Pathfinder 2E Here's The Pathfinder 2nd Edition Skill List!

It's another Tuesday, which means another look at the previous night's Pathfinder 2nd Edition preview! There's only a couple of month to go until the full playtest rules are released (I have the hardcover on pre-order). Until then, Paizo continue with their twice-weekly glimpses into the ruleset - and this time we look at skills!

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• 17 base skills down from 35.
• Lots of consolidation -- Athletics contains a bunch, and Use Magic Device is replaced by the relevant Lore skill
• You are trained in more skills than before -- fighter has an extra one, for example (3+ Int mod)
• Skill list --
  • Acrobatics (Dex)
  • Arcana (Int)
  • Athletics (Str)
  • Crafting (Int)
  • Deception (Cha)
  • Diplomacy (Cha)
  • Intimidation (Cha)
  • Lore (Int)
  • Medicine (Wis)
  • Nature (Wis)
  • Occultism (Int)
  • Performance (Cha)
  • Religion (Wis)
  • Society (Int)
  • Stealth (Dex)
  • Survival (Wis)
  • Thievery (Dex)
• Skill proficiency --
  • Untrained -2, trained +0, expert +1, master +2, legendary +3 (plus level and ability modifier)
  • Each level of proficiency unlocks new skill uses
  • Medicine's Administer First Aid ability is available at the untrained level, being trained allows you to Treat Disease and Treat Poison
• Skill feats --
  • Usually at even levels you choose a skill feat
  • Rogues get them every level
  • Prerequisite is a level of proficiency in a skill (e.g. "legendary in Medicine")
  • Example is the Legendary Medic, which lets you remove diseases and conditions.
  • Stealth has skill feats like Quiet Allies (help your party sneak), Swift Sneak (move at full speed while sneaking), and at legendary level you just sneak everywhere constantly.

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[jmucchiello]

They mentioned in an earlier blog that since Perception was such a must-have skill, they just made it Trained for everyone.

Which in itself is annoying. I have created characters who were notoriously bad at perception before. It's practically a trope.

 

[Imaculata]

Which in itself is annoying. I have created characters who were notoriously bad at perception before. It's practically a trope.

Same here. It can actually be fun to play a character with bad perception.

I think the problem is really not with the skill itself, but with the way DM's tend to use perception. They will have players make perception checks to notice 'anything', and that is really not how the skill should be used. Because it makes the skill the most common roll at the table, while others are hardly ever used at all.

In my current campaign for example, diplomacy and sense motive are way more important than perception.

 

[mellored]

Personally I just would not use a level 0 character as a model for a Master of anything. I definitely would not use such a flat level bonus.

I like the idea that you get a bit better at everything as you level.
Just not that much better.

 

[Tsuga C]

I wonder what the difference between Arcana and Occultism is.

I'd guess that Arcana relates to wizardry/spells and Occultism would cover planar lore such as demonology.

 

[Shasarak]

I like the idea that you get a bit better at everything as you level.
Just not that much better.

I am not sure about a bit better. Your character goes from fighting Orcs to fighting Orcus. From casting magic missiles to casting meteor swarm. From being OK at your skills to being a little better at using your skills.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

I am not sure about a bit better. Your character goes from fighting Orcs to fighting Orcus. From casting magic missiles to casting meteor swarm. From being OK at your skills to being a little better at using your skills.

The major difference is that we have absolutely zero basis in reality for how much time it's supposed to take in order get that much better at casting magic spells. We do have a pretty solid basis in reality for how much time it's supposed to take in order to master mundane skills, and in most cases it takes longer than a few months of intermittent study.

Imaginary things can be as amazing as we want them to be. Real things are limited by what sounds plausible.

 

[Shasarak]

The major difference is that we have absolutely zero basis in reality for how much time it's supposed to take in order get that much better at casting magic spells. We do have a pretty solid basis in reality for how much time it's supposed to take in order to master mundane skills, and in most cases it takes longer than a few months of intermittent study.

Imaginary things can be as amazing as we want them to be. Real things are limited by what sounds plausible.

How much time does it take to master mundane skills? And how much time does it take to go from Trained to Expert to Master to Legendary in the real world?

 

[prosfilaes]

The major difference is that we have absolutely zero basis in reality for how much time it's supposed to take in order get that much better at casting magic spells. We do have a pretty solid basis in reality for how much time it's supposed to take in order to master mundane skills, and in most cases it takes longer than a few months of intermittent study.

Imaginary things can be as amazing as we want them to be. Real things are limited by what sounds plausible.

How many action movies do you watch? That doesn't seem to be a very tight rule. Forget physics; if we want the bus to jump the gap, the bus will jump the gap, and if we want the hero to walk away from the explosion all cool-like, they'll walk away from the explosion all cool-like, no matter how unrealistic it is.

And we do have a basis for knowing how much time it's supposed to take to get that much better at casting magic spells. We can look at the NPCs in the universe and see how long they took. If it takes five years to get to world-shattering magical power levels, we should see that; dedicated individuals with the right skills should be hitting world-shattering magical power levels on a regular basis.

Lastly, we do have some bounds for what a fighter can do. I'm pretty sure we can safely say that that killing a dozen boars (600 XP a piece) isn't going to make someone skilled enough to make them able to fight a grizzly bear one on one. If you want realism here, you've got much bigger issues than the skill rules.

PCs rocket up levels much faster and pick up amazing abilities way faster than realistic. If you want a game that worries about that, at least for mundane abilities, you're looking for a different game. Ars Magica, maybe?

 

[The Crimson Binome]

How much time does it take to master mundane skills? And how much time does it take to go from Trained to Expert to Master to Legendary in the real world?

Greater than the in-game length of a typical Pathfinder campaign. Maybe you can go from Magic Missile to Meteor Storm in three months, but it takes longer than three months to go from microwaving pizzas to being the best chef in the world.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

And we do have a basis for knowing how much time it's supposed to take to get that much better at casting magic spells. We can look at the NPCs in the universe and see how long they took. If it takes five years to get to world-shattering magical power levels, we should see that; dedicated individuals with the right skills should be hitting world-shattering magical power levels on a regular basis.

If you're saying that Golarion is a ridiculous place which seems to operate by arbitrary and inconsistent rules, then I'm not going to argue with that.

However a game world actually works, as spelled out for us in the rules, the narrative needs to be consistent with that. It's stupid if the PCs go from level 1 to level 20 over the course of three months, but an equivalent-motivated NPC wizard can't go from level 5 to level 6 over the course of a year. I know that 3.5 addresses the disparity with training times before you can actually gain a level, but I can't recall if those appear in Pathfinder as well.