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My Pathfinder 2e Post-Mortem
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<blockquote data-quote="!DWolf" data-source="post: 8869572" data-attributes="member: 7026314"><p>I have had a very different experience.</p><p></p><p>I am currently running Legacy of Fire (converted from 3.5) with Broken Chains as a supplemental adventure and Abomination Vaults/Troubles in Otari. Both of these have dungeons with intelligent groups of enemies and when running them the healing system works well. Each turn in the dungeon is dangerous and the characters have to make a choice of whether to refocus/heal (and risk a “random” encounter), press on (and risk entering the next encounter weakened), or retreat (and let the enemies prepare). Having choices like that really makes dungeon crawling fun in a sort of “press your luck way”. </p><p>I have also run urban exploration and wilderness crawls and the healing system also worked well for those. If there is no danger or pressing time, I just let the characters heal to full in a watch (or sooner depending on what their method of healing is). </p><p></p><p>I have a completely different philosophy on skills, skill feats, and exploration activities and I never have had the problems with things like group impression or survey wildlife people on the internet always bring up. Like I explained to my players, both of those feats make you supernaturally fast at what they do. With group impression by the time you finish reading this sentence I have made friends with twenty-five people. With survey wildlife I have done a task that can take years and a massive amount of money in a mere ten minutes for free. To answer your rhetorical questions: think of skill actions as building blocks. Some things you want to do require a single block, some however require multiple blocks and thus multiple checks. For the latter simply think realistically on what you have to do to accomplish them and break that down into steps until they match the available skill actions. Then have the players roll for each skill action. That is skill feats don’t give you access to things anyone can do - they let you do these things very well and often to a supernatural degree.</p><p></p><p>I apply the same principle to exploration activities. I ask what the players want to do (to quote the CRB: “…allow each player to describe what their character is doing. Then, as the GM, you can determine which activity applies. This also means you determine how an activity works if the character’s actions differ from those on the list.”) and then break it down into one or more exploration activities. For example to sneakily scout ahead looking for traps, how would you realistically do it? Well you sneak up to a location (Avoid Notice) and make sure it is clear of obvious dangers (included in the Avoid Notice activity), then carefully search the location for traps (Search which is more than glancing around the room: you are doing things like waving light sources around to check for the moving shadows of tripwires and raised or dressed stones, tapping suspicious objects with ten foot poles, etc.) then repeat. Is this incredibly slow without a feat? Yes. That is the benefit of the feat: it doesn’t allow you to do it, it allows you to do it inhumanly fast.</p><p></p><p>Finally, aside from crafting (I house ruled a day by day system instead of a four day system), I like the downtime rules. I use an enforced downtime rule in Abominations Vaults (basically - one day rest per one day adventuring) and I think it really elevated the game: especially when combined with vp systems for individual characters sub-goals.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="!DWolf, post: 8869572, member: 7026314"] I have had a very different experience. I am currently running Legacy of Fire (converted from 3.5) with Broken Chains as a supplemental adventure and Abomination Vaults/Troubles in Otari. Both of these have dungeons with intelligent groups of enemies and when running them the healing system works well. Each turn in the dungeon is dangerous and the characters have to make a choice of whether to refocus/heal (and risk a “random” encounter), press on (and risk entering the next encounter weakened), or retreat (and let the enemies prepare). Having choices like that really makes dungeon crawling fun in a sort of “press your luck way”. I have also run urban exploration and wilderness crawls and the healing system also worked well for those. If there is no danger or pressing time, I just let the characters heal to full in a watch (or sooner depending on what their method of healing is). I have a completely different philosophy on skills, skill feats, and exploration activities and I never have had the problems with things like group impression or survey wildlife people on the internet always bring up. Like I explained to my players, both of those feats make you supernaturally fast at what they do. With group impression by the time you finish reading this sentence I have made friends with twenty-five people. With survey wildlife I have done a task that can take years and a massive amount of money in a mere ten minutes for free. To answer your rhetorical questions: think of skill actions as building blocks. Some things you want to do require a single block, some however require multiple blocks and thus multiple checks. For the latter simply think realistically on what you have to do to accomplish them and break that down into steps until they match the available skill actions. Then have the players roll for each skill action. That is skill feats don’t give you access to things anyone can do - they let you do these things very well and often to a supernatural degree. I apply the same principle to exploration activities. I ask what the players want to do (to quote the CRB: “…allow each player to describe what their character is doing. Then, as the GM, you can determine which activity applies. This also means you determine how an activity works if the character’s actions differ from those on the list.”) and then break it down into one or more exploration activities. For example to sneakily scout ahead looking for traps, how would you realistically do it? Well you sneak up to a location (Avoid Notice) and make sure it is clear of obvious dangers (included in the Avoid Notice activity), then carefully search the location for traps (Search which is more than glancing around the room: you are doing things like waving light sources around to check for the moving shadows of tripwires and raised or dressed stones, tapping suspicious objects with ten foot poles, etc.) then repeat. Is this incredibly slow without a feat? Yes. That is the benefit of the feat: it doesn’t allow you to do it, it allows you to do it inhumanly fast. Finally, aside from crafting (I house ruled a day by day system instead of a four day system), I like the downtime rules. I use an enforced downtime rule in Abominations Vaults (basically - one day rest per one day adventuring) and I think it really elevated the game: especially when combined with vp systems for individual characters sub-goals. [/QUOTE]
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