Pathfinder 2E Pathfinder 2e: is it RAW or RAI to always take 10 minutes and heal between encounters?

[Retreater]

This one would be more of an issue, because it requires the GM to come up with the number of pebbles in the room, despite that not being particularly useful information for anyone. I agree that would not be great design, but since by your own admission you made it up, I concur with @Justice and Rule's

Hilariously, the pebble issue did come up at my table. In 3.5 there was an elementist wizard who could detect the presence of rocks and wanted to know how many auras were in the cavern. Haha.

 

[Justice and Rule]

Another important thing about Combat Climber is it does not prevent you from still allowing the PC to try it with a (suitably challenging) roll. Combat Climber allows it without a cost, so why would ruling it can be attempted with a cost be prohibited? That makes no sense.

Yeah, if you wanted to do some sort of ruling where someone could hold onto a sword while climbing, you could just put on a harsh modifier (+2/+5, maybe dependent on the size of the weapon). Hell, if you wanted to you could have someone swing a two-handed weapon and make a crazy Balance check to keep their feet in place if they so desire. Failure would be, to put it lightly, bad, but you can totally make that sort of ruling. I probably wouldn't (or I'd be pretty clear that this is not a good thing to attempt), but there's no rules preventing it.

Same with the Dandy feat: what it does is lock in a way for the player to do something, rather than the GM making something up. If you want to change a rumor and don't have the Dandy archetype, you just have to wheel and deal with the GM in a way that the Dandy simply does not. That's the benefit of the feat: it's not that it necessarily prevents other players from using those sorts of actions, but rather it guarantees that player from being able to do it.

Another good example of this is A Home in Every Port. You can find free lodging if you spend 8 hours in a town or village. There's nothing that says you can't do that with other players as a matter of course; you spent 8 hours as a cost and now you get free lodging for a night. But they never get that guarantee, while someone with that feat does.

Hilariously, the pebble issue did come up at my table. In 3.5 there was an elementist wizard who could detect the presence of rocks and wanted to know how many auras were in the cavern. Haha.

The old guys in my group often tell about the one time in a wargame that someone had a gun pulled on them (it ended with no one hurt and that guy obviously hasn't gamed with them in 30+ years since he had real problems), and it's always been a topic of discussion as to what would be the thing that causes you to draw on a guy.

I wouldn't do it for that, but it'd be close. And I would make that fact known to my player if they wanted to do that again.

 

[Retreater]

The old guys in my group often tell about the one time in a wargame that someone had a gun pulled on them (it ended with no one hurt and that guy obviously hasn't game with them in 30+ years since he had real problems), and it's always been a topic of discussion as to what would be the thing that causes you to draw on a guy.

I wouldn't do it for that, but it'd be close. And I would make that fact known to my player if they wanted to do that again.

I had the number of rock auras in the cave stagger the character, being overloaded with the presence of rocks. The player didn't like the ruling, but he never used that power again.

 

[Justice and Rule]

I had the number of rock auras in the cave stagger the character, being overloaded with the presence of rocks. The player didn't like the ruling, but he never used that power again.

Someone in our group was using the UA Ranger and they chose Humanoid as their Favored Enemy. We were campaigning in Waterdeep and every time he used his Primeval Awareness we all made jokes about overloading him. He would put his hands to his temples and shake his head a little. It was funny.

 

[kenada]

Same with the Dandy feat: what it does is lock in a way for the player to do something, rather than the GM making something up. If you want to change a rumor and don't have the Dandy archetype, you just have to wheel and deal with the GM in a way that the Dandy simply does not. That's the benefit of the feat: it's not that it necessarily prevents other players from using those sorts of actions, but rather it guarantees that player from being able to do it.

I was thinking the same thing. If you wanted to do that without the feat, one could use the VP subsystem to resolve it. The same goes for Group Impression (use the Influence subsystem). Obviously, if one isn’t using the GMG, the GM can just make something up instead. The point is these feats are still valuable because they reduce the need to roll, reduce the time it takes, or make the outcome more certain. In a d20 game, those are all very desirable especially when the GM is making rulings.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Yeah, I've never understood the idea that just because there's a feat that lets you automatically do something or do it with an easy roll, that somehow implies you can't do it otherwise without that feat.

Now, maybe someone doesn't like that the presence of that feat and/or the entry in the skill writeup makes doing something otherwise, by implication, difficult, but that's not an argument against the feat structure (and to be clear, I'm not intrinsically a massive fan of the heavy exception based design present in those, but given other parts of D&D and its kin (which tend to be about as heavily exception based as any family of games out there), getting into it about feats is like complaining water is wet) or the skill structure, that's just an argument about where you want to draw the lines.

 

[payn]

Yeah, I've never understood the idea that just because there's a feat that lets you automatically do something or do it with an easy roll, that somehow implies you can't do it otherwise without that feat.

Now, maybe someone doesn't like that the presence of that feat and/or the entry in the skill writeup makes doing something otherwise, by implication, difficult, but that's not an argument against the feat structure (and to be clear, I'm not intrinsically a massive fan of the heavy exception based design present in those, but given other parts of D&D and its kin (which tend to be about as heavily exception based as any family of games out there), getting into it about feats is like complaining water is wet) or the skill structure, that's just an argument about where you want to draw the lines.

I think much of it harkens back to the action economy of 3E/PF1 and attacks of opportunity. It was often painful to try things without feats because it was always an inferior choice to just attacking or using feat based abilities.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I think much of it harkens back to the action economy of 3E/PF1 and attacks of opportunity. It was often painful to try things without feats because it was always an inferior choice to just attacking or using feat based abilities.

Yeah, I'm kind of having an argument with someone on the Paizo board about this, because my experience with 3e was just what you say; if you hadn't baked a cake during character generation and advancement, there were very few things that were actually worth doing other than slugging away. One thing I will argue strenuously about in regard to PF2e is most character builds actually have some real decisions to make about what to do with their third action that actually matter (which doesn't mean you can't have, say, a sword-and-board fighter who just does Hit-Hit-Raise Shield and have it work, but that at least some of the time one of those actions can be usefully used other ways).

 

[kenada]

It goes further back than 3e. It’s been that way since the thief was introduced to OD&D. As soon as classes have differentiation, people assume others are locked out of even attempting those activities.

 

[Thomas Shey]

It goes further back than 3e. It’s been that way since the thief was introduced to OD&D. As soon as classes have differentiation, people assume others are locked out of even attempting those activities.

Well, that was compounded by the fact the thief was the first time there was any mechanics applied to some of those actions at all. If you wanted to figure out how to determine whether a group of PCs in OD&D could climb something or hide from something, you were entirely on your own with nothing but, at best the (in my opinion inadequate) single-D6 rolls for some things to use as a model.

So when you only really have one set of things to use as a model, and that set seems to be set up for only a specific class...