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Message: <blockquote data-quote="kenada" data-source="post: 8430170" data-attributes="member: 70468">Eh, I’ve been pretty forthcoming here about my dislike of certain elements in Pathfinder 2e. I don’t like skill actions at all. I think bringing them forward from Pathfinder 1e was a mistake, and they could have retained the degrees of success approach with something simpler to use and adjudicate. I just don’t agree with you regarding the problem skill feats purportedly create.The only difference between what you’re suggesting and what we’re suggesting is that your approach explicitly enumerates the trade-off instead of leaving it up to the GM to decide. If I say, “you can do (some activity) with a cost, and the feat lets you do it free,” and you say, “the rules let you do some activity, and the feat gives you a bonus while doing it,” what’s the difference? The cost has been shifted, but there’s still functionally a cost. The only difference is in how it’s accounted.That’s the problem. Whenever we start digging into details, the criticisms don’t hold up. Maybe a few feats are bad, but a few bad feats don’t show a systemic problem.That’s only the case if you take it that way. I don’t think the system necessitates running it the way you claim it does. If you let someone do something at a cost, and a skill feat lets them do it for free, you haven’t invalidated the skill feat by your affordance. Yes, maybe now it’s less valuable in a strict sense, but if the game is more fun for everyone, then isn’t that a good thing?On the other hand, if the players hate that and prefer you don’t do it, then where’s the problem? They don’t want you to be a permissive GM. They want you to take a very rigid approach to adjudicating the system that preserves (though I would argue increases) the value of their feat choices. Maybe it makes for a miserable experience, but that’s what they asked for and received.It does tell you. <a href="https://2e.aonprd.com/Actions.aspx?ID=76" target="_blank">Crawl</a> tells you how fast you move (5′ in one action). <a href="https://2e.aonprd.com/Actions.aspx?ID=33" target="_blank">Climb</a> indicates in its requirements you must have both hands free. <a href="https://2e.aonprd.com/Actions.aspx?ID=81" target="_blank">Leap</a> and <a href="https://2e.aonprd.com/Actions.aspx?ID=37" target="_blank">Long Jump</a> tell you how far you can jump (Leap up to 10′ and Long Jump up to your speed based on the DC). Again, that’s how exception-based design works: you follow the general rule until you something brings the exception into play (a feat, a spell, the GM, etc).Are you talking about <a href="https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=849" target="_blank">Survey Wildlife</a>? I’m not sure which feat you mean by the gossip example, but it’s my understanding the designers consider it bad design for a feat to change which ability score an activity uses (so that would be a bad feat). Regardless, I agree with you here on Survey Wildlife as well as on whatever feats would let you change the ability score (becuase that’s supposed to be bad design).I think that should be implicitly part of the Survival skill that you can identify the local wildlife and make an appropriate Recall Knowledge check about it. I can see ways of adjudicating that activity that would avoid invalidating the feat (make it take an hour or a day), but this is a case where one does need to know about the skill feat to make rulings, which shouldn’t be the case normally. I agree that’s a problem, but I don’t agree that it reflects a systemic one.Personally, I’d probably just get rid of Survey Wildlife or change it. It’s a bad feat because it has you roll twice, which is an example of <a href="https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/38798/roleplaying-games/gm-dont-list-2-rolling-to-failure" target="_blank">rolling to failure</a>. It makes more sense for the general case to roll twice and the feat to let you roll once or to roll once and for the feat to give you a bonus. Again, Paizo dropped the ball with this one, but I still don’t agree it represents a systemic issue with Pathfinder 2e.Given the amount of disagreement on this point, it doesn’t seem like the message was as clearly sent as you say.</blockquote>

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