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Message: <blockquote data-quote="CapnZapp" data-source="post: 8143521" data-attributes="member: 12731">I completely understand the theoretical idea "okay so nobody takes this or that feat, what's the problem?"The problem is where do you draw the line. Which feats are irrelevant, or phrased differently: open to "GM generosity"?Per the rules, as soon as you take even 1 point of damage from a fall, you land prone. Unless you have a feat. Do you allow corner cases, and if so, how can you justify taking those feats?Per the rules, you crawl excruciatingly slow (1 square per action). Unless you have a feat. Do you allow corner cases, and if so, how can you justify taking those feats?Per the rules, you can never jump longer than your Speed (even if you spend more than action). Unless you have a feat. Do you allow corner cases, and if so, how can you justify taking those feats?Per the rules, you can't climb with weapons drawn (since both hands and feet are needed for the climb), meaning you must spend actions drawing and sheathing your weapon(s) each time you need to reposition yourself on the wall or cliff (making it a no-no to try to defend yourself in practice) Unless you have a feat. Do you allow corner cases, and if so, how can you justify taking those feats?If you think it's so easy to just be generous, which feats are worthless in your campaign so I know which ones to avoid. Maybe I don't need Quickdraw if you simply allow a DC 15 Acrobatics or Initiative check? Maybe you allow a hero to Grab an Edge even though he wields a two-handed weapon - in which case it's no point is building a Zorro character that fights with one hand "empty"?This never ends. Per the rules, you need to spend three actions if you want to take a step to the table, jump up on it, and keep moving. Or if you want to reach the door, open it, and step through.And on and on. I can't be bothered to research this reply, so hopefully you will not get sidetracked if I made a mistake.Point is, we're quickly moving away from playing PF2 here and into playing KenadaFinder2. Nothing wrong with that......except that unless you have a photographic memory, you will forget in which cases you held firm and required the feat, and when you allowed the feat to be bypassed.In a game where the feat choices - and the very subtle improvements they (together with spells and magic items) grant- are what charbuilding is all about, you quickly end up with an unsatisfying mishmash. Can I ever be certain I'm getting the printed benefit out of my feat choices, or will Kenada just let my fellow players persuade him into letting them try without them?What then is the point of making choices?---No, Pathfinder is very clearly a game actively preventing you from the "yes, but" generous GM play style. I myself made a couple of such attempts to be generous, but quickly stopped when my players started asking questions like "is your decision final and permanent? Just want to know which feats I should ignore..."In almost every single case where I thought "no harm in being generous" a player went "but what about my feat then?" And in the few cases nobody objected, chances are it's just because we weren't high level and hadn't experienced all classes yet - the generosity just happened to invalidate a feat from a class or level my players hadn't checked out.You can't track a beast you haven't seen with this specific feat.You can't be smart about finding leads without this specific feat.And on and on and on...---Example from practical play.The player of a level 15 Barbarian, happy to put her newly taken Cloud Jump to the test, challenged my level 18 monster to a long-jumping contest. After reading the rules and <a href="https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=767" target="_blank">the text of the feat</a>, I had to conclude we couldn't hold that contest (despite the monster being clearly superior in Athletics!) - either the player character would win trivially, or I had to rule the monster didn't need the feat to jump longer distances than its Speed.Smarting from my previous experiences, I quickly decided not to open Pandora's Box, and suggested they compete another way instead.Had the game been sensibly designed, every character who becomes Legendary in Athletics would gain this ability automatically. Justifying that my monster was of equivalent ability (monsters don't specify proficiency ranks) would have easy in comparison.Of course, even better would have to have a general rule that said something like "jumping like on clouds* requires a DC 34 Athletics check**.*) meaning whatever the benefits of the feat are**) DC 34 selected because it's the class DC for level 15The point is, now you have a rule that works for all characters and all monsters. You don't need to reach any specific threshold at all. If you have a +20 bonus, you can try but will find it challenging. If you have a +30 bonus, it's close to a given (especially since you can apply Assurance). As an added benefit, you're not asking a high level character to still jump like a low-level plebe (jumping the standard speed of 25 feet is something you mastered many levels ago) unless you prioritize this one feat.It allows you to clean out all these useless feats that just serve to emasculate characters, there to create an artifical option space. But mostly introduce monster and NPC incompatibilities and generally be a royal pain in the hindquarters.</blockquote>

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