What triggers some people about Pathfinder?

[RandomPeasant]

I would like to point out, again, that the overwhelming response from the pro-pathfinder crowd here has not been to try and highlight how the more complex system can be good, but rather to say that our (the people who dont care for 3.5/PF) perspective is wrong, our opinions are invalid and in some cases to insist that we are simply inventing criticisms.

So that would be why people asking if I would like to try Pathfinder actively drives me away from Pathfinder.

If I said that 5e was bad because it used dicepools instead of d20s, would you feel compelled to explain why dicepools were a good fit for D&D and how they actually made the system better, or would you (entirely correctly) point out that 5e does not use dicepools and my objection is, at best, a massive mischaracterization of Advantage and Disadvantage?

Because that's how a lot of these objections sound from the perspective of someone who plays 3e. I think there are valid points to make about complexity in 3e. The system does not have good tools for guiding new players to specific classes that fit their preferences. That's bad. But the badness it results in is "people default to stuff and miss out on things they might enjoy", not "people meticulously read every option and develop a robust framework for evaluating them" as people seem to be implying (indeed, if you are the sort of person who does that, I am pretty confident 3e is a better fit for you than 5e). Similarly, I think there's a valid point to make about the ways that the system doesn't do a good job of signposting what classes are more complex, or making sure that complexity is aligned between build and play in ways that make sense (it is, for instance, pretty dumb that high-op martials take a whole bunch of work to build but end up with one button to press). But these are not the criticisms people make, or seem to be making, when they talk about complexity. It is simply not true that there are overwhelmingly more mechanics you need to learn to get started with 3e. It is not the case that the modal 3e option is filled with nested conditionals and cross-references and ambiguous rules.

I think, to be charitable, the argument many people are advancing for 5e is that they prefer a system that does less stuff and has less things in it. And that's a fine preference to have. You can want that, and if you want that 3e is not a good system for you. But the argument is presented as "3e is unnecessarily complex" when the reality is that it is necessarily complex because it allows you to do things you simply cannot do in 5e and could not do without turning the system into something that was comparably complex.

Because they are. You could have one, or the other, or both. In 5e there is resistance (half damage), vulnerability (double damage) and immunity (no damage), and it applies per damage type.

"This creature takes less damage from fire" and "this creature takes less damage from non-slashing" are mathematically the same operation.

Yes, but also no. 5e uses things like Concentration, Attunement and Advantage to deliberately cut down on what you can possibly have even if you say enabled Gestalting and handed out free feats in a monty haul campaign. 3.PF expects you to pick up all these whings with WBL, stacking long duration buffs, etc.

The stuff you are expected to pick up with WBL in 3e is all stuff that is just passively on all the time. Unless you are regularly jumping into and out of AMFs, you don't need to re-calc the bonuses you get from your cloak of resistance and magic sword and so on. I just don't agree that 3e "expects" you to stack long duration buffs. That's certainly a thing you can do, but again if you have this discussion in the 3e forum about 3e specifically, the faction that is pro-5e here insists at length that you are not at all expected to do things like Persistomancy and that it is in fact abusing the system to employ them.

[animorte]

So the comparison is that, in a 5e game, you would instead be rolling an extra 1d4 and have to track Advantage and Disadvantage instead of some +2s. That's just not any less complicated.

You just explained why it is though. Add an extra die roll or two instead of wondering whether or not these particular modifiers are relevant. I mean, we could also discuss two-weapon fighting where you need a -2/-4 and then Str = 3/1.5 (round down)...

Like I said, I didn't mind it too much, but outright claiming it's the same level of complexity assumes a lack of experience with at least one of the systems.

I already touched on skills as well. 5e is proficiency and maybe expertise (then dis/adv) where 3.5 is max skill rank = level +3, +mod, +2 feat, +2 for ranks in other skills, rounding down for half skill ranks.

[RandomPeasant]

Add an extra die roll or two instead of wondering whether or not these particular modifiers are relevant.

And you don't need to wonder if the die rolls are relevant? Seriously, how is "bless gives you a d4 bonus die" possibly any less complicated than "bless gives you a +1 bonus". It is the same effect applying at the same times, it's just that now it's variable. That's more complexity, not less.

I mean, we could also discuss two-weapon fighting where you need a -2/-4 and then Str = 3/1.5 (round down)...

You certainly could, but that is again a static series of adjustments. I will grant you that a character that swaps between TWF, two-hander, and sword-and-board in 3e is pretty complicated and involves tracking a lot of different bonuses, but such a character is profoundly optional to play, and indeed I have never heard of someone building such a thing.

I already touched on skills as well. 5e is proficiency and maybe expertise (then dis/adv) where 3.5 is max skill rank = level +3, +mod, +2 feat, +2 for ranks in other skills, rounding down for half skill ranks.

But, with the rare exception of ability damage, none of those bonuses are in any way conditional. That's all stuff you can do way in advance. If you want to make the argument "it is massively more complex to add up five numbers than two numbers", sure, you can make that argument. But the argument that's been suggested is that 3e involves a bunch of conditional modifiers that make it hard to understand what is happening, but the evidence you are presenting does not demonstrate that. Once you have accumulated your 5 ranks in Bluff for a Diplomacy synergy bonus, you have that bonus forever. There will never be a circumstance where you need to ask yourself "does my synergy bonus apply", and so it is not evidence for the proposition that 3e is riddled with conditionally-applicable bonuses.

There are totally arguments you can make here. I think "skill checks vary enormously because 3e contains a lot of options and which ones you choose dramatically changes your outcomes" is a valid critique. But that's a different critique from "there are a lot of conditional bonuses", which is just not true. It's absolutely the case that someone who has bought a +20 competency item and acquired an Item Familiar has a larger bonus than another character who has not done those things. But their bonus is always larger than that other character's, there's nothing conditional about it.

[animorte]

There are totally arguments you can make here. I think "skill checks vary enormously because 3e contains a lot of options and which ones you choose dramatically changes your outcomes" is a valid critique. But that's a different critique from "there are a lot of conditional bonuses", which is just not true.

I request that you to take a good look at the Skill Synergies table (found on page 66 of 3.5e PHB), count how many times you see the word "involving" and tell me none of that is conditional, not to mention all the other conditions that don't include that specific word.

Notice that bluff applies to 4 different conditions. Handle animal, tumble, and use rope each show two different conditions.

In some cases, this bonus applies only to specific uses of the skill in question, and not all checks. Some skills provide benefits on other checks made by a character, such as those checks required to use certain class features.

I honestly don't understand how the variance could be any more clear than that.

[Kane0]

Seriously, how is "bless gives you a d4 bonus die" possibly any less complicated than "bless gives you a +1 bonus". It is the same effect applying at the same times, it's just that now it's variable. That's more complexity, not less.

Because you can have the 1d4 physically sitting next to your d20 to remind you, and that 1d4 does not interact with other bonuses/penalties that you might get. If you are recieving bless that caster is not also providing guidance or bane or shield of faith or enlarge/reduce or magic weapon or haste. All of which do add their own die or +1 or +2 mind you, but its usually only ever one at a time, and you tend to pay attention because of concentration.

It sounds like you're taking our examples in isolation, when the common contention is that the compounding of all these functions creates the difficulty. Difficulty as in 'this busywork is not adding to my enjoyment of the game', not 'im finding this challenging to calculate'

[Satinavian]

Err, I've been climbing trees since I was like 7, and I guarantee you that 7 year old me was no Athletics Expert, I was a pretty normal kid. Like, unless we're talking about the legendary Greasebark Trees of the Fang jungle, wreathed in the deadly but beautiful Bloodsipper vines, climbing a climbable tree isn't that hard.

Ok, that whole thing sounded a bit strange, so i looked it up and well :

Climbing can be used untrained.

There are competence levels in the example difficulty table but that is not "you need to have this to be allowed to roll".
A failed climbing roll only means you don't advance and need to try again, only a fumble means you fall.

And yes, while that means that someone completely untrained without good attributes can climb an average tree, it will will likely take long and there is a risk to fall. If it is an easy to climb tree, that becomes an automatic success without a chance to fall, but will still take longer than for a trained climber.



Pathfinder 2 has enough problems without inventing new ones.

[Ignimortis]

The longer I type up my response, the less I agree with this in general. Not only do I think it's possible to do all of the above in a single skill system, but I also think you're missing the space in-between where neither die rolls nor skill investment fully eclipse the other.

My personal preferences for a skill system (all of these things make intuitive sense to me as modeling the fiction, and work fine from a gameplay perspective as well):
1. Random chance or circumstantial bonuses should be the deciding factor in peer vs. peer contests, or when someone is pushing the edge of their ability (regardless of how skilled they are).
2. Specialists should have a distinct, genuine advantage over generalists, who should have a distinct, genuine advantage over someone with no investment whatsoever, regardless of level.
3. Specialists should almost always succeed at things that are only moderately difficult or easier.
4. Generalists should basically always have a chance in things they've invested in, unless they're trying something unreasonably hard.
5. There should be things that are too hard for an untrained character to even attempt.

There's a skill system that I quite like that accomplishes all of those things (I'm sure there are more than one). It's 3.5's (and to a large extent, PF1's). We don't have to choose between "everyone scales up everything as they level", "the dice decide everything", and "the dice are useless".

3.5's system only functions along those lines either before modifiers become too high to offset with dice (i.e. +25 is easy at level 10, and +40 is quite doable at level 15, so someone who hasn't invested into a skill has a, say, 3-22 roll range, and someone who has has a 41-60 roll range. What is impossible to one is trivial to another (DC30). A generalist with +20 to the same roll (still takes quite some investment, usually, it's not "yeah I can spare one skill point for this every four levels") can attempt a DC30 check, but will only succeed 50% of the time.

Which means that a challenge you can pose to such a group will either exclude everyone but the specialist, or have the specialist solve it automatically without needing to give other people a try.

Even now, at level 6, a survivalist Rogue in my PF1 game has +21 to Survival. If something calls for a Survival roll, there is no reason to hand it to anyone but the Rogue, because she can get a better result on a 1 than other party members get on an 11. The gap will only increase as they level, and by level 12 the Rogue will roll around +31 or +36 (+6 or so WIS, +15 class ranks, +10 or +15 magic item). There won't be anyone in the party who can reliably outroll a guaranteed 32/37 (or a talent-ed "automatically take 10" 41/46). A generalist would have to invest into magic items of their own to even come close. Say, +5 WIS, +8 class ranks instead of maxed +15, and a +10 magic item - that's a +23. No magic items for that particular skill? You're barely going to get their nat1 result even on a nat20.

You would have to completely exclude +skill magic items from the game, as well as improving the amount of skill points every class gets AND how they get to invest them. For instance, maybe the skill cap is actually "your HD x2" and you get commensurately more skill points so that you can spread them narrowly (most if not all trained skills at HDx2) or widely (most trained skills at HDx1 to HDx1.5). But the default 3.5 system very quickly reaches values where you either have to be a specialist to attempt stuff or you don't need to, as the specialist automatically wins.

I am not a fan of 5e's approach, but they too have identified this problem and decided to solve it in their own way. However, this leads to 5e's absurd "a level 1 untrained (+0) character beats a level 20 trained (proficient, stat +5) character in a skill contest around 20% of the time, and can even win circa 5% of contests with focused specialists (expertise, stat +5)".

[Kurald Galain]

Pathfinder made its decision. You need to be this high to ride on skills. You don't have to like it, but at least there is an official rule on the matter, and Pathfinder is not stingy on the number of skills players may have.

Assuming from context that you're talking about PF2 here, yes it is very stingy on the number of skills players may have. That is, outside of rogues, at most levels you can have exactly two skills at a relevant level. And that is because you get only one skill increase per two levels (again, except rogues).

Climbing can be used untrained.

There are competence levels in the example difficulty table but that is not "you need to have this to be allowed to roll".

True enough, but there are also traps/hazards/obstacles that do require "Mastery in this skill to be allowed to roll". I can't off-hand think of any traps that require climbing, but quite a lot of traps work that way with e.g. thievery or arcana skills (to the point where the game basically requires that someone in the party maxxess out these skills).

[Satinavian]

Assuming from context that you're talking about PF2 here, yes it is very stingy on the number of skills players may have. That is, outside of rogues, at most levels you can have exactly two skills at a relevant level. And that is because you get only one skill increase per two levels (again, except rogues).

Oh, yes. PF2 is way too stingy here. It is as if someone thought "We can reach niche protection by making overlapping skills prohibitively expensive." It is honestly quite stupid. rogue/investigator skill increases should be the bare minimum to stay in the fiction of halfway competent adventurers.

True enough, but there are also traps/hazards/obstacles that do require "Mastery in this skill to be allowed to roll". I can't off-hand think of any traps that require climbing, but quite a lot of traps work that way with e.g. thievery or arcana skills (to the point where the game basically requires that someone in the party maxxess out these skills).

But this is ok, i feel. Never liked the habit of "Oh, we have no clue what we are doing, but let's try anyway, maybe we get a high roll" relying on the fickleness of the D20 overshadowing the actual character abilities.

However it does become a problem if regular level appropriate tasks require maxing out skills. But that goes back to the seemingly rather intentional habit of PF2 to force everyone to make one-trick-ponies.

[Ignimortis]

Oh, yes. PF2 is way too stingy here. It is as if someone thought "We can reach niche protection by making overlapping skills prohibitively expensive." It is honestly quite stupid. rogue/investigator skill increases should be the bare minimum to stay in the fiction of halfway competent adventurers.

I think it's a part of their design philosophy, which can be inferred to be "everyone only gets the bare minimum of abilities they need to form a feature-complete party of four". If you take four PCs, one of which is a Rogue/Investigator, you can cover all skills in the game...barely. With the exception of Crafting and Lore, which are somewhat specific and have few general uses, there are 15 skills...which is exactly how many skills 3 x non-skill (3 skills each) and 1 x skill (6 skills) characters would get.

[lesser_minion]

I think it's a part of their design philosophy, which can be inferred to be "everyone only gets the bare minimum of abilities they need to form a feature-complete party of four". If you take four PCs, one of which is a Rogue/Investigator, you can cover all skills in the game...barely. With the exception of Crafting and Lore, which are somewhat specific and have few general uses, there are 15 skills...which is exactly how many skills 3 x non-skill (3 skills each) and 1 x skill (6 skills) characters would get.

I don't like being too harsh on things I haven't played, but things like this make me wonder what the designers were even trying to achieve. The game seems to have a few good ideas, but everything else I've seen and heard about it is just weird, and in a very 4e-ish way.

[Tanarii]

In PF2 don't untrained skillets get zero bonus, whereas trained skills get +level, and every other rank +2 per rank taken?

That would make getting trained in as many skills possible the best bang for the buck. Only reason to take the advanced ranks would be to unlock feat access.

(I'm only as far as reading races in my newly arrived PF2 PHB, so I'm going off a scan of the skills system from two-ish years ago, feel free to correct and expound.)

Also even if that's wildly off base, non skill monkey classes being SMEs on exactly two areas is absolutely fine, as long as doing every day stuff doesn't require a checks, only requires a DC 10 check for something that's very sketchy to try for someone untrained, and skill checks aren't road blocks to the entire area/adventure.

The last is fine as long as the PCs can walk away and try another area/adventure, but since when do DMs and publishers design non-linear sessions, modules and adventure paths?

-----------

Also Pex if they give examples in a way that works, clearly we need to have another round in the 5e forum about skills, DCs, and why 5e doesn't have example DCs.

[Ignimortis]

I don't like being too harsh on things I haven't played, but things like this make me wonder what the designers were even trying to achieve. The game seems to have a few good ideas, but everything else I've seen and heard about it is just weird, and in a very 4e-ish way.

Balance and maintaining the core gameplay loop for as much as possible. To the detriment of everything else.

In PF2 don't untrained skillets get zero bonus, whereas trained skills get +level, and every other rank +2 per rank taken?

That would make getting trained in as many skills possible the best bang for the buck. Only reason to take the advanced ranks would be to unlock feat access.

That would be right...IF.

If PF2's target numbers did not scale in a way that assumes you have an expert/master/legendary rank in a skill. Good luck intimidating anyone meaningful at level 10 with only a trained Intimidation when the game thinks you ought to have Master.

[gesalt]

A trained pf2e character with +4 in their main ability score has a 50% chance of passing an on-level skill check using it at level 5, a 45% chance at level 10 (bumps to +5) and a 35% chance at 15. Subtract an additional 5% for each point your modifier is behind. Bad odds for your best score and worse for anything else.

Otoh, having a character with one for all in the party or having ageless patience as an elf will bring in another 5-20% over the course of the game and heroism can add another 5-15%, so as long as you/your party build right, it's less of an issue and you can clear tasks out of combat even with just trained. Feels bad for parties not chasing +1s though.

[lesser_minion]

In PF2 don't untrained skillets get zero bonus, whereas trained skills get +level, and every other rank +2 per rank taken?

That would make getting trained in as many skills possible the best bang for the buck. Only reason to take the advanced ranks would be to unlock feat access.

I think it was originally going to be -2 untrained/+0 trained/+1 expert/+2 master/+3 legendary and +level always, but that probably attracted some feedback. It certainly wasn't popular here.

However, there's a move that gives you a free +level to many skill checks outside of combat provided that you can see and hear an expert. Also, the skill feats are probably hard to avoid, given that they include both the ability to take 10 on a skill and things like "intimidate more than one character with a single act" (with the limit scaling with proficiency rank) and "use a nonverbal threat to demoralise a target" for some reason. So I'm not sure that "just train everything to get +level" is really the best answer.

I also don't know how critical those +2s are, but generally each step up on the "simple DCs" table is either +5 or +10. Levelled DCs are roughly 14 + (1.3 * level) and Trained, Expert, Master, and Legendary DCs correspond to levels 1, 5, 12, and 20 respectively. The game seems to be clear that the level/proficiency rank for a DC are at least meant to about the task and the character you can imagine succeeding at it, not the character who is currently attempting it, but I imagine there's still a risk of at least some paragon-tier lockpicking happening in play.

[Tanarii]

I also don't know how critical those +2s are, but generally each step up on the "simple DCs" table is either +5 or +10. Levelled DCs are roughly 14 + (1.3 * level) and Trained, Expert, Master, and Legendary DCs correspond to levels 1, 5, 12, and 20 respectively. The game seems to be clear that the level/proficiency rank for a DC are at least meant to about the task and the character you can imagine succeeding at it, not the character who is currently attempting it, but I imagine there's still a risk of at least some paragon-tier lockpicking happening in play.

Unless DCs really scale with adventurer level, it's not a problem. And if they do the entire skill system is broken a la 4e the way people ran it wrong all the time, and the game is basically unplayable.

Another example of bad scaling would be 13th age's terrible system where paragon areas and epic areas scale up DCs. That's exactly the wrong way to determine difficulty, basically Heinsoo doubling down on doing 4e DCs (a different) wrong way.

If they scale with what makes sense in the world and adventurers choose to go do things they are capable of accomplishing, both in terms of level and capabilities, then being a SME at a few things means you can have a very good chance of doing epic things on a smaller number of things, vs a wider of range of things you can do merely amazingly heroic things with.

[stoutstien]

Even if you set the complexity issue aside PF2 takes the lack of narrative cohesion that 5e has and turned it into
almost a running joke.

The rules, while complex, make sense to a given point in isolation but the world logic was destroyed in the process once they meet. What a character can or cannot do is solely determined by the rules.
It's 5e approach to magic for everything.

[Tanarii]

Even if you set the complexity issue aside PF2 takes the lack of narrative cohesion that 5e has and turned it into
almost a running joke.

The rules, while complex, make sense to a given point in isolation but the world logic was destroyed in the process once they meet. What a character can or cannot do is solely determined by the rules.
It's 5e approach to magic for everything.

Given 4e or 13th age as possible comparison points, I don't see how that could be claimed for any part of 5e

[Amidus Drexel]

I largely agree, but it is worth pointing out that if you do this type of scaling you end up pushing out people who don't actively invest. And that can be good (it is not, I think, particularly desirable or necessary for everyone to be able to roll Knowledge-type checks effectively), but it also has issues. The big one is stealth, where a lot of stealth-type encounters really rely on the whole party having numbers that are at least in a ballpark.

I largely agree with you, but I have more thoughts.

Not investing only pushes you out if you're competing with people who have invested heavily - otherwise, you're on a level playing field. At high levels, that means your wizard who never put a single point into Sense Motive is not going to be able to tell when the dragon with maxxed-out Bluff is lying to him - but he has a chance when the evil fighter who never put a point in the skill does the same.

Any system that has each person roll an individual stealth in a group setting is going to suck at group stealth (and this fiction models reality pretty well, fwiw, even if it's not particularly fun in-game). That's not necessarily a weakness of 3.5/PF1/5e (all of these systems handle it that way), but it is a limitation. If you want group stealth to be meaningful at a high level, you either need to keep target numbers down so untrained folks have a chance, or you need to change the way group stealth is calculated away from 'each person rolls individually to hide, each person rolls individually to look, a single failure gives away the group'.

On the other hand, everything in 3e is a stacking (or sometimes not, read the individual effect and probably the errata and several FAQs) numeric modifier. Most of which are conditional on a lot of things. Without advantage and without the streamlined resistance/vulnerability, that's the only tool feats have. And there are lots that stack in...interesting ways. Or conflict with each other (if you do X, you lose the bonus from Y) or are variable (compare 3e's power attack to 5e's GWM equivalent).

This is largely true. To clarify, in 3.5, most modifiers are typed, and like-typed modifiers do not stack (with one exception - for some ungodly reason dodge bonuses do stack), you only apply the greatest bonus and penalty of each type. Not that you're likely to ever have more than one bonus of each type. Untyped modifiers (which are uncommon) do stack.

It's rare for bonuses to outright conflict with each other, though.

The whole point of touch AC was to make up for spellcasters (including many spellcasting monsters) having lower physical stats and lower proficiency with their attack rolls with magical attacks. If you instead base magic attacks on mental stats and full proficiency then there's no reason to have a different AC number for those.

I've never thought about it that way, but that makes sense. The other common uses for touch AC are for incorporeal undead (who typically have low attack bonuses) and for grappling (which also imposes a penalty to hit by default).

3.5's system only functions along those lines either before modifiers become too high to offset with dice (i.e. +25 is easy at level 10, and +40 is quite doable at level 15, so someone who hasn't invested into a skill has a, say, 3-22 roll range, and someone who has has a 41-60 roll range. What is impossible to one is trivial to another (DC30). A generalist with +20 to the same roll (still takes quite some investment, usually, it's not "yeah I can spare one skill point for this every four levels") can attempt a DC30 check, but will only succeed 50% of the time.

Frankly, I don't see that as a downside. A 15th-level character in 3.5 has been effectively a demigod for several levels. Specialist characters (those investing most of their build resources into one thing) at that level should be doing impossible things easily. If we're talking about specialists as characters with +x feats, targeted skill synergies, and +10/+15/+20 skill items, then no, generalists do not get to just drop a point in once every four levels. By your metric (which is pretty accurate here), a generalist is someone doing maybe one of those things (perhaps a spellcaster or UMD class with access to "divine insight", or a rogue with 10 maxxed out skills and decent ability scores). This generalist has invested some, but not most of their build resources into being good at a bunch of skills.

Which means that a challenge you can pose to such a group will either exclude everyone but the specialist, or have the specialist solve it automatically without needing to give other people a try.

Even now, at level 6, a survivalist Rogue in my PF1 game has +21 to Survival. If something calls for a Survival roll, there is no reason to hand it to anyone but the Rogue, because she can get a better result on a 1 than other party members get on an 11. The gap will only increase as they level, and by level 12 the Rogue will roll around +31 or +36 (+6 or so WIS, +15 class ranks, +10 or +15 magic item). There won't be anyone in the party who can reliably outroll a guaranteed 32/37 (or a talent-ed "automatically take 10" 41/46). A generalist would have to invest into magic items of their own to even come close. Say, +5 WIS, +8 class ranks instead of maxed +15, and a +10 magic item - that's a +23. No magic items for that particular skill? You're barely going to get their nat1 result even on a nat20.

In this situation, using your numbers, a generalist is probably rocking max ranks but no item investment (or item investment but not max ranks) - so +20ish is probably fair. And yeah, a difference of +10 between a specialist and a generalist at high levels is pretty common - but your generalist is still capable of beating them when taking 10 isn't an option (if the difference is +10, then the generalist rolls better 1/4 of the time). You're not wrong that, in 3.5/PF1, by level 12, uninvested characters basically can't succeed at tasks specialists can fail at. I don't really see an issue with "effective demigod of tracking wins tracking competition against someone with no ranks in survival", though, and I don't really have a problem with the skill system supporting that kind of thing.

My thoughts here stray a bit from the discussion about 3.5's skill system specifically, but I'd argue that a challenge won or lost on a single roll by one player is not really challenging the party at all. Those "single-success" challenges... are there for the party specialist, not the party. If your game has a lot of those, then yeah, specialists will shine, and +10/+15/+20 skill items will be a worthwhile investment of build resources (gold is a build resource, after all). If you can pass a challenge with a single roll, and the party has a specialist that auto-succeeds at that thing - that's also not really a big deal. The specialist invested a huge amount of their build resources into being good at this thing, and they're freeing up build resources for the rest of the party to be good at other things.

My games don't use only that kind of challenge, though. Skill checks where the whole party rolls and the overall outcome depends on how many people (and which people) succeed are pretty common. That rewards investment across the whole party (meaning generalists get to shine sometimes too), while giving the specialist a leg up in consistency when their area of expertise comes up.

The druid with +20 to spot will almost always see the ambush, sure, but the fighter with a +0 is probably not participating in the surprise round. The rogue with +7 might, though.
The monk with +30 to climb will just ignore a cliff face, but the wizard with -1 will need some help getting up. The fighter with +10 can probably make it, though.
The rogue with +20 to balance isn't fazed by a grease spell, but the party fighter with no skill ranks is flat-footed (and maybe prone) now. The bard who only put 5 points in for synergy still has to roll to move around, but at least they're not flat-footed.

You would have to completely exclude +skill magic items from the game, as well as improving the amount of skill points every class gets AND how they get to invest them. For instance, maybe the skill cap is actually "your HD x2" and you get commensurately more skill points so that you can spread them narrowly (most if not all trained skills at HDx2) or widely (most trained skills at HDx1 to HDx1.5).

There are a lot of ways to make 3.5's skill system better, for sure. More skill points for every class would help, and if I ever decide to do any extensive homebrewing for the system that's one of the first things I'll change.

[stoutstien]

Given 4e or 13th age as possible comparison points, I don't see how that could be claimed for any part of 5e

I give 4e it's fair share of flack but it actually made/makes more narrative sense in this regard in every area but action execution. The world as a whole was fairly solid besides combat and trying to maintain balance too tightly. It's like the anti PF where it's core is solid but the framing is forced and inevitably cracks. I'm personally more forgiving in my judgement when that happens.

13th age is.... something I guess. At least it doesn't pretend to care.


5e is mostly on point due to having such establish lore and settings besides magic. Arguably it's ok as long as you squint. with the more recent design applications of NPCs and what is magic and what is magic(spells) that scabbed over issue is getting picked at again and for go reason. It's crap outside of certain settings like eberrion.

[lesser_minion]

Unless DCs really scale with adventurer level, it's not a problem. And if they do the entire skill system is broken a la 4e the way people ran it wrong all the time, and the game is basically unplayable.

They definitely give examples where the level for a DC is different to the level of the character attempting the task. So I'm hopeful that it works out that way. That said, even if "paragon-tier lockpicking" does happen in some groups, it's only really a problem if it harms someone's enjoyment of the game.

[Pex]

Also Pex if they give examples in a way that works, clearly we need to have another round in the 5e forum about skills, DCs, and why 5e doesn't have example DCs.

Spoiler: Minor thread derail

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5E could leave everything the same. Just copy/paste all the Pathfinder examples and replace Untrained with Very Easy, Trained with Easy, Expert with Medium, etc. and the 5E Skill System problem would be mostly solved. But no, even having that much, having explicit words on paper assigning a skill use to a difficulty is evil anathema for some people ruining their DM agency of immersion.

[Zuras]

I am not a fan of 5e's approach, but they too have identified this problem and decided to solve it in their own way. However, this leads to 5e's absurd "a level 1 untrained (+0) character beats a level 20 trained (proficient, stat +5) character in a skill contest around 20% of the time, and can even win circa 5% of contests with focused specialists (expertise, stat +5)".

That’s not an accurate statement of odds. Skill contests actually favor trained PCs more than rolls against fixed DCs. Grappling demons and throwing them back into the Abyss is shockingly easy in 5e if you can increase your size.

A trained 20th level character would have a +11 in a skill, so they would lose to an untrained individual with no special talents 9% of the time, and tie another 2.25% of the time. A specialist would have another +6 from expertise, reducing odds of defeat or a tie both to 0.75%.

Even in a more standard case of a specialist vs a talented individual, (say a +13 vs +4) your odds of success are excellent (exceeding 83%).

[Pex]

3.5's system only functions along those lines either before modifiers become too high to offset with dice (i.e. +25 is easy at level 10, and +40 is quite doable at level 15, so someone who hasn't invested into a skill has a, say, 3-22 roll range, and someone who has has a 41-60 roll range. What is impossible to one is trivial to another (DC30). A generalist with +20 to the same roll (still takes quite some investment, usually, it's not "yeah I can spare one skill point for this every four levels") can attempt a DC30 check, but will only succeed 50% of the time.

Which means that a challenge you can pose to such a group will either exclude everyone but the specialist, or have the specialist solve it automatically without needing to give other people a try.

Even now, at level 6, a survivalist Rogue in my PF1 game has +21 to Survival. If something calls for a Survival roll, there is no reason to hand it to anyone but the Rogue, because she can get a better result on a 1 than other party members get on an 11. The gap will only increase as they level, and by level 12 the Rogue will roll around +31 or +36 (+6 or so WIS, +15 class ranks, +10 or +15 magic item). There won't be anyone in the party who can reliably outroll a guaranteed 32/37 (or a talent-ed "automatically take 10" 41/46). A generalist would have to invest into magic items of their own to even come close. Say, +5 WIS, +8 class ranks instead of maxed +15, and a +10 magic item - that's a +23. No magic items for that particular skill? You're barely going to get their nat1 result even on a nat20.

You would have to completely exclude +skill magic items from the game, as well as improving the amount of skill points every class gets AND how they get to invest them. For instance, maybe the skill cap is actually "your HD x2" and you get commensurately more skill points so that you can spread them narrowly (most if not all trained skills at HDx2) or widely (most trained skills at HDx1 to HDx1.5). But the default 3.5 system very quickly reaches values where you either have to be a specialist to attempt stuff or you don't need to, as the specialist automatically wins.

I am not a fan of 5e's approach, but they too have identified this problem and decided to solve it in their own way. However, this leads to 5e's absurd "a level 1 untrained (+0) character beats a level 20 trained (proficient, stat +5) character in a skill contest around 20% of the time, and can even win circa 5% of contests with focused specialists (expertise, stat +5)".

I would say the problem, if there is one, is the existence of a +10 to skill magic item. That they exist as a concept I won't argue against was a mistake for the game designers to have created. However, the game does not run in a vacuum. The existence of the magic item is not guarantee of having it.

DCs, in general, are not that high. I do enjoy my DC tables for skills, but that a DC 30 skill use exists is not the same thing as that particular skill use will appear in the game. Should it happen let the PC with +25 to his skill shine at that moment. He earned it. Most tasks Take 10/20 will suffice, and some skill uses you can't do because you didn't invest at all. That's not an issue. Fortunately Pathfinder 1E makes skill point investment easier than 3E so even having +10 to something that's not a class skill is not hard to get if you care about that skill, accepting it's not happening at level 1 or 3.

Pathfinder play is not unique in players wanting the PC with highest modifier to a skill do a Thing. I see it all the time in 5E where players want the PC with the highest modifier make the roll. The only difference is because of Bounded Accuracy in 5E that highest modifier PC is not guaranteed to succeed, but the players are defaulting to one player always making that skill check. That's for the DM to fix. the DM has to encourage/make other players roll. When I DM when a player suggests an idea of doing something, I make that player roll. I don't care if his modifier is -1 or +8, he makes the roll because he's the one who suggested it. Another PC doesn't make the roll just because his modifier is higher. Everyone participates. In Pathfinder, for me it wouldn't matter the Paladin has a Diplomacy of +15. The fighter gets to talk to NPCs, and if I ask for a roll he gets to roll even if his Diplomacy is +0. The DC is not going to be 20 or 25 all the time just because everyone is level 9. Certainly the paladin would have an easier time of it and is entitled to that easier time of it, maybe not even needing to roll at all, but I as DM don't make the fighter sit in the corner and keep quiet. For a Pathfinder game probably so that paladin should be doing the talking when speaking with the Very Important But Easy To Anger NPC. That is when the person with the highest Diplomacy should do the talking and get his own moment to shine. 5E Bounded Accuracy would be more forgiving to the fighter to let him talk. Which is better is a matter of taste.

[Kane0]

Spoiler: Minor thread derail

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5E could leave everything the same. Just copy/paste all the Pathfinder examples and replace Untrained with Very Easy, Trained with Easy, Expert with Medium, etc. and the 5E Skill System problem would be mostly solved. But no, even having that much, having explicit words on paper assigning a skill use to a difficulty is evil anathema for some people ruining their DM agency of immersion.

Skimming through the examples, yeah that seems to fit nicely.

[Zalabim]

Yes. The amount of stuff you need to do to create a character that can play through Sunless Citadel is not higher than the amount of stuff you need to do to play through whatever the equivalent "starter adventure" in 5e is. There is a high skill ceiling, but honestly some characters in 3e are simpler than their 5e counterparts. There's no Action Surge on the 3e Fighter.

It's a little hazy at this point, but my first experience with 3E was Sunless Citadel. I made a cleric with heavy armor and a shield (-6 or -7 ACP, no skill ranks). He died to rolling less than 0 on entering the dungeon. That was the end of the campaign. We couldn't go on. The skill ceiling can be a problem, but the skill floor can also be a killer.

[Kurald Galain]

He died to rolling less than 0 on entering the dungeon. That was the end of the campaign. We couldn't go on.

Frankly, this sounds more like your DM being a massive jerk than anything related to the system or rules or skill levels.

[Zuras]

This discussion helped clarify the issue, at least for me.

In the end, the “triggering”, if that is even the right word, aspect of the Pathfinder/D&D 5e discussion is that the differences between the systems boil down to 5e being ruthlessly edited while Pathfinder is effectively the Lord of the Rings Director’s Extended Edition.

I don’t necessarily agree with every specific scene cut out, but I do agree the aggregate extra two hours is too much. I don’t want to have a scene by scene discussion about whether specific bits could have been added back in.

There’s nothing wrong with preferring the extended edition, but I don’t want to hear snide comments from anyone that my preference for the theatrical cut flows from my short attention span or limited bladder capacity. Please accept that I made a value judgement about the relative merits of detail versus ease of play and decided 5e fits better.

It shouldn’t be this hard. I don’t have long arguments with the folks who wish the movies were all just one extended cut of the Battle of Helm’s Deep (aka the WFRP posse).

[Pex]

It shouldn’t be this hard. I don’t have long arguments with the folks who wish the movies were all just one extended cut of the Battle of Helm’s Deep (aka the WFRP posse).

I'm partial to the WKRP posse, especially the Thanksgiving Battle of the Pinedale Shopping Mall.

[Zuras]

I'm partial to the WKRP posse, especially the Thanksgiving Battle of the Pinedale Shopping Mall.

As God as my witness, I thought Kobolds could fly.