My pleasure. There's a lot of rough patches, but the system mostly seems to work.TarkisFlux wrote:Thanks for pointing these things out. I appreciate that you took enough time with the rules to find them.
On Perception
I was going to suggest cutting normal pacing down to Standard only, because it sucks to constantly ask if the PCs would like to do anything with their swift actions. But hustling on and off all the time is a built-in workaround to that, so I don't think it's worth changing. It's probably best to make it the default assumption that spare actions are always dumped into Perception.TarkisFlux wrote:The lack of swift and immediate actions in pacing is a straight up oversight though. Something should have been said about them. While I'm tempted to just say that Normal pacing is only one action of standard or less, plus a free, I'm not sure that actually leads to behaviors I want to encourage. I'll need to ponder that a bit. Changes there don't impact the guardsman routine as much as a hard cap on detection checks though, since any route can just incorporate minor breaks to keep the fatigue from piling up.
If distraction is meant to be a relatively common penalty, it needs a definition, or at least a guideline for when it applies. If it's left to fiat, it'll produce arguments every time the GM tries to penalize the PCs until they finally throw up their hands and stop caring. I'd be ok with distraction applying whenever you're taking a standard action to do something else, because that turns your swift action notice into Take 0 anyways.
Extreme Distraction works ok as is, assuming it's supposed to be defined as being threatened in combat, specifically. However, I'd drop "Shocked beyond ability to respond, dumbfounded" from the list of distraction modifiers. Fear conditions already inflict skill penalties, so an extra fiat penalty doesn't add anything. Maybe increase extremely distracted to -10, just to make it easier to remember (it drops notice by 2 steps instead of one).
The Conceal Action skill ability in Legerdemain gives anyone actively watching the user an "immediate notice check". Not only does this contradict the new rule against multiple notice checks per round, it also lets the party metagame when sleight of hand is happening. If someone wants to actively watch for shenanigans, they should roll a Notice check on their turn as normal; the Legerdemain attempt is rolled against the increased Perception result.
Disguise has the same problem, although it's not as explicit.
I'm trying to come up with a Perception cheat sheet, since it's causing my players grief; the minigame writeup got blank stares, honestly. Taking most of the above as a given, this is what I've got:
Under normal circumstances, characters don't roll Perception checks out of combat; they use their Passive Perception. Passive Perception fluctuates based on the character's activity:
The above results assume that your character is acting at normal pace. If your Endurance bonus is good enough, you can instead hustle all the time, and maintain laser-like focus from dusk to dawn without burning out. If you want to actually do everything at double speed the above results still apply, but if you're still moving at a slower pace with the rest of the party, this gives you leftover actions that you are assumed to spend on a higher Passive Perception, like so:
Characters with enough ranks in Dowsing can use Sense Presence instead of Perception. While using Sense Presence, you can't spend actions on Perception, which means you default to Take -5 (free action to Notice, -5 distraction). However, you gain Blindsense:
You can remove a distraction penalty with a DC 15 Concentration check. This means that if you have 1 rank in Concentration and at least a +5 bonus, you can Take 10 and never suffer from distraction penalties out of combat, and that boosts your Passive Perception accordingly. If you have at least 5 ranks in Concentration, you can take 10 on Ignore Distraction in combat, too.
- Take 10 if you're standing on guard (standard action to Notice)
Take 5 if you're walking around (move action to move, swift to Notice)
Take 0 if you're busy (standard action to do something, swift action to Notice, -5 distracted)
The above results assume that your character is acting at normal pace. If your Endurance bonus is good enough, you can instead hustle all the time, and maintain laser-like focus from dusk to dawn without burning out. If you want to actually do everything at double speed the above results still apply, but if you're still moving at a slower pace with the rest of the party, this gives you leftover actions that you are assumed to spend on a higher Passive Perception, like so:
- Take 10 if walking around (move action to move, standard to Notice)
Take 3 if you're busy (move action to Notice, -5 distracted).
- Take -5 if you're not actively threatened (free action to Notice, -5 distracted)
Take -8 if you're being stabbed in the face (free action to Notice, -8 extremely distracted)
Characters with enough ranks in Dowsing can use Sense Presence instead of Perception. While using Sense Presence, you can't spend actions on Perception, which means you default to Take -5 (free action to Notice, -5 distraction). However, you gain Blindsense:
- Take 10 with 60 ft. Blindsense if you're standing on guard (standard action to Sense Presence)
Take 0 with 15 ft. Blindsense if you're walking around (move action to move, swift to Sense Presence)
Take -5 with 15 ft. Blindsense you're busy (swift action to Notice, -5 distracted)
You can remove a distraction penalty with a DC 15 Concentration check. This means that if you have 1 rank in Concentration and at least a +5 bonus, you can Take 10 and never suffer from distraction penalties out of combat, and that boosts your Passive Perception accordingly. If you have at least 5 ranks in Concentration, you can take 10 on Ignore Distraction in combat, too.
Tangent: Because it's really easy to stay on alert and/or ignore distractions at all times, there should be a way for someone to force the penalty, either with Bluff or Legerdemain. Something like "you throw a rock in the bushes. Targets within your line of sight are distracted if you beat their concentration, no takebacks". Only less shitty-sounding.
On Disguise
Disguise should either cost gp or it shouldn't. Don't put up a sidebar that says you can totally fiat up gp costs if you want, that's bullshit. If we're going with costume-building I figure it should definitely cost gp (which you spend to craft magic textiles and polyjuice potion), but I'd prefer if the costume-building was dropped and Disguise became a variation on polymorph. Honestly, I can accept a ninja turning into a sahuagin with Naruto magic, but I can't accept him making a sahuagin suit out of burlap and bobby pins.
Fire Retardant Face Paint should have an expiry date. If there isn't one, it would be simpler for the ability to just say "you and your friends get Energy Resistance 6 forever," because you just can pack your handy haversack with an arbitrarily large stockpile. That's not game-breaking, but blasting doesn't really need to be worse.
On Backup Saves
They basically work, but they're clunky. Our main issue is that they're a bitch to roll when the skill bonus and save DC are closely matched. The first time we used Not Finished Yet it took eight rolls to determine that, yes, the PC was sickened for an hour. (The fortitude save was called for out of combat, so being stunned for eight rounds while rolling it out didn't matter). A larger modifier for narrowly passing/missing the DC would help make the result snowball in one direction.
Another thing is that you can't fail one of the backup saves outright--the penalty to your skill checks needs to build to -5 before you finally succumb to whatever condition you're trying to fight off. In practice this means that 2 ranks in Endurance/Concentration lets you delay most anything lethal (or potentially lethal) for three rounds. It doesn't let you act while doing so, or let you overturn anything, but even just delaying it is really useful once effects like Resuscitate are available. And when Adventurer's Knack kicks in, everyone can do this.
In terms of balance, this is not a big deal, but it feels odd that a level 8 character literally can't be killed in less than 3 rounds with a SoD. This quirk could be removed by adding automatic failure at DC-20, so that people have to actually be on the RNG to attempt the skill ability. This works especially well if the penalties for narrowly missing the DC are increased.
On Appraisal
I think Eye for Magic and Identify Magic Items can safely be rolled together at Rank 6. Mind you, I'd also make Identify more convenient, so maybe I should adjust that one to taste on my own.
What is the DC for Detect Forgery when the target isn't actually a forgery at all? The only thing stopping the PCs from using the ability on everything is the comedy of errors whenever they roll DC-6, so we need a good answer. The easy one is that the DC scales with the target's level, but I'm not sure I care for the idea that the higher the level of the person you're talking to, the more likely it is that you'll conclude that they're wearing a flawed disguise.
