I ran my second session of Pathfinder’s The Abomination Vaults the other night. It went well, as these things go. Not brilliantly, but we finished exploring the first level of the dungeon.
I’d reviewed the rules around combat before the session, and was pleased to see that I still remembered most of them. The main things I had to remember this time were the rules for flanking and the rules for Hero Points, neither of which are particularly difficult to implement.
The first level of the adventure is.. okay, I guess. Honestly, it doesn’t engage me much. I’m not really a fond of the humour Paizo seems to give its low-level humanoid enemies, and the Misflits are a key example of such, with a bumbling chief. There is amusement to be found, but from what I can see of the plot of this series, I’d be happier with a more serious approach. (That probably exists in the dungeon below).
But what really annoyed me in the session? Paizo’s approach to rules.
Pathfinder, for a long time now, has billed itself as a comprehensive rules system. You see it all the way through its micromanaged systems. Want to grapple someone? You’ll find that under the Athletics skill, which you must be trained in, then you must hit this target number and if you have these skill feats, you can become more competent in it.
Fine. That’s what its fans want, and I understand the appeal.
So, my players wanted to identify a magic item using the Arcana skill. I turn to that page in the rules, and find the following staring back at me: “The GM sets the DC of the check.”
Huh?
Here, I am, a novice GM of Pathfinder, and I’m being told that the folk at Paizo haven’t been able to come up with a core rule of the game. They’ve come up with half of it, but not the rest of it.
Now, this isn’t accurate. There is a rule for setting the DC of something. It’s sitting on page 503 of the 640 page rulebook. It’s probably also sitting on the GM screen, which I own but are not using because I’m running the game on Roll20.
Sigh. Oh well, I know now.
The players also found a wand. They can use it more than once in a day, but if they do, it might be destroyed. If not, it’s broken.
How do you repair it? Let’s look up broken… nothing there. How about the Crafting skill? Talks about hit points and a DC… no hit points immediately listed for a wand.
Honestly, this entire process of trying to find the rules is feeling horrible. When you have interlocking rules, you need guides to where else to find the rules. (Yes, it has a comprehensive index & glossary, which is appreciated). The Magic Item section of the Dungeons & Dragons 5E rules has text (under the “Identifying a Magic Item” header) that states that:
- The identify spell is the quickest way of identifying a magic item,
- A player can identify an item during a short rest, and
- DMs can have additional methods of identification, including a few examples.
- Oh, and there’s a taste-test exception for potions.
Pathfinder 2E says this about identifying items in the Magic Item section:
- Nothing.
Some of the details are sitting in the skill section. And it again contains that killer phrase: “The GM sets the DC for your check.” So, off to another chapter we go. And then to a third chapter, because you also need the type of magic of the magic item to learn what skill to use.
I couldn’t find a rule saying you don’t automatically learn what a magic item does. There is such a rule in D&D 5E. It’s a case in PF2 of the exception proving the rule – because you can only identify an item by using a skill or a spell, there must be a general rule that you don’t automatically learn what an item does. But it doesn’t seem to be stated anywhere. If anyone can find it, please send me a page reference!
I know I’m being grumpy about this. I’m running more PF2 soon. It has good points. I just get frustrated by aspects of its presentation.
Ugh. This I can relate to. I almost rage quit PF2 multiple times for this exact reason. Well, this and the attitude of members of the community when you raise it. Paizo takes no responsibility for how much its poor presentation increases the difficulty of the game.
My personal favourite – the description of the “blinded” condition. It gives you a bunch of information on how this affects perception checks and *nothing* on how it affects you in combat, and no direction on how to find that out. The design of the layout is so poor in important it’s baffling.
This is double frustrating because there is a really good game underneath.
Core rulebook page 238. See: https://2e.aonprd.com/Actions.aspx?ID=24
As per the article – the issue is not finding the section. It is that the section says “The GM sets the DC for your check” without any guidance for the GM on how to do so, what would be reasonable etc… That is exceedingly unhelpful.
Fully agree about layout and setting difficulty issues. The page no. 238 quoted is in response to the part of the article quoted only, and isn’t a complete answer, just trying to be helpful: “there must be a general rule that you don’t automatically learn what an item does. But it doesn’t seem to be stated anywhere. If anyone can find it, please send me a page reference!”
Part of the presentation issue is that the Action tags give you the rules on who can do what and when in a kind of shorthand or code, so here on p238 the ‘trained’ tag puts limits on who can even attempt to identify magic and ‘exploration’ says it can’t be done in combat. But unless you have also read page 17, you aren’t primed for these tags or even the way Pathfinder makes everything into an Action.
Here’s the fun thing: Does it actually say you don’t know the magic item’s properties? (Have another look!) 🙂
‘Identify magic’ has the ‘trained’ tag. Page 233, ‘Anyone can use a skill’s untrained actions, but you can use trained actions only if you have a proficiency rank of trained or better in that skill.’ Page 17 explains everything characters do is coded as an action, and each action has tags which specify use. I think the authors believe this kind of shorthand is better than explanatory natural language for each action. I don’t agree, but there you go..
Page 238 Critical success ‘you learn what the item does’; Success ‘you get a sense of what it does’; Failure: ‘you fail to identify the magic and can’t try again for one day’
In other words: No, it doesn’t. You have to infer it from the rule.
At least it attempts some wording for a failure state, and even a critical fail where you misidentify the item as something else. Some Actions just give what happens on a success, forcing you to look elsewhere for guidance if the player fluffs the roll.
Thank you for this information. I know I would become frustrated by this too and Pathfinder 2e was on the list of systems that I want to try out running. This means I’ll reconsider it. (Not saying that I won’t but rather that I reconsider, as I do think the system underneath is great as Daniel said).
I find with Pathfinder you basically need a player to act as a DM’s assistant/rules reference to look things up during play so things don’t stop while the DM searches. I’ve been doing this role in a campaign a friend is running, I have the online rules reference open in a browser all the time and probably do a dozen or so rules searches each session. There are things I like about Pathfinder but to me a lot of unnecessary complexity.
I haven’t played PF2, just PF1. It has some of the same crazy flow chart rules (grappling is so complicated I just avoid it) but it seems better explained overall. E.g. Spellcraft is the skill used to identify magic items.
https://www.d20pfsrd.com/skills/spellcraft/
So…some time later, here’s the thing. We agree that Pathfinder has a weird way of codifying and presenting its rules. But so does 5e and in fact most ‘new school’ games, albeit in subtly different ways. For example, in 5e, what the hell is a ‘bonus action’? Does that weirdness actually matter in this case when we know the intent of ‘identify magic’? Here’s an interesting article from a source you probably hate about using some old school intuition to see past the rules description to something useful to your game: https://theangrygm.com/what-detect-magic-detects/