Yeah Recall Knowledge should have the GM pick the most appropriate skill that makes sense. The character that knows about these creatures probably has far more experience to know which skill to use when trying to know about a specific creature, while having the player pick the skill is 90% metagaming and down to personal knowledge of the system and the monsters instead of the abilities and knowledge of the character. Which honestly is weird in a game like pathfinder which discourages metagaming by having secret checks to prevent that in the first place.
The reason for this is because RK isn't just for monsters. My PC sees a dead body, and asks can my knowledge of medicine/experience as a surgeon tell me about how long the corpse has been dead? I've studied tomes of arcane secrets/am a Master of Arcana, do those runes mean anything to me? It's completely reasonable to ask a question like that about monsters, and your GM to respond, "No, but your basic training in Occultism suggests it's an aberration of some kind and *rolls secret check*, you know which one. Remember that the game isn't assuming your GM has knowledge of your PC's skills or feats. You have to let them know what skills you have, or suggest a Lore skill that might fit, or play with PC cheat sheets/VTT to track that info. The RAW even say "suggest" and "collaborate...to narrow down the...skills". It's not a house rule to suggest the appropriate skill, RK assumes you will cooperate on which one is appropriate. There is no indication of getting no information because you "picked the wrong skill".
I always tell the players before a roll if a Skill makes sense or not. Not if it is the Best/optimal skill, but if the skill can give relevant knowledge.
For those who want to make grappling their bread and butter, the wrestler dedication is extremely fun. Didn't realize how much it could help the party until I started playing one.
@@DietDrRob Absolutely! I might go over Wrestler at some point as I'm thinking of doing a video on lesser known or under-utilised Archetypes, and Wrestler might be one of them.
@TheDominomicon this is why my party plays with free archetype. It allows for really unique builds and you can toy with all the features the game has to offer. My champion wrestler is a ton of fun to play. Definitely encourage you to try the archetype out
1. With Grapple and Trip on your list, I'm surprised SwingRipper wasn't automatically summoned. 😜 2. A video on how other skill action interact would be GREAT!
Good point! I guess my channel is so small that he's probably not heard of it. Might have to do a video chapter on how good the wrestler is to fulfil the summoning ritual and bring him here!
Thank you for the kind words, and I'm glad you agree. I didn't realise how great of a "tank" ability it was until I properly started looking at it. Makes me think how much fun a shield-only tank with a hand free for grappling would be!
Thanks! That's from years and years of standing at the mirror saying my name over and over again, sometimes embellishing it by adding extra letters... we all do that though, right?
Another excellent video. I'd like to mention that there are shield augments, which can give your shield the trip and shove trait (you get to choose two out of a list, or one for certain weapon properties). Makes the whole "shielded tripping athletics" build much more viable. And shoving is good to get people out of grapples. Now, if there was a way to get to grapple with no free hands without having to take a specific weapon for it...
You can get the constricting whip tail graft (Howl of the Wild, item level 7) as any character, or you can play a gnoll/kholo: they have a level 1 ancestry feat, Crunch, that grants the grapple trait to their baked-in bite attack.
I don't know why I never considered using both deception and intimidation in the same turn on my Pistolero Gunslinger. My brain just told me you can't do both at the same time, but I guess you can. Enemies are about to feel the pain next session 😈
Def sending this to my players but might make some notes to talk it over with them in session too lol. Thanks for the vid, happy to give a sub to a small creator
The "Lengthy Diversion" Skill feat adds enormous value to Create a Diversion - use it as your final action on a turn, and enjoy concealment during your opponent's turns unless they want to seek you. And then enjoy combat advantage on your first action on your next turn. You are so good at distraction, that the enemy knows they have to watch out for that invisible dragon, and can't spare a moment to even look at you !!
Love your channel! I've got a Pathfinder 2e game called Silly Lil Guys about a group of anthropomorphic animals that's waiting to get edited and posted. I'll certainly be encouraging my players to use these
Bon Mot is great, but it comes from a skill feat, rather than being an intrinsic skill action, so I think it's valid to have left out of this particular video.
Very good, I'm just starting to watch it now but I already loved the approach! I've already liked it and subscribed, I'll follow it regularly! Success!
Just a small reminder that both most conditions are status penalties. They don't stack with each other. Frightened and Off-guard are great together. Frightened and Sickened are just different kinds of the same penalty with different durations.
Indeed! As I say to my players, if you're confused about whether a certain thing would work, just read the entry carefully. It almost ALWAYS tells you everything you need to know.
I've been trying to get convince my party of DnD refugees that skill actions are important but they still refuse/forget to use them and then complain that combat is too hard. I've sent this to them, let's see if they survive next session. Thanks
@TheDominomicon oh I ticked her off haha. When you do that, get GM approval ticket Twilight Speaker and Acrobat, it's pretty nasty. Almost always first, I Devise a Strategem, and get to know if I should Tumbling Strike for the Tumble, knock down, and already known dice roll to hit.
Nice format. Gonna consider sharing this to new players. Nice thing about Hammers is that they target Fort on crit, which means even high reflex enemies can fall prone. Also quick correction, but Sickened and Frightened are both status penalties, and therefore don't stack.
I didn't even realise I mentioned sickened without looking at my script, but I'll make a note and pin it for a correction. Thanks for checking out the video and for noticing!
“You might need to collaborate with the GM to narrow down the question or skills, and you can decide not to Recall Knowledge before committing to the action if you can't or don't like your options.” -Player Core 1 Rules as written, the GM works with you to find the skill that will have a chance of working, and you don’t have to commit to the action of the skill you wanted isn’t applicable
Emphasis on the "might" part. If you're going up against a creature that has an ambiguous nature (and could be multiple "types"), your GM might ask you to pick a skill, especially if they're still using the pre-remaster rules where that's what you basically did (I know of a GM that still does this). The remaster has definitely made this better with the choice of not taking that action if you don't want to, but I still think it could be made a bit more concrete as a rule (by just removing the word "might"), as lots of new players don't like using Recall Knowledge due to the potentially wasted action - or at least, that's what I've noticed.
tl;dr, I remove the off-guard to other allies from grapple as it's 100% imbalanced, mostly only complained about by players when used against them lol. Grapple is the most incorrectly written ability in PF2E. It's 100% written by someone that doesn't grapple IRL, as people outside of the grapple would not get a bonus to hit the target without hitting a chance to hit their ally. Best example, is have your 2 friends start trying to grapple and see how hard it is to only hit your one friend vs the other while they are rolling around on each other.
That makes sense, especially if your players were complaining about it... I find that my players are way too good at using conditions against enemies to make encounters easier, so I'll be keeping it RAW to punish them when they get grabbed. That and the update for the remaster that makes the Grab ability from creatures requiring an Athletics check makes is a bit easier to avoid getting grabbed. I think that a lot of stuff is mechanically there for the sake of balance and gameplay rather than realism, like bulk being an abstract rather than specific weight, for example, and I imagine Grabbed is one of them. Also - thanks for checking out the video!
I did a community post on it which is probably why people don't talk about it: ua-cam.com/users/postUgkxtqhi_tpUE2uPrvJohNragOhX4xwVt1U_?feature=shared But essentially - actual artists I've spoken with practically laughed at me when I mentioned paying for art for my small channel (the costs are in the THOUSANDS of dollars), and they have no issue with me using AI art, so I get confused when non-artists get upset about this topic. I understand that it's an issue for a PAID product, but these are free, educational videos I make in my spare time to try and help people. I'm not an artist (I can't draw ANYTHING, for real) and have very limited free time to make these videos, and they can take upwards of 30-40 hours to create... trying to get permission to use free art online can take even more of that time, though I have done it in the past (my Pathbuilder video is one example). And I'd sooner use AI art than literally steal from websites like Shutterstock etc... I actually see the latter as more immoral than the former, and it's direct theft, and could potentially risk my channel at some point. Smaller channels don't have a leg to stand on when it comes to issues like this. Also, the majority of images in all of my videos are NOT AI generated, and in some cases are less than 5% of the images I use. I would LOVE to use real art from deserving artists, as I would like nothing more than to support them, but until my channel is large enough for such a thing, I am simply not able to do so. Still - thank you for the feedback!
I don't know why I never considered using both deception and intimidation in the same turn on my Pistolero Gunslinger. My brain just told me you can't do both at the same time, but I guess you can. Enemies are about to feel the pain next session 😈
Yeah Recall Knowledge should have the GM pick the most appropriate skill that makes sense. The character that knows about these creatures probably has far more experience to know which skill to use when trying to know about a specific creature, while having the player pick the skill is 90% metagaming and down to personal knowledge of the system and the monsters instead of the abilities and knowledge of the character. Which honestly is weird in a game like pathfinder which discourages metagaming by having secret checks to prevent that in the first place.
I never considered that but you're absolutely right! Really does seem like metagaming... now I'm doubly glad I mentioned my houseruled version.
The reason for this is because RK isn't just for monsters. My PC sees a dead body, and asks can my knowledge of medicine/experience as a surgeon tell me about how long the corpse has been dead? I've studied tomes of arcane secrets/am a Master of Arcana, do those runes mean anything to me?
It's completely reasonable to ask a question like that about monsters, and your GM to respond, "No, but your basic training in Occultism suggests it's an aberration of some kind and *rolls secret check*, you know which one.
Remember that the game isn't assuming your GM has knowledge of your PC's skills or feats. You have to let them know what skills you have, or suggest a Lore skill that might fit, or play with PC cheat sheets/VTT to track that info. The RAW even say "suggest" and "collaborate...to narrow down the...skills". It's not a house rule to suggest the appropriate skill, RK assumes you will cooperate on which one is appropriate. There is no indication of getting no information because you "picked the wrong skill".
I always tell the players before a roll if a Skill makes sense or not. Not if it is the Best/optimal skill, but if the skill can give relevant knowledge.
For those who want to make grappling their bread and butter, the wrestler dedication is extremely fun. Didn't realize how much it could help the party until I started playing one.
@@DietDrRob Absolutely! I might go over Wrestler at some point as I'm thinking of doing a video on lesser known or under-utilised Archetypes, and Wrestler might be one of them.
@TheDominomicon this is why my party plays with free archetype. It allows for really unique builds and you can toy with all the features the game has to offer. My champion wrestler is a ton of fun to play. Definitely encourage you to try the archetype out
Very nice style and narration. The examples are good and pretty clean. Thank you for helping the community grow.
You're very welcome, and thank you for checking out my video. The kind words really mean a lot!
1. With Grapple and Trip on your list, I'm surprised SwingRipper wasn't automatically summoned. 😜
2. A video on how other skill action interact would be GREAT!
Good point! I guess my channel is so small that he's probably not heard of it.
Might have to do a video chapter on how good the wrestler is to fulfil the summoning ritual and bring him here!
I really like your crisp and engaging presentation style. And yes, Grapple is the best "taunt" ability in game ;)
Thank you for the kind words, and I'm glad you agree. I didn't realise how great of a "tank" ability it was until I properly started looking at it. Makes me think how much fun a shield-only tank with a hand free for grappling would be!
I'm impressed the most by how fluently you can say "dominomicon"
Thanks! That's from years and years of standing at the mirror saying my name over and over again, sometimes embellishing it by adding extra letters... we all do that though, right?
@@TheDominomicon Sure. why not? :P
Another excellent video. I'd like to mention that there are shield augments, which can give your shield the trip and shove trait (you get to choose two out of a list, or one for certain weapon properties). Makes the whole "shielded tripping athletics" build much more viable. And shoving is good to get people out of grapples. Now, if there was a way to get to grapple with no free hands without having to take a specific weapon for it...
I wouldn't be surprised if there is, honestly! And thank you for the compliment - they keep me going!
You can get the constricting whip tail graft (Howl of the Wild, item level 7) as any character, or you can play a gnoll/kholo: they have a level 1 ancestry feat, Crunch, that grants the grapple trait to their baked-in bite attack.
I don't know why I never considered using both deception and intimidation in the same turn on my Pistolero Gunslinger. My brain just told me you can't do both at the same time, but I guess you can. Enemies are about to feel the pain next session 😈
Def sending this to my players but might make some notes to talk it over with them in session too lol. Thanks for the vid, happy to give a sub to a small creator
Thanks for the kind words! Appreciate it!
The "Lengthy Diversion" Skill feat adds enormous value to Create a Diversion - use it as your final action on a turn, and enjoy concealment during your opponent's turns unless they want to seek you. And then enjoy combat advantage on your first action on your next turn. You are so good at distraction, that the enemy knows they have to watch out for that invisible dragon, and can't spare a moment to even look at you !!
@@auzrael Very true! A really good skill feat for the deceitful! And some people say that skill feats are boring...
Great stuff Dominomicon!
@@TheMythkeeper I'm super flattered you stopped by - the loremaster himself! Thank you so very much!
Love your channel! I've got a Pathfinder 2e game called Silly Lil Guys about a group of anthropomorphic animals that's waiting to get edited and posted. I'll certainly be encouraging my players to use these
Thank you so much. And your game sounds fun! More PF2e content creators is never a bad thing, so welcome!
"my current obsession", i feel you bro...
Thanks - really useful and fun guide.
Oh - is there a remedy for a Barbarian with really low Charisma but wants to 'Intimidate'?
@@dylanhyatt5705 Intimidating Prowess should help a little: 2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=5163&Redirected=1
You're very welcome. Thanks for the support!
Bon Mot is always worth a mention too, to get those Will saves down…
Bon Mot is a great one! It was on my list but didn't quite make the top 5. If I did another video, it definitely would feature...
Bon Mot is great, but it comes from a skill feat, rather than being an intrinsic skill action, so I think it's valid to have left out of this particular video.
@@CelestialDoggie Indeed. Part of me thinks that maybe they could make it a baseline ability...
Very good, I'm just starting to watch it now but I already loved the approach! I've already liked it and subscribed, I'll follow it regularly! Success!
Thank you for the kind words, and for checking out the video!
Just a small reminder that both most conditions are status penalties. They don't stack with each other. Frightened and Off-guard are great together. Frightened and Sickened are just different kinds of the same penalty with different durations.
Indeed! As I say to my players, if you're confused about whether a certain thing would work, just read the entry carefully. It almost ALWAYS tells you everything you need to know.
We call your "Murdertime" "The Circle of Love" ;-)
Hehe - that's one term for it, and it's certainly less grim than my term.
I've been trying to get convince my party of DnD refugees that skill actions are important but they still refuse/forget to use them and then complain that combat is too hard. I've sent this to them, let's see if they survive next session. Thanks
@@anthonyhumpage7290 Nice! Really hope it helps, and thanks for checking out the video.
Fantastic - thanks! I have a group arriving I. 20 minutes … mooowaaahhaahaaa!
Nice! Hope you're having a good time!
My Nagaji investigators entite thing was doing this. Trip, grapple them, beatvwith sap
Nice! Did you drive your GM crazy? Nah, I kid... I'm always happy when my players come up with a clever strategy to beat my encounters.
@TheDominomicon oh I ticked her off haha. When you do that, get GM approval ticket Twilight Speaker and Acrobat, it's pretty nasty. Almost always first, I Devise a Strategem, and get to know if I should Tumbling Strike for the Tumble, knock down, and already known dice roll to hit.
@@hellfrozenphoenix13 Nice strats! Glad to hear your GM could handle it all!
Nice format. Gonna consider sharing this to new players. Nice thing about Hammers is that they target Fort on crit, which means even high reflex enemies can fall prone.
Also quick correction, but Sickened and Frightened are both status penalties, and therefore don't stack.
I didn't even realise I mentioned sickened without looking at my script, but I'll make a note and pin it for a correction. Thanks for checking out the video and for noticing!
“You might need to collaborate with the GM to narrow down the question or skills, and you can decide not to Recall Knowledge before committing to the action if you can't or don't like your options.”
-Player Core 1
Rules as written, the GM works with you to find the skill that will have a chance of working, and you don’t have to commit to the action of the skill you wanted isn’t applicable
Emphasis on the "might" part. If you're going up against a creature that has an ambiguous nature (and could be multiple "types"), your GM might ask you to pick a skill, especially if they're still using the pre-remaster rules where that's what you basically did (I know of a GM that still does this).
The remaster has definitely made this better with the choice of not taking that action if you don't want to, but I still think it could be made a bit more concrete as a rule (by just removing the word "might"), as lots of new players don't like using Recall Knowledge due to the potentially wasted action - or at least, that's what I've noticed.
tl;dr, I remove the off-guard to other allies from grapple as it's 100% imbalanced, mostly only complained about by players when used against them lol.
Grapple is the most incorrectly written ability in PF2E. It's 100% written by someone that doesn't grapple IRL, as people outside of the grapple would not get a bonus to hit the target without hitting a chance to hit their ally. Best example, is have your 2 friends start trying to grapple and see how hard it is to only hit your one friend vs the other while they are rolling around on each other.
That makes sense, especially if your players were complaining about it... I find that my players are way too good at using conditions against enemies to make encounters easier, so I'll be keeping it RAW to punish them when they get grabbed. That and the update for the remaster that makes the Grab ability from creatures requiring an Athletics check makes is a bit easier to avoid getting grabbed.
I think that a lot of stuff is mechanically there for the sake of balance and gameplay rather than realism, like bulk being an abstract rather than specific weight, for example, and I imagine Grabbed is one of them.
Also - thanks for checking out the video!
Really don't like the use of AI art in this. Weird no other comment called it out.
I've been saying this for years and nobody listens to me
I did a community post on it which is probably why people don't talk about it:
ua-cam.com/users/postUgkxtqhi_tpUE2uPrvJohNragOhX4xwVt1U_?feature=shared
But essentially - actual artists I've spoken with practically laughed at me when I mentioned paying for art for my small channel (the costs are in the THOUSANDS of dollars), and they have no issue with me using AI art, so I get confused when non-artists get upset about this topic.
I understand that it's an issue for a PAID product, but these are free, educational videos I make in my spare time to try and help people. I'm not an artist (I can't draw ANYTHING, for real) and have very limited free time to make these videos, and they can take upwards of 30-40 hours to create... trying to get permission to use free art online can take even more of that time, though I have done it in the past (my Pathbuilder video is one example).
And I'd sooner use AI art than literally steal from websites like Shutterstock etc... I actually see the latter as more immoral than the former, and it's direct theft, and could potentially risk my channel at some point. Smaller channels don't have a leg to stand on when it comes to issues like this.
Also, the majority of images in all of my videos are NOT AI generated, and in some cases are less than 5% of the images I use.
I would LOVE to use real art from deserving artists, as I would like nothing more than to support them, but until my channel is large enough for such a thing, I am simply not able to do so.
Still - thank you for the feedback!
@TheDominomicon Literally know lot of artist and I do not believe they would have no issue, AI bs is wrong.
I don't know why I never considered using both deception and intimidation in the same turn on my Pistolero Gunslinger. My brain just told me you can't do both at the same time, but I guess you can. Enemies are about to feel the pain next session 😈
@@AhhFa Your GM is probably about to get very upset! Good luck to you regardless!