The PF2e subreddit broke out into Yet Another Discussion About Feats and Improvizing, and this time it caught Mark Seifter's attention. So, I thought I'd reproduce his post here:
> Hi everyone! Mark Seifter here. > >I've seen several threads this past weekend about the video Linda and I made about improvising actions in PF2 (I actually found out about this by following a trail from a large spike in the video's views on Saturday when I checked the analytics today). The OP of the first thread that started the conversation summarized our video in a way that was (likely unintentionally on their part) turned out to be a bit provocative, a bit confusing especially for those who hadn't seen the video, and made a harder and harsher case than what we were trying to say, so I thought it might be helpful to give some tips here in text form. Some of these are in the video too, but not everyone wants to watch a video. Some notes about improvising in your games: >Caveat > >First and foremost, only do this if you and your group want to do it! Yes, I am one of the original creators of PF2 and I worked on the rules involved here (the improvising rules were mostly written by myself and Logan), but so what? It's your game. Never let the statements of one of the game designers make you change something that is working for you and your group (not even this statement... well wait a minute...). If you don't like the improvisation rules or you feel they create issues for your group, you don't have to use them in your game. If you feel they actually don't go far enough and you have a bigger or more sweeping solution you like better, use that (the video mentions that too). The existence of the improv rules and the advice for how to use them is not meant to stop you from making an even bigger change or to convince you that there's no need to do so (I guess that video title would be "Don't Let the Improv Rules, or Designer Statements, Stop You From Running the Way Your Group Likes"). Everyone who said "This is just something Mark said, we don't have to listen to it and my group does it differently" has my full support! Honestly there's a reason I try to caveat everything I say and why I try not to weigh in too often when a rule is legitimately ambiguous (even if I felt like I could clear it up), but mostly just when there's clear rules to point to, since I know that people who agreed with what I said already might use my statement more aggressively than I'd like, and those who disagreed aren't likely to be convinced anyway, so it's not going to necessarily help. >How to Use the Improv Rules > >If your group is open to using the improvisation rules to handle situations where the player wants to try something that the rules does not say their character can do, some folks were worried that the next step is to memorize every feat in the game or at least do a deep-dive to find any feats similar to the current situation so you can analyze them and present a carefully nerfed version of them to your player. That's very much not something I would recommend. Instead, treat the situation by its own merit. Whether you know about any feats on the matter or not, is this something you think they should be able to try? If so, what feels like a good and fair way to make it work (the improv rules have some good starting points but they are open-ended to allow you to decide). > >Once you've made your call on whether to allow the attempt and how to make it work, potentially using the improv rules as guidance, you might later discover a feat that does something similar. Technically it might happen at the same time you're making your call if you suddenly remember the feat (or you always remembered it because you are a rules encyclopedia, huge respect!), but that's fine either way. If the feat lets you do the same thing but better, faster, or more easily, then you probably don't have to do anything. But what if it doesn't? What if you essentially allowed the feat for free, or your improv rule was actually stronger than what was in the feat to start? At that point, you'll want to think about the way you adjudicated and the feat and make a decision. Maybe involve the players too. Think for a moment about why the feat might exist and see if there's any merit in it for you and your players' enjoyment of the game. Maybe the player was using one skill to do the role of another skill and the feat being a gate helps preserves the second skill's niche. And this analysis might be enough for you to decide you want to nerf your initial improv ruling the next time someone tries it... but if it isn't? Just stick with the improv ruling as an official houserule and cut the feat. If someone doesn't know about this houserule and takes the feat later by accident, immediately refund it once you find out. >How Not to Use the Improv Rules > >Important aside: the way this works, we starting by deciding whether you wanted to allow the thing they were attempting in the first place. "Don't Let Feats Stop You From Improvising" (not just skill feats by the way, another common thing to improvise is some kind of much smaller jump and less efficient leaping attack than the powerful class feats for it) does not mean that you are obligated to let players try anything they can find written in a feat without the feat. It means that if you would have allowed an improv anyway without a feat or any rules for it, then you should. One of the most obvious examples of this are feats that give you a bonus or better action economy for something that is already in the rules. The base rules for those actions exist already. > >For example, several people in the weekend's discussion gave an example of actions like Battle Medicine that they said they would never allow someone to do without a skill feat, since it allows quite a bit of healing for 1 action when you normally would need to spend 10 minutes to heal that much out of combat. In that case, don't allow it. Aside: This is not to say that the people mentioning Battle Medicine were wrong or making a mistake to do so; because of the way the first thread's OP summarized the video, it made it seem like every feat (or at least skill feat, but the video was about feats overall) was fair game, even math boosters and action economy compressers. In fact, folks who brought that point up were (in my mind at least) right to do so. >Last Thoughts > >I feel like a lot of people were making very good points this past weekend from multiple conflicting perspectives, but also getting a bit heated with each other in part because some had watched the video, others were relying on the summary from the first post or a comment made partway through the discussion. I hope this post helps clear things up a little and explains what Linda and I meant when we were referring to the improv rules (several people kept wondering why they were relevant to the conversation, but they are absolutely foundational to the concept, so I hope this post makes it clear exactly how we might suggest using them and why). > >I'll end with the same caveat as I started: as always, don't use this advice if it doesn't work for you and your group, and on the flip side, even if you really like this advice, please don't go around using it as an arrow in your quiver "against" people who don't. It's not meant for that, and as much as I know it's inevitable that statements I make might be weaponized, I'd prefer if they weren't to the extent we can avoid it. The other view is a valid one; different groups play the game in very different ways. But do feel free to share it with people who might not have thought about this topic or decided one way or the other to help them along the way! > >EDIT: Adding this link to the video at the request of one the commenters! (here and up top).
