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If you fail a skill check can you just try again?

Yes.*

* = But this does not necessarily negate the previous failure. For example, the second roll of the Climbing Skill is used to catch yourself as you start to fall, not to continue to advance upwards. The second roll of a failed Pilot Aircraft check may be to attempt to regain control, to attempt to safely crash-land or to attempt to eject.

It is up to the GM to adjudicate the consequences of the failure and to determine if a follow up roll can negate or mitigate those consequences.

It would also require you to be able to know that you failed....
And not all skills can be retried.
If you fail a seduction roll to get the ladies phone number your going to probably going to get a slap and a view of her backside as she storms out, not a chance to try again.
If you fail a lore roll then you will have no idea that you need to make the stake out of Hawthorne wood and not Pine until you try to stake the vampire.
If you fail a counterfeiting roll you might not know until the FBI is kicking in your door.

But if you have a way to know you failed, and a way to correct the failure then sure you can try again.

Asta wrote:If you fail a skill check can you just try again?

yes and no. You can roll again, but that won't necessairly negate the concequences of your previous failure

Asta wrote:If you fail a skill check can you just try again?

In general, the original roll usually has some consequence for failing.
And the consequence usually changes the situation.
Thus, the second skill roll would be focused on dealing with the new situation.

Knowing the 'down time' between failed rolls for a lot of stuff would be nice. Like if you fail a save vs magic to enter a Circle of Protection / Protection Circle, I figure eventually you could re-try just not sure how often you could attempt until you passed it.

Axelmania wrote:Knowing the 'down time' between failed rolls for a lot of stuff would be nice. Like if you fail a save vs magic to enter a Circle of Protection / Protection Circle, I figure eventually you could re-try just not sure how often you could attempt until you passed it.

Well if you make the saving throw to enter a circle, you have 1d4 melee rounds before you need to make another save to remain inside the circle.
If you fail the save, you have 1d4 melee rounds until you can try and reenter the circle.
I don't have any books close at hand, but it's covered in the pfrpg main book, right before all the circle descriptions. Because it's fun to guess, I'm going to say page 68.

*wonders how close he got.*

The only skill that I know of that has any type of use limit, is trying to pick the same lock according to the pick lock skill In the pfrpg core book.

68 is Priests of Darkness. Circle descriptions begin 137. What you mentioned is printed on page 138, completely overlooked it until now for some reason. I was so focused on the first "Further Circle Protection" section with the damage and penalties that I overlooked the following "Savings Throws vs Circle Magic' section.

The 'cannot try to save again' text is only in the context of failing a save after having made a save and entered the circle though, it doesn't restrict how many saves you can try to make while outside of it.

What do you think happens if it's not possible for someone to get out of a protection circle? Like if you draw one at the bottom of a slippery-walled pit and throw a god into it, unless they had natural teleport or flight abilities would they just slowly die since it's constant damage and they can't regenerate it? Being in the circle prevents them from using magic/psionics which removes a lot of escape options for some enemies.

The only escape would be to destroy the circle but they can be made indestructible with permanence wards.

That or I guess just punch holes in the walls to make handholds to climb out.

Wasn't the height barrier of protection circles specified as 10-20 feet somewhere? I might be thinking of spell radiuses but without a clear answer for circles going with that seems reasonable.

Axelmania wrote:The 'cannot try to save again' text is only in the context of failing a save after having made a save and entered the circle though, it doesn't restrict how many saves you can try to make while outside of it.

What do you think happens if it's not possible for someone to get out of a protection circle? Like if you draw one at the bottom of a slippery-walled pit and throw a god into it, unless they had natural teleport or flight abilities would they just slowly die since it's constant damage and they can't regenerate it? Being in the circle prevents them from using magic/psionics which removes a lot of escape options for some enemies.

Wasn't the height barrier of protection circles specified as 10-20 feet somewhere? I might be thinking of spell radiuses but without a clear answer for circles going with that seems reasonable.

The damage from staying within a circle would be 4d6 per melee. Also you can't make a circle permanent via permanency wards, it's two different types of magic.

The height of a circle has never been anwsered within any of the books that I know of.
Also you are correct about the context of the passage, I figure a failed saving throw within a circle would be about the same as a failed save in general, and 1d4 melee rounds seems fair enough.

Oh and I remember another skill that has limited uses, track humaniods three consecutive fails means you lost the trail for good.

Grug wrote:

Axelmania wrote:The 'cannot try to save again' text is only in the context of failing a save after having made a save and entered the circle though, it doesn't restrict how many saves you can try to make while outside of it.

What do you think happens if it's not possible for someone to get out of a protection circle? Like if you draw one at the bottom of a slippery-walled pit and throw a god into it, unless they had natural teleport or flight abilities would they just slowly die since it's constant damage and they can't regenerate it? Being in the circle prevents them from using magic/psionics which removes a lot of escape options for some enemies.

Wasn't the height barrier of protection circles specified as 10-20 feet somewhere? I might be thinking of spell radiuses but without a clear answer for circles going with that seems reasonable.

The damage from staying within a circle would be 4d6 per melee. Also you can't make a circle permanent via permanency wards, it's two different types of magic.

It has been explicitly stated that you can combine these two, and in fact there are numerous examples of it in the books.

If only we know the damage capacity and strike penalties for destroying non-permanent wards or circles.

eliakon wrote:It has been explicitly stated that you can combine these two, and in fact there are numerous examples of it in the books.

You are correct, I always forget that permanence wards can work with circles and spells. Sorry about that.

Axelmania wrote:If only we know the damage capacity and strike penalties for destroying non-permanent wards or circles.

I'd settle for the approximate time it takes to destroy it by 50%, doesn't the island at the edge of the world say something about spilling the circle makers blood? Pretty sure it was an expection and not the rule though.

Permanence ward for Deflect would be pretty nice.

I wonder if you wanted to permanence ward an Anti-Magic cloud how that would work. You can't exactly stitch a ward to a vapourous cloud. I figure you could just do it to some object that you anchor the spell to but then that would prevent the spell feature of moving the cloud around at will unless you took the object it was anchored to along for the ride.

Area Effect + Permanence would do for the Anti-Magic Cloud. But yeah, no making it mobile. Actually, that is one of the things that they are adamant about in the Wards section of the book. NO MOVEMENT. Granted, they then point out how you can make Protection and Protection by Inflection wards on people, make them permanent, even, which defeats the whole 'no movement' thing, but eh.

I came across an example of multiple skill use today in Rifts Canada. Page 119 describes the Slammer OCC's Hotwire skill taking 3 melee actions per attempt, and that they can make numerous attempts, but suffer a -40% penalty after 3 consecutive failures.

No expiration date is given on that penalty so it might be permanent. Luckily it does say 'in a row on the same system' and you can get +9 (62% at level one) if you get RobotElec/RobotMech as your other skills and Locksmith as a secondary.