Envoy Expertise and Skill Focus


Rules Questions


So the CRB says the Envoy at 9th lvl once per day you can re-roll your expertise die with any skill you have skill focus in and keep the better result. But your expertise die gives you an insight bonus, as does skill focus. And these bonuses don't stack.

Was it intentional to do implement the skill in this way, or should it have been a different bonus type?


Knil117 wrote:

So the CRB says the Envoy at 9th lvl once per day you can re-roll your expertise die with any skill you have skill focus in and keep the better result. But your expertise die gives you an insight bonus, as does skill focus. And these bonuses don't stack.

Was it intentional to do implement the skill in this way, or should it have been a different bonus type?

It is 100% intentional. At level 9, an envoy has 1d6+2, which is the exact level that skill focus no longer provides any bonus, no matter what you roll, so to make up for that, they get this ability instead. Its works exactly the same way with the Operative, exact the Operative is way better off since they aren't limited to once per day... Basically I think their idea was at the point where skill focus is no longer useful to your skill, it gains a different effect so the feat is not useless(arguably better in some cases). Would be nice if they just let them stack instead, but they are clearly going for less of that kind of stuff(which raises some questions about high level ship combat, but there are other threads for that).


I noticed the same with Operative associated skills and Operative Edge. you get skill focus in your associated skills, and operative edge is an insight bonus which is +3 at 7th. Coincidentally, at 7th, you can always take 10 in any skill in which you have skill focus.

So although you don't really get a bonus to the skill form skill focus anymore, you still get something.

They seemed to do a decent job and making sure an ability that seems to fade to uselessness actually gets a bump at the same level in which it seemingly fades to uselessness.

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I have pretty harsh language about this supposed 'benefit'. Why would I ever take Skill Focus in a skill I chose for expertise? Since they are both insight bonuses they won't stack.

So an ability that lets me do something with an ability and feat I'll never combine is pretty useless IMO.


You do get some of minimal benefit by having a skill focus in a skill you have expertise in. First is the benefit mentioned in the op of this thread. Second is if you roll low on your expertise you still get the 3 from skill focus. Basically you set the floor higher. It's not great if you do the math, but it is a minor benefit. Third there are abilities that let you forgo your expertise for for some other benefit. When you do so if you have a skill focus you would still get the bonus of 3 I stead of 0 which is nice.

All and all, no it's not the best idea to have both, but if it is a very important skill to you it can be worth it. Also you may want to have the bonus ealier in your charter than you could have expertise. These benefits are ways to make sure you still get something later in your career, but not allow ycharacters to break the cr rating of skill based chalenges to a point where gms and designers must set the challenges for uber experts making those less skilled completely useless. It's actually very well thought out.

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