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Using The Swashbuckler, at the example level (14) you can get either 5 damage (for having panache) or 5d6 damage (For using a Finisher, ending their panache.) In my mind, neither is worth blowing an action on a 25% or less chance roll.
First edition can occasionally have similar problems where you swing at a boss and roll say, 16, but still miss- but because of how 1e combat tends to go, you just turn off piranha strike, or deadly aim, or whatever you were using, accepting a lower damage total for a more accurate attack. Skill checks don't have any way to do this, so if you can't succeed on your class's main mechanic on less than a 17, you might as well be playing a fighter, and be more consistent.
There's something to be said for conditional highs vs consistency, but I don't believe either of the martial playtest classes have a big enough high to justify the unlikeliness of their primary mechanic in an encounter with a single big foe.
To put it in perspective, Barbarians don't have to succeed on a roll to begin raging, and get a significantly better conditional high for doing so than an investigator does for identifying a weakpoint.