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Per the above post by the omnipotent Hawkmoon, it looks like a sentence was added to the new rulebook that says that you can't ever automatically succeed at a combat check against a bane. However, the Potion of the Ocean from Skull & Shackles has the following language:
Banish this card and choose a character at your location to succeed at a check to defeat a bane with the Aquatic trait.
Since the new rulebook supercedes the old one (at least last time I checked) does that make the Potion of the Ocean useless except in the rare circumstance that an Aquatic bane has a check to defeat other than Combat?
No need to fear, Designer Mike is here.
Aquatic barriers that are tasks, not combat, maybe?
There are some aquatic monsters too. But yeah, based on what Mike says this will see some tweaking. And I would assume that since it was added to WotR but they saw no need to tweak the S&S rules that everything that came in S&S should still work exactly the way it did without this rule. I'm guessing this is for something that might come up in WotR or beyond. And I'm excited to see what that something is.
Thinking about this some more: there are of course a few barriers with a combat check to defeat, and several ways to automatically (succeed at a check to) defeat a barrier: Thieves'/Masterwork Tools, Staff of Heaven and Earth. But every such barrier I can think of has an alternative check that you could be automatically succeeding at instead, e.g. the big stone heads from Sins of the Saviors were, IIRC, Combat or Disable.
If there are any barriers with only a Combat check to defeat, this rule would preclude using cards like Masterwork Tools to defeat them.
Mike's explanation, linked above, was this:
Masterwork Tools would seem to fit in that "unless" part since they say they work against a specific type of bane.