Operative Skill Stacking! ...or maybe Not?

[Richard McGuffin]

This question about two 2nd level operative exploits interacting.

Alien Archive: Double your operative’s edge bonus to your skill checks when identifying a creature and its abilities.

Jack of all Trades: You can use all skills untrained, and you double your operative’s edge bonus when using a skill in which you have no ranks.

So my question is, how large is the bonus a 20th level operative with no ranks in mysticism gets from operatives edge when identifiing a creatures abilities?

+12 because it's essentially the same bonus type so it shouldn't stack.

+18 because two doubling effects are treated as a tripling.

or

+24 because two doubling a doubled number is really 4x who needs ranks anyway?

My thoughts are leaning toward the +18 but I'm searching for clarification.

Thanks in advance.

[Cantriped]

I think it should be +18 (two doubling effects which stack to produce a tripling is supported by the RAW).

But I fear SDT will rule that the exploits do not stack.

[wraithstrike]

+18.
By the rules they should stack because it is an untyped bonus, but they might try to say the class is the source instead of saying they have different sources.

Personally I don't think a +18 bonus is enough to even worry about at level 20.

[LankyOgre]

If you are a spacefarer, you can add +2 at 1st level and +4 at 13th. So then you are at +22 compared to +23 with ranks. Not sure it's worth a theme and two exploits, but it's there.

[Hithesius]

wraithstrike wrote:

Personally I don't think a +18 bonus is enough to even worry about at level 20.

It's not worth worrying about even before 20. +18 is a modifier you'd expect to see on a specialist around level 7 or so. The Operative has a slight advantage in that this doesn't account for their ability score modifier, but even for Wisdom I don't imagine that being more than a +4 or +5 at best at level 20. Keeping in mind that this stacking only applies to identifying creatures, what can they do?

Worst case scenario, an Operative is trying to identify with no ability score bonus nor anything like the Spacefarer bonus, and thus get only +18. Best case scenario, an Int heavy operative has a modifier of about +9 and haven't put any ranks in one of Engineering or Life Science despite having enough skill points to have max ranks in every skill except Profession. They're also a Spacefarer for another +4, for an improbable best case scenario of +31.

Our Int-heavy operative who is surprisingly inept with at least one Intelligence skill can identify a rare (DC 15+1.5*CR) CR 20 (DC 45) creature with a 14 or better. The Operative with no particular bonuses save the +18 from their Exploits cannot do that. In fact, since their maximum check result is 38, they cannot identify a rare CR 16 creature with its DC of 39. They also cannot identify an average CR 20 creature with its DC of 40. If we go for a 50/50 chance (DC 29), they can identify a rare CR 9 creature (DC 28), an average CR 13 monster (DC 29), or a common CR 16 monster (DC 29).

I expect that it is tripling rather than quadrupling, but even if it were quadrupling, I think it would only be a potential problem because it might accidentally validate something genuinely concerning in the future because of poor editing, not because of the combination given here.