Something that I came across when I was reading several spells, was that it would point out that a natural 1 would fail the check.
When I checked the glossary (p. 514 CRB) I came across these entries?
“Natural 1: This occurs when you roll a 20-sided die as part of a game mechanic and the result on the die is 1. A natural 1 is always an automatic failure if it’s rolled for an attack roll or a saving throw, even if your bonuses might otherwise make it a success.
Natural 20: This occurs when you roll a 20-sided die as part of a game mechanic and the result on the die is 20. A natural 20 is an automatic success if it’s rolled for an attack roll or a saving throw, even if the result would not normally succeed.”
This seems to imply that a natural 1 does not automatically fail, and a natural 20 does not automatically succeed at skill checks unless it specifically says so. Is that the case?
Correct. Natural 1 can still succeed if you have enough ranks and the task is easy enough.
This is the same as Pathfinder, though I think a lot of people house rule skills checks as using the nat 1/nat 20 rules.