Background: Skill feat without trained skill?

[Dilvias]

If I want to play a fighter and take the gladiator background, it gives the skill feat "Fascinating performance". What happens if I don't take Perform as one of my few trained skills?

[Jeffrey Kovach]

I was wondering myself about how this is addressed. Most of the skill feats from the backgrounds have prerequisites so it seems we are being forced to take training in a particular skill if it calls for it in the prerequisites. Or do we ignore any prerequisites during character creation? In my opinion, background selection should have came after skill training.

Edit: To answer your question though from my perspective if you don't get the trained skill for the background skill feat, you don't get the benefit of it. It's essentially useless without it.

[mach1.9pants]

Same with Blacksmith.

[Rahod]

What about the Warrior

it talks about how you were a soldier of some type and now your independent.

Which makes sense

ability boost Strength or Constitution

Which makes sense as well

You gain the "quick repair" skill feat?

Ok when did we make a wrong turn here?

What does repair have to do with being a Warrior? Now if we had something like a quick draw feat that would make sense, but quick repair does not make any sense at all.

[Culach]

Rahod wrote:

What about the Warrior

it talks about how you were a soldier of some type and now your independent.

Which makes sense

ability boost Strength or Constitution

Which makes sense as well

You gain the "quick repair" skill feat?

Ok when did we make a wrong turn here?

What does repair have to do with being a Warrior? Now if we had something like a quick draw feat that would make sense, but quick repair does not make any sense at all.

Warriors spend more time repairing and maintaining gear than fighting, and with the new rules for damaging gear you WILL want to be able to repair your gear on your own rather than paying someone after every other fight.

When I played Valeros in the demo my shield was dented, a second dent makes it useless, so after the fight either I repair it, pay someone to repair it, or buy a new one. Options two and three are wastes of funds if you ask me.

[Culach]

As for the Thread topic:

My take is that you get the benefits of the feat, but you also get the untrained penalty of -2 on the check. This merely means it is more difficult for you to get the benefits of the feat, though not impossible.

[Alric Rahl]

But the feats it gives you has Feat requirements of “you must be trained in x skill”

[Ljosalf]

You would think that being good enough or having enough experience means to get a skill feat for something, means you are trained in the relative skill.

[Alric Rahl]

Yes but they haven’t explicitly said that it makes you trained nor that you get even if you don’t meet the requirement.

[Fuzzypaws]

Well, backgrounds should give a skill anyway, in addition to a Lore. It makes no sense for them not to, and it's one of the first things I am houseruling if it's not fixed in the next iteration. Logically, that would be the skill associated with whatever skill feat the background gives you.

[Joe Mucchiello]

If you don't qualify for a feat, the feat stops working. This has not changed.

[Alric Rahl]

Or the devs assumed since you take the background first that you would look up the feat and decide to use one of your skill points from your class in that skill. However this doesn’t work with the feats like Robust Recovery which require Expert in the skill.

Also @ Joe Muchiello, why would they give you a feat that requires Expert in a skill since
You wouldn’t be able to use this until 2nd level if you were trained at 1st or 4th level if you only chose to train that skill at 2nd. That seems really dumb. Robust Recovery’s feat requirements are Expert in Medicine, that is a stupid feat to give a 1st level player if by your statement they can’t use it until at minimum 2nd level.

[Culach]

I agree with Alric.

I think the intent was that the Background Feats worked immediately for the character due to their history, even without "Trained" proficiency in the skill. Unfortunately, this is NOT stated anywhere in the book.

As a houserule, I would 100% have the character get BOTH the skill in question AND the associated Lore skill at trained.

In the case of 'Robust Recovery' I would have it work as long as it was in the 'Background Feat' slot on the character sheet.

[Arakhor]

I'd go one step further, perhaps, and just grant the related skill as a (trained?) signature skill and then allow you to make profession checks using that skill, as per Lore.

[Theryon Stormrune]

We're assuming that the Background gives you the Skill feat without requiring the prerequisite skill training. It would be nice if this was stated somewhere otherwise a lot of backgrounds don't make sense if you don't get the feats included.

[David knott 242]

Joe Mucchiello wrote:

If you don't qualify for a feat, the feat stops working. This has not changed.

But is the relevant prerequisite the one listed in the feat itself, or the background that granted you the feat? If it is the latter, there is no risk of failing to qualify for the feat.