PCs should get more skill increases

[Jason S]

In PF2, you get a skill increase at 3rd level and then every 2 levels afterwards. At level 19, you get a total of 6 skill increases, which means you can have 3 legendary skills.

In PF1, at level 1 to level 20, many characters could have between 4-6 skills (or more) at maximum applicable level.

At level 3:
- PF2 you are an expert at 1 skill
- PF1 you were an expert at 6+ skills

At level 7:
- PF2 you are a master at only 1 skill and an expert at 1 skill
- PF1 you were a master at 6+ skills

It just seems to me at level 7 that you should have a larger skill set. This is why characters all feel the same, it’s because we’re all trained (at best) at the same skills.

At level 11, FINALLY you are good at 3 skills.

At level 13:
- PF2 you are a master at 3 skills
- PF1 you were a master at 6+ skills
It’s catching up, but still at 50%, but it’s better than 20%.

At level 19:
- PF2 you are legendary at 3 skills and aren’t especially good at anything else
- PF1 you were legendary at 6+ skills
Again, 50%.

Now that I’m playtesting higher levels (5 and 10), this doesn’t feel especially good or right. It also doesn’t feel right that skills I’m supposed to be good at, that my PC will fail those skill checks and untrained PCs are making them, but that’s a different post.

I’m not sure what solution we have for this, but the solution should be tied to the Int stat, which is clearly recognized as the dump stat of PF2. Below is one possible solution.

Every time you gain a skill increase, you gain a bonus skill increase. You can only gain a maximum number of bonus skill increases equal to your Intelligence modifier.

This way, Intelligence matters a lot more. Boosting intelligence would matter. And in the long run, high Intelligence PCs would be more skilled than low Int PCs. As a stat, this would make intelligence good but not great, but it would be better.

[SqueezeBox]

I think that you are right in some regards, Int really should assist the character outside of class abilities and starting skills. Your solution might be all right, but I'm not sure how much of an incentive that is to have a higher Int.

I do think that the Rogue doesn't need to be the only class to get a skill increase every level. It should be open to all classes. Then it really feels like your character is getting better every level (outside of level bonus, which I have other issues with in another thread). Let the Rogue keep the Skill Feats every level, but give a skill increase every level.

[Yolande d'Bar]

I would definitely like INT to matter more after first level.

[Jason S]

All I know is that being good at only 1-3 skills doesn't feel right.

More than anything, when you're an expert or master at a skill, I want to feel like an expert or master, but so far nothing in the game makes you feel that way. I was hoping gated skill feats would or perhaps innate abilities that come with being a master (2 rolls and take the highest?) but nothing so far. We'll see at the level 7 and 10 playtests.

[Rameth]

I like that idea. I was also thinking that giving 2 (or maybe 3) skill increases at 7th and 15th lvl, instead of 1, could work. Or giving 2 out every other increase, so 1 on 3rd, 7th, 11th, 15th, and 19th and 2 on 5th, 9th, 13th, and 17th. It's 4 extra either way but the second way flows a little better.

I do know if it's not changed at all that I'm probably going to houserule some sort of increase in my games.

Edit: I also agree they should have went really hard on the skill feats but they just went like 40% when they should have went full 110%. I'm hoping that they just put out the more tame ones for the playtest to gauge peoples reactions and then go from there. I'm hoping.

[Draco18s]

Rameth wrote:

Edit: I also agree they should have went really hard on the skill feats but they just went like 40% when they should have went full 110%. I'm hoping that they just put out the more tame ones for the playtest to gauge peoples reactions and then go from there. I'm hoping.

Agreed. The high level ones don't have any power to them and some of them (like the single only existing feat for Arcana) gives people access to Detect Magic. Yet the only class that:

A) Can benefit from the Master and Legendary aspects of the skill
B) Does not get Detect Magic anyway

Is the alchemist.

[Keydan]

Skills feel like the weakest part of P2 for me right now. Not only does being Legendary mean you are only a few points above someone who's just trained, it also means that even at high level raw "talent" which comes from attributes is still more important than training. A burly barbarian will sometimes be better at athletics than a monk who's a legendary athlete. Doesn't sound legendary, doesn't sound like his sill is legendary even if he has some coll stuff to do with it. Sounds like he's trained +3.

[Dante Doom]

I came up with a simple fix for this. Let me know what you guys think

1) when you would get your skill increase in odd levels you get more increase based on your intelligence.

The formula is: 1 + Int modifier (rounded up) (Minimum 1)

So if you have a better modifier you will get better increases.

2 Another fix should make at character creation 2 floating signature skills, to accommodate more skill increases

[Tridus]

I tend to think the opposite on this. With how much smaller the skill list is, giving out more skill increaes is going to further increase the samey-ness of everyone, because everyone will be good at half the list.

It's not like a level 15 character in PF2 is *bad* at anything. That innate +15 makes you better at untrained stuff than anyone in PF1 could ever hope to be because you won't be rolling Stealth at a -4 total modifier like what happened before.

[Draco18s]

Tridus wrote:

It's not like a level 15 character in PF2 is *bad* at anything. That innate +15 makes you better at untrained stuff than anyone in PF1 could ever hope to be because you won't be rolling Stealth at a -4 total modifier like what happened before.

That's not neccessarily a good thing. There's been threads on it. Namely "why does my wizard, who's spent 15 years adventuring in the desert, suddenly become good at swimming?"

[breithauptclan]

You don't actually have to be legendary at a skill in order to be good at it. Trained is enough to unlock all of the actions and activities of the skill. You only need higher than that in order to unlock higher powered skill feats.

So if you re-run that analysis comparing the number of max rank skills of a PF1 character vs. the number of Trained skills that you can have as a PF2 character, how does that compare?

[Jason S]

Dante Doom wrote:

The formula is: 1 + Int modifier (rounded up) (Minimum 1)

4 extra skill increases every 2 level is a lot.

[Jason S]

Tridus wrote:

I tend to think the opposite on this. With how much smaller the skill list is, giving out more skill increaes is going to further increase the samey-ness of everyone, because everyone will be good at half the list.

An addition 4 skill increases is actually a really small adjustment, it means you get 1 additional legendary skill. 4 skills makes everyone like everyone else but 3 doesn't?

How do you feel about the Rogue class who gets 20 skill increases? Because rogues get a skill increase every level, are all rogues the same?

To me you could go double that. 5 good skill is not too much.

Tridus wrote:

It's not like a level 15 character in PF2 is *bad* at anything.

That's exactly what I'm saying, the fact that you're legendary hardly matters.

In addition we'll all have basically the same stats since we get +2 per boost up to 18 and then soft cap at 22. Even with stats the characters will be eerily similar at level 15. Clones.

[Zapp]

Jason S wrote:

In PF2, you get a skill increase at 3rd level and then every 2 levels afterwards. At level 19, you get a total of 6 skill increases, which means you can have 3 legendary skills.

At level 19, you will have received nine skill increases, not six.

It is true you can have 3 legendary skills, but that is because you get three skill increases at or after level 15 (the first level that lets you upgrade a Master skill to Legendary).