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It isn't important for players to participate in all major parts of the game: exploration, combat, and social encounters. So it's important that player characters are comparatively effective in all different parts of the game, so that they get to participate and not just wait.
Currently all character classes (except Rogues) get about the same number of skill increases and skill feats. These skills and skill feats allow those characters to contribute to social interactions and exploration. But in addition to their skills, spellcasters also have access to spells that have a lot of narrative power like charm and teleport. So spell casters have more ways to contribute narratively than non-casters. That's a little unbalanced, I think it would be best if all characters could contribute a similar amount to all parts of play.
Martial classes like the Fighter should get more skill increases and skill feats than spellcasting classes like the Wizard. This would give them more chances to contribute with their skills and skill feats, to compensate for the Wizard's spell's narrative power.
This could be done by making all martial classes like the Rogue, with skill increases and skill feats every level. Or maybe by giving them an extra increase and feat every new tier (3, 7, and 15). By whatever means, they should have meaningfully more skills and skill feats than characters who cast spells.
So I'm going to start off saying I think the better solution is to give casters just as useful, or more useful spells, then they currently get, but in a narrower band. As outlined here.
But that's not really feasible for the initial release of 2E. Frankly, neither profiiency bumps or skill feats feel very impactful in the playtest, so how they change those by release will be a big part of how much the OP's suggestion will affect anything.
There's a pretty narrow range of skill uses where martials shine more, but they largely revolve around mobility or intimidation. Being able to scale/wall run/leap run 30 foot vertical obstacles isn't nothing for narrative tools, but it only really emulates one of many tools casters have.
The ranger gets some tools for survival and stealth that are nice, but many of them come at the cost of combat focused class feats.
Fighters, rangers, and rogues also get the best Perception, which can be extremely relevant for spotting traps and/or keeping a lookout while moving at full speed.
One thing to note though is that because skill increases are a limited resource, a well rounded party is probably going to have to lean on everyone's skill set. Until like level 11 everyone probably only has 2 skills they've been able to focus on, 4 if you're a rogue. If your martial picks medicine they will never feel useless, and stuff like stealth or thievery can be clutch even though casters have spells for it. So I think it is somewhat less likely that martials will feel useless in the narrative... they may not contribute as much but I don't think they're gonna be twiddling their thumbs.
One thing I've spent a lot of time thinking about is "are the class features martials are supposed to get at level-up supposed to be on par with spells?"
Like a Barbarian at 5th level gets "immune to flanking", a Monk at 5th level gets "unarmed strike are cold iron and silver", a Fighter at 5th level gets Bravery, whereas a Wizard at 5th level gets "3rd Level Spells". Are all these things supposed to be equivalent?
I guess it could be an "always on versus runs out quick" thing, since it's not a good idea to balance classes with "well class x has better feats than class y" because of how multiclassing works.
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Flavor-wise, anyone that doesn't have magic should almost by definition be more skilled - they can't get by with magic, after all, so they have to learn mundane means to get by. Casters shouldn't be on par by default with non-casters with skills, their benefit comes from their primary stat being a mental stat meaning they tend to have high bonuses in a variety of skills.
DEX has 3 skills that take penalties if the wearer is wearing anything but the lightest armor, STR only has Athletics (the bonus from STR is almost always going to be completely negated by heavy armor, by the way), there is no CON skill (but maybe that's alright?), and then all the mental stats have 4 skills which don't take penalties, and additionally INT is the default stat for Lore skills and every single character is automatically trained in at least one of those.
What this means is that casters have a tendency to have higher rolls in a larger variety of skills from the get-go, because armor check penalties are nasty and martials really need to wear armor to not die. Add in the fact that only really the Ranger and Rogue seem to get more trained skills than average and it gets a little annoying. Why is the Fighter so skill poor when their entire identity centers around them actually being crazy talented?
Now, not all skills are created equal, pretty much no one gives a f@#& about Performance unless your class uses it for something other than aggressively tooting at people. Acrobatics and Athletics are bound t ocome up during anything action-oriented, and for most campaigns its the action scenes are where PC's actually die. It takes an extremely contrived circumstance for the consequences of a failed Perform action to be death. A failed Grab Edge attempt (Acrobatics) means you fall off a cliff and lose at least some HP, if you don't die outright from massive damage. But again, armor check penalties exist and already seriously temper the benefit martials tend to get from naturally higher physical stats.
Meanwhile, Medicine is a pretty important skill to have now, it heals a ton without using spell slots. It scales of WIS, any WIS caster is just automatically going to be amazing at that with no penalty. All of the social skills are CHA and those are often incredibly important. Crafting decides when the party has access to critical upgrade, and that's INT.
Even if casters had a smaller number of trained skills, having an 18 in a mental stat just does more for skills. Meanwhile, a Wizard with a 10 in STR who used their silly number of trained skills to pick up Athletics is going to be on par with even the beefiest of bois wearing plate armor, and that won't change until fairly late in the game when the plated muscle of the group is "only" dealing with a -2 ACP instead of a -5 ACP. Meanwhile, Rogues have trouble picking locks in hide armor because of... reasons? Does hide armor not feature fingerless gloves or something? Can it not be assumed that it's trivial for a rogue to take off their gloves for a second to do something that requires fine motor skills?
I just really don't like how ACP works. It only really makes sense for stealth checks, maybe Acrobatics, but everyone's watched YouTube videos of people doing flips and shit in plate armor. It makes it hard for martials to do the things they should be good at because Paizo can't quite come up with a compelling reason for someone to wear light armor otherwise besides proficiency.
So yeah, I think skill feats should maybe be more plentiful for non-casters, and that those skill feats actually do useful things the moment you get them instead of being like Rapid Mantel which only becomes potentially useful in a super situational way if your character gets knocked off a cliff and only when you're at least a master. Maybe the skills should be at least as useful as Battle Medic as a guideline, that always does something helpful even if you're only trained.
Like what the hell is Forager? Isn't that immediately invalidated by the existence of rations? Taking it doesn't even let you feed your party reliably until you're Legendary, while every spell that involves feeding people just automatically assumes that it's useless if you can't feed the entire party. If the skill let you automatically succeed at finding enough to feed your entire party within a reasonable biome (ie there's sufficient plant and animal life), and then let you get progressively sillier with how you're finding food in more extreme environments (finding water in a desert, finding firewood in a frozen tundra) and culminating in being able to survive even in unfamiliar and inhospitable plains of existence, that would actually be worth a feat and then investing in that skill until its Legendary. That would actually be on par with a spell, which it should be given how much investment it requires and how you can't swap it out with something else if the adventure doesn't require foraging.
It's not enough that skill feats be on par with spells of roughly their level. Spells have to be an insufficient replacement for skills. If someone spent *four* skill increases on something, to get to Trained, then Expert, then Master, then Legendary, and *then* spent a skill feat on it that they can't easily swap out every day like a spell, then under no circumstances should that be upstaged by a spell. Skills should not sacrifice effectiveness when they are already sacrificing breadth.
Agree with the OP; I'm writing here to keep track on this thread.
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One problem is that skill feats are terrible and 99% of them should be in core mechanics of the skills.
Also difference in +0 to +3 would mean a lot in 3d6 system but in d20 it is terrible to describe difference in training.
Also as mentioned ACP is too high,
An interesting idea.
I've always been a fan of being able to select a method to get a task done. As in, I don't like "needing" a cleric to do healing; there should be several other ways to get that task done that other classes can perform.
To that end, I've always been okay with the idea of a high-Charisma martial maxing out Bluff, and a caster using glibness to get the same task done.
But the idea of deliberately enhancing non-casters' access to skill is interesting to me. I may steal that for PF1, significantly increasing martial skill ranks, and perhaps adding a layer of benefits available to them. Cool.
If you feel like your martial character needs more skills for narrative power, spend the extra class feats martials get on rogue dedication and skill mastery.
I don't think that's going to do much for difference in narrative power though, that problem is better looked at from outside the system rather than trying to hack together a solution from what's already there.
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Meanwhile, Rogues have trouble picking locks in hide armor because of... reasons? Does hide armor not feature fingerless gloves or something? Can it not be assumed that it's trivial for a rogue to take off their gloves for a second to do something that requires fine motor skills?No, armor comes in a set, you can't remove pieces willy nilly. The rogue has to take those penalties.
What next? Fighters removing their plate mail boots to improve their sneak skill?
What?
So in winter, istead of removing one of your gloves to open your house or car, you strip butt naked so you can pull out keys from your pocket and unlock a lock?
I think skill feats and skill proficiencies should be more impactful, and that would help make this change more effective at solving the problem. But wither or not that happens, a change like this would be a step in the right direction. It would be perfectly balanced, but at least there would be cooperative advantages and disadvantages.
I've never actually assumed gauntlets were what got in the way of thievery checks. I just assumed being covered in heavier armors made it harder to use fine motor skills all around which feels pretty intuitive.
Whether that's realistic or well balanced I won't comment on, though.
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We always just figured that unless there was extreme time pressure the 1 minute to remove your armor involved "taking off enough of it that you can pick the lock" and thereafter you just don't get the armor bonus until you put it on again. It's more complicated if you have someone in full plate, but why is that person picking locks?
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I've never actually assumed gauntlets were what got in the way of thievery checks. I just assumed being covered in heavier armors made it harder to use fine motor skills all around which feels pretty intuitive.
Whether that's realistic or well balanced I won't comment on, though.
As someone that's worn lots of heavy equipment while using fine motor skills - it really, truly doesn't make sense. So long your fingers are free, doesn't really matter. Hell, any locksmith that's had to unlock someone's car out in below freezing weather can attest to that - the big bulky heavy winter clothing is the only thing enabling you to work at that point. Hell, bomb squads exist, and even for them the major issue is the sheer thickness of their armor possibly making it hard to move their arms (which isn't an issue with metal armor, which is much thinner). They disarm bombs just fine, even though in PF2's internal logic the bulk of the armor would give them an ACP from hell. The only way the armor makes things harder or easier is in the same way doing math in big heavy clothing is harder; it's just less comfortable and it gets hot inside and that's a bit distracting.
For stealth, heavy armor makes sense because that's something that actually requires your entire body - range of movement is actually important and heavier gear is going to rustle more and making louder noises, especially if it's got the Noisy trait like chain armor that assigns a further penalty.
But for athletics, for acrobatics, especially for thievery? Nah.
For Athletics/Acrobatics, I think STR should mitigate ACP. ACP - STR mod = total penalty from armor for those two skills. If you're strong, you can handle heavier armor without it restricting your movement.
But for Thievery, it receiving ACP just makes no sense. I think 5e got it right by making armor penalties only affect Stealth. The only "sneaky" thing Thievery actually does is when you're trying to steal something off of someone's person, and even then that's only if the target is completely unaware of the thief's presence (which would involve an actual Stealth roll, where ACP is already factored in). The attempt itself, the act of putting your fingers into someone's pocket and taking their wallet, has utterly nothing to do with what you're wearing.