Saving Skill Increases

[The DM of]

I don't see language about this one way or another in the rules or forum. Has anyone heard if it's come up?

If I get a skill increase at let's say Level 6, can I save it until Level 7 to increase one of my Expert skills to Master?

Thanks!

[Captain Morgan]

No.

[The DM of]

Assuming you're replying to the second question, what are you referencing for that?

[Nocte ex Mortis]

It’s part of the level-up process. You can no more save it than you can save getting your hit points or proficiency-by-level increase.

[Nefreet]

You can't prove a negative.

Pathfinder is a permissive rules system. What you need is evidence showing you can hold or save your increases for a later level.

I am unaware of any Designer statements or published text that supports that idea.

[thenobledrake]

What Nefreet said.

If you could do this, the rules would say that you could - and the process for leveling-up is on page 31, and says "Every time you gain a level, make sure you do each of the following" and "Add class features from your class advancement table, including ability boosts and skill increases."

Not even the barest hint of suggesting you could refuse to gain a skill increase at one level to instead gain two skill increases at a later level.

[Nefreet]

Holding back feats could be advantageous as well, depending on your build.

For further context, you couldn't hold things back in PF1, either, and you can't currently in Starfinder.

Two different games, yes, but similar design elements from the same company.

[ofMars]

yeah, I would assume not because each level is balanced in a vacuum, not in comparison to how a given character got to that level. There's probably a way to read the retraining language to make this clear, but take a level 7 fighter, for example. At level 7, the game is balanced to only have 1 mastered skill and one expert, or 2 experts + 1 additional trained, barring any of the feats that auto-level a skill. Similarly, it's balanced for a level 7 fighter to only have ONE level 6 fighter feat. Even if they gave up a feat at first level, saving it for later to have a better feat would be unbalanced at that level. Taking a disadvantage early on doesn't suddenly balance the game play for when you're OP later

[The DM of]

Nefreet wrote:

Pathfinder is a permissive rules system. What you need is evidence showing you can hold or save your increases for a later level.

I'm not able to find the word permissive in the core book. Page 444 talks about "Specific Overrides General," but I'm not finding statements corroborating that broad of a paintbrush across the game. It's unreasonable to expect everything you can do in a roleplaying game to be limited to what's "permissively" written in the book.

Page 444 also talks about Ambiguous Rules where if something sounds too good to be true, use common sense. There is a precedent for Class and Skill feats not being able to be applied at a higher level (saved or retrained). They both have a level. Saving up several Class feats until L8 or 10 for example is abusive. You gained a Class feat 2. It should grant you that level or lower.

The only limit written for skill increases is that you can't achieve a proficiency ahead of its minimum level, in this case Master at 7th. The skill proficiencies themselves are level agnostic. Their progression is UTEML.

I see where the No's are coming from on this. I was hoping for a reference that clarified one way or the other.

However, as I was about to hit submit, I added the word retrained to my 2nd paragraph and realized I didn't look in the downtime retraining section for statements. There is actually one that I would say makes this a clear No on page 481:

"You can spend a week of downtime retraining to swap out one of your skill increases. Reduce your proficiency rank in the skill losing its increase by one step and increase your proficiency rank in another skill by one step. The new proficiency rank has to be equal to or lower than the proficiency rank you traded away."

Thus if you gained Expert in S1 at L6, rose to L7, and then retrained that skill increase, your S2 Expert skill would be ineligible to be raised to Master.

Thanks for the replies. Edit: Ninja-ed by ofMars while posting. Good one.

[Nefreet]

The DM of wrote:

Nefreet wrote:

Pathfinder is a permissive rules system. What you need is evidence showing you can hold or save your increases for a later level.

I'm not able to find the word permissive in the core book.

It's a legal definition that game design takes after.

Restrictive - Allow everything except those things which are forbidden by the rules
Permissive - Disallow everything except those things for which permission is given by the rules

The all-too-common example being, "Nothing says I can't <insert crazy idea here>, so I can"

In Pathfinder2 (and Pathfinder1 and Starfinder) you need to be given permission to do something. In this case, if you want to retain a skill increase for a later level, you need evidence supporting that idea (or a GM who says it's okay). You can't just go ahead on your own.

[thenobledrake]

The DM of wrote:

It's unreasonable to expect everything you can do in a roleplaying game to be limited to what's "permissively" written in the book.

It is objectively less unreasonable to expect the rules to list everything that you can do within them than to expect them to list what you cannot do.

Seriously. Just imagine what the rules would look like if they even tried to consistently include wordings like "Add class features from your class advancement table, including ability boosts and skill increases. You cannot leave any choices unmade or features not added for a later time."

[Jared Walter 356]

The DM of wrote:

Assuming you're replying to the second question, what are you referencing for that?

The retraining rules also strongly support not being able to save this, feats etc. Pg 481:

"For instance, you can't exchange a second level skill feat for a fourth level one".

also pg 31 on gaining level indicates mandatory language "Your character gains"

pg 33 ancestry feats: "as a starting character you can choose from only 1st level feats"

Everything in the rules states that it is mandatory, and retraining even goes out of its way to tell you that you can't take a higher level option when retraining.

And actually pg 444 says if "If one version is too good to be true it probably is."

It also says "you should default to the normal rule"

[Bill Dunn]

The DM of wrote:

Nefreet wrote:

Pathfinder is a permissive rules system. What you need is evidence showing you can hold or save your increases for a later level.

I'm not able to find the word permissive in the core book. Page 444 talks about "Specific Overrides General," but I'm not finding statements corroborating that broad of a paintbrush across the game. It's unreasonable to expect everything you can do in a roleplaying game to be limited to what's "permissively" written in the book.

Indeed, player characters can always try all sorts of things to do that the rules haven't thought of. That's normal for an RPG - there is always a universe of things that can happen while the rules have to be a finite list of guidelines.

That said, manipulating the metagame mechanics is different from living in the story of the game world. In a situation like that, you generally have to approach the rules as being permissive in that they define how those metagame elements can be manipulated.

[masda_gib]

You can't use a Skill Increase from level 1-6 to increase a skill to master for the same reason you can't use a level 1-6 feat slot to get a level 8 feat.
Master skills are a level 7 thing and you can't use slots/points of lower level to get them.