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It says on page 233 that during character creation, if your background and class each give you Trained in a skill, you remain Trained and must choose another skill to become Trained in instead. But this is unrealistic. It seems like if your background led you to your class you should be better than normal at some of those skills. A Street Urchin who has had to use Thievery all his life to eat and survive should be better at it when he actually becomes a Rogue.
Rule change: If, during character creation, your Background and Class both provide Trained in the same skill, the Player may choose to either increase that skill's rank to Expert or select to become Trained in a different skill.
This would apply whether the Class skill is required or the Player simply selected it as one of his free skill choices. Expert is allowed at any level it says, unlike Master and Legendary which require minimum levels.
Given that skill increases are such a limited commodity in this game, I feel like this change just overly incentivizes finding stacking backgrounds unless you make it easier to get Expert in other ways too.
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Given that skill increases are such a limited commodity in this game, I feel like this change just overly incentivizes finding stacking backgrounds unless you make it easier to get Expert in other ways too.
You get a skill increase at Level 3 and every 2 levels thereafter. Those can either be used increase an existing skill's rank or buy a new skill at Trained. This rule in effect makes it retroactive to 1st level, and then every 2 levels thereafter.
I don't like any rule that encourages power gaming over everything else. This edition has made it a point to limit the optimization ceiling by reducing the stacking of bonuses. By removing stacking, it encourages more organic and flavorful choices while also rounding out your character a bit.
Given that skill increases are such a limited commodity in this game, I feel like this change just overly incentivizes finding stacking backgrounds unless you make it easier to get Expert in other ways too.You get a skill increase at Level 3 and every 2 levels thereafter. Those can either be used increase an existing skill's rank or buy a new skill at Trained. This rule in effect makes it retroactive to 1st level, and then every 2 levels thereafter.
Yes, and that's one of the only ways to increase a skill to Expert (along with a handful of specific options like certain Dedications and the Skilled heritage).
Because the options to advance a skill from Trained to Expert are comparatively limited and because advancing skills is important to keep your numbers relevant, when you're given the choice between another trained skill or an expert skill, it's almost always better to take the second choice.
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Yes, and that's one of the only ways to increase a skill to Expert (along with a handful of specific options like certain Dedications and the Skilled heritage).
Because the options to advance a skill from Trained to Expert are comparatively limited and because advancing skills is important to keep your numbers relevant, when you're given the choice between another trained skill or an expert skill, it's almost always better to take the second choice.
We are really only talking about 1 skill here. Under the existing rule you either have an incentive to choose a background that is unrelated to your class because you want the skill it provides, or you could choose one that duplicates a class skill in order to get another free skill choice. In some ways, it all comes down to what skill feat does the background provide.
It sounds like you're only thinking about "how can I get this 1 skill to Expert", instead of thinking like "I can get +2 +level in 2 skills and that will broaden my choices and things I can do with Trained Skill". It's rare that Expert provides new skill uses, it is usually Trained vs Untrained. If your ultimate goal is to raise your skill to Expert, you might even just take a Dedication from the Lost Omens books at level 2 in order to get your skills to stack up to Expert. The Devs already allow it in the books they created after the Core, so I'm really just projecting it backwards to the change from Background to Class, and it is simply a choice for the Player to make. They can still choose 1 other skill of their choice instead.
The only real issue is that it will throw off skill check balance at level 1 and 2. Would it apply to all dedications as well? You will end up seeing a lot more than one skill boosted to expert right way. Being able to have stealth and athletics boosted to expert by level 1 or 2 will see a pretty big advantage in combat as well. There is a reason why they didn’t even let the skill classes start with expert in any skill.
For example, what if I start out with with an ancient elf, I can be a cleric and take the champion dedication and automatically start with expert in 2 skills, then use the background and an ancestry feat to easily pick up one more. I think having an elven sarenrae or gozreh cleric running around with expert in nature, medicine and religion is probably going to be pushing the boundaries of balance, especially if they can start with natural medicine. They will be treating wounds with a +4 over what a 1st level character is expected to have.
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The only real issue is that it will throw off skill check balance at level 1 and 2. Would it apply to all dedications as well? You will end up seeing a lot more than one skill boosted to expert right way. Being able to have stealth and athletics boosted to expert by level 1 or 2 will see a pretty big advantage in combat as well. There is a reason why they didn’t even let the skill classes start with expert in any skill.
For example, what if I start out with with an ancient elf, I can be a cleric and take the champion dedication and automatically start with expert in 2 skills, then use the background and an ancestry feat to easily pick up one more. I think having an elven sarenrae or gozreh cleric running around with expert in nature, medicine and religion is probably going to be pushing the boundaries of balance, especially if they can start with natural medicine. They will be treating wounds with a +4 over what a 1st level character is expected to have.
Yes, it would apply to Dedications as well. The Dedications in Lost Omens grant the "If you are already Trained, you become Expert" ability, so the Lost Omens Devs obviously don't think it is completely unbalanced. If you take Lastwall Sentry, for instance, you gain Athletics and Undead Lore at Trained, or you are already Trained, they become Expert. So either the Corebook writers don't know what the Lost Omens writers are doing, or there has been a company shift in attitude since the Corebook was released. I tend to think it is the latter. It would be nice if the next official Errata stated the change I'm suggesting, but if not, I'll just keep it as a house rule, like so many others I felt were needed or helpful.
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Also, note that I already made a Signature Skill ability for the Rogues that lets them get either Stealth or a Racket skill to Expert at 1st level, and then advance that Signature skill for free to Master and Legendary 2 levels earlier than others can (5th and 13th levels). Signature Skill costs the Rogue 2 free skill choices, and helps make them the skill masters similar, to the Fighter's combat mastery. Even with this latest rules change, I don't think that crown is gone.
Or the feats have different power balance.
Lastwall Sentry gives you stacking training and... shield block.
Aldori or Mantis give you stacking training and... future scaling on a signature weapon you’re already trained in (bought with another feat).
Pathfinder agent gets you stacking training and... level to untrained.
The CRB archetype give nonstacking training, but the other benefits are much more marked, even without bringing up Rogue Dedication. Cantrips, rage, proficiencies, several unique features or a combination of benefits... weighing the parts, I’d say stacking training was accounted for.
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Or the feats have different power balance.
Lastwall Sentry gives you stacking training and... shield block.
Aldori or Mantis give you stacking training and... future scaling on a signature weapon you’re already trained in (bought with another feat).
Pathfinder agent gets you stacking training and... level to untrained.The CRB archetype give nonstacking training, but the other benefits are much more marked, even without bringing up Rogue Dedication. Cantrips, rage, proficiencies, several unique features or a combination of benefits... weighing the parts, I’d say stacking training was accounted for.
Hmmm, you make a good point. I hadn't fully considered the qualitative differences between the Dedications. I just looked over the Lost Omens World Guide, and I do agree they are less powerful abilities than the Multiclass Dedications from the Corebook. I'll have to think about this and see what I want to do. For now though, have a Merry Christmas!
Obviously, for house rules in a home game, you can totally rebalance everything around the level you want it to be. I think it is pretty safe to say that core PF2 is balanced around the general assumption that characters gain expert proficiency with skills at level 3, although few select characters can gain it at level 2, by focusing significant class resources towards it.
A first level character with a +9 (or even in the case of my elf, a +10) is probably not balanced to PF2 general expectations, but if you generally want players to be able to trivialize some skill challenges starting at level 1, without making the challenge itself trivial to all characters, by reducing DCs, this is a way you can do it.
Things will start to get more challenging again at higher levels because legendary proficiencies will still be generally rare, and remain the highest cap, so legendary challenges will still be quite hard.
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Counter Proposal:
Intelligence
At character creation, you can instead use skill boosts gained from Intelligence to increase a trained skill to expert, up to a number of times such that the number of expert skills governed by a given ability score do not exceed that ability score's modifier.
...
For example, a Monk with 14 Intelligence can have a total of 6 skills (4T/2E), 7 skills (6T/1E), or 8 skills (8T/0E), however, if they chose to start with both Stealth and Thievery at expert, their DX score could be lower than 14, or, if they chose to start with both Diplomacy and Performance at expert, their CHA score could be lower than 14.
This rule just makes it so you have the choice of 1 higher skill or 1 extra skill.
Yeah, in a game where higher skills are both more valuable and significantly limited in your ability to acquire them.
It also allows you to qualify for higher feats earlier than expected, thus having more of them.
Just saying.
And yeah Squiggit, you have a point, but I dont see that as much of a problem. I think expanding the potential skill difference from lv 1 is good.
I sort of agree with you. I think differentiation is good, but I also think with how generally rare skill increases are I'm not sure there are many (if any) times I'd pick an extra trained skill over an extra upgraded skill.
Personally I'd rather go even further that direction and make it easier to pick up Expert+ skills in general, because I think being able to build skill-driven characters is a good thing and I'm not a huge fan of rogues basically owning the skill monkey niche, but in a vacuum it's still something worth considering.
Expert feats have a requirement of lv2, but unless you have some special training (like Rogues, or Pathfinder Agents) you normally can’t take them until lv4.
This changes that.
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It also allows you to qualify for higher feats earlier than expected, thus having more of them.
Just saying.
Not really. The "requires Expert in X skill" feats are all minimum Level 2, and the Master are minimum level 7, etc. So they can't take those feats until they get a skill feat at those levels minimum.
I don't think anyone is worried about the power curve here. Most dissenters seem to be concerned with the PF1 problem if "optimal traits". By limiting the stack, we reduce the amount of Optimacy in these choices and thus we increase the variety we see in player choices.
Oh I’m just pointing out side effects that people seem to not notice. It’s kind of always the case when someone says “you can change this rule and nothing negative really happens”.