Page 31 of the CRB:
If an ability boost increases your character’s Intelligence modifier, they become trained in an additional skill and language.
So no to getting a skill to expert, yes to getting a new trained skill and yes to language.
Honestly, treating later levels' ability boosts into Intelligence as a way to get another skill increase would probably help Intelligence's value as a stat quite a bit. It'd allow the player to get more skills to master/legendary, which might be worth it for some builds.
I dunno', I hope someone on the design team sees this and considers it for a future round of FAQ/errata.
Honestly, treating later levels' ability boosts into Intelligence as a way to get another skill increase would probably help Intelligence's value as a stat quite a bit. It'd allow the player to get more skills to master/legendary, which might be worth it for some builds.
I dunno', I hope someone on the design team sees this and considers it for a future round of FAQ/errata.
You are right that intelligence's value in PF2 is very low, since the value of a trained skill is pretty low since it doesn't get to increase.
Basically everybody can end up with 3 skills at Legendary and Rogues can get 5. So the system disincentivizes attempting to gain more skills, since they wont increase and the cost of gaining additional trained skills is often expensive, except for that Human racial feat.
But I can guarantee int is not going to get you skill increases, because that would make wizards the best at skills again, which would replace rogues skill monkey position, or at least threaten it highly.
Honestly, treating later levels' ability boosts into Intelligence as a way to get another skill increase would probably help Intelligence's value as a stat quite a bit. It'd allow the player to get more skills to master/legendary, which might be worth it for some builds.
I dunno', I hope someone on the design team sees this and considers it for a future round of FAQ/errata.
You are right that intelligence's value in PF2 is very low, since the value of a trained skill is pretty low since it doesn't get to increase.
Basically everybody can end up with 3 skills at Legendary and Rogues can get 5. So the system disincentivizes attempting to gain more skills, since they wont increase and the cost of gaining additional trained skills is often expensive, except for that Human racial feat.
But I can guarantee int is not going to get you skill increases, because that would make wizards the best at skills again, which would replace rogues skill monkey position, or at least threaten it highly.
I disagree. There is far more value to being Trained in a Skill than there is to being Legendary in a Skill. Even at Level 15, the difference between Untrained and Trained is a +17 modifier. The difference between Trained and Legendary is only +6.
Yes, if you are looking to use Athletics to Trip or Shove or something, keeping your proficiency at the highest level possible is important, but if you're looking to not drown when crossing a river, which is a DC that is pretty much static for the entire game, Trained is just fine.
Being Trained in Medicine is sufficient to make good use of Battle Medicine.
Being Trained in Survival is sufficient to avoid wasting Rations 99% of the time.
Being Trained in any relevant Skill is sufficient for Recall Knowledge checks about common things.
Levels above Trained are most relevant for Proficiency gated things, especially cool Skill Feats.
I do wish we could get higher proficiency with more Skills, but I think that would be better accomplished by giving each class 1 or 2 Key Skills that increase automatically.
Honestly, treating later levels' ability boosts into Intelligence as a way to get another skill increase would probably help Intelligence's value as a stat quite a bit. It'd allow the player to get more skills to master/legendary, which might be worth it for some builds.
I dunno', I hope someone on the design team sees this and considers it for a future round of FAQ/errata.
You are right that intelligence's value in PF2 is very low, since the value of a trained skill is pretty low since it doesn't get to increase.
Basically everybody can end up with 3 skills at Legendary and Rogues can get 5. So the system disincentivizes attempting to gain more skills, since they wont increase and the cost of gaining additional trained skills is often expensive, except for that Human racial feat.
But I can guarantee int is not going to get you skill increases, because that would make wizards the best at skills again, which would replace rogues skill monkey position, or at least threaten it highly.
We don't know exactly what the APG version will look like, but based on the Playtest version I suspect this change would leave Investigators far ahead of Rogues or Wizards.
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That's true Gisher. I forgot about Investigators.
Yes, the already had rogue-like skill progression but had a lot of use for int (unlike the rogue).
Honestly, treating later levels' ability boosts into Intelligence as a way to get another skill increase would probably help Intelligence's value as a stat quite a bit. It'd allow the player to get more skills to master/legendary, which might be worth it for some builds.
I dunno', I hope someone on the design team sees this and considers it for a future round of FAQ/errata.
You are right that intelligence's value in PF2 is very low, since the value of a trained skill is pretty low since it doesn't get to increase.
Basically everybody can end up with 3 skills at Legendary and Rogues can get 5. So the system disincentivizes attempting to gain more skills, since they wont increase and the cost of gaining additional trained skills is often expensive, except for that Human racial feat.
But I can guarantee int is not going to get you skill increases, because that would make wizards the best at skills again, which would replace rogues skill monkey position, or at least threaten it highly.
I disagree. There is far more value to being Trained in a Skill than there is to being Legendary in a Skill. Even at Level 15, the difference between Untrained and Trained is a +17 modifier. The difference between Trained and Legendary is only +6.
Yes, if you are looking to use Athletics to Trip or Shove or something, keeping your proficiency at the highest level possible is important, but if you're looking to not drown when crossing a river, which is a DC that is pretty much static for the entire game, Trained is just fine.
Being Trained in Medicine is sufficient to make good use of Battle Medicine.
Being Trained in Survival is sufficient to avoid wasting Rations 99% of the time.
Being Trained in any relevant Skill is sufficient for Recall Knowledge checks about common things.
Levels above Trained are most relevant for Proficiency gated things, especially cool Skill Feats.
I do wish we could get higher proficiency with more Skills, but I think...
While there are some specific use of skills that can be done while only trained, anything that is opposed or has scaling DCs is basically only valuable if you continue to upgrade the skill.
Battle Medicine isn't actually worth your time if you're not going to consistently invest in medicine, sure you can quickly treat someone in combat for...2d8 hp. It doesn't scale up because you can't make the DCs at only trained.
Rations are....something that only ever gets tracked by most groups if you end up in an environment that's hostile and you don't have the opportunity to buy stuff. For better or worse most groups still don't care much about bulk and don't care about or enforce rations.
IMO about 80% of skill use has to deal with scaling DCs, and general speaking in a 4 person party you don't have room to have people really overlap their training.
And aside from all that you still already get extra trained skills from intelligence.
My argument is that it's not worth investing a lot of ability scores increases into since you wont get skill proficiency increases for it.
My argument is that it's not worth investing a lot of ability scores increases into since you wont get skill proficiency increases for it.
Yes, I definitely agree on that part. CHA is the only stat I'm less interested in increasing on the majority of my characters. The only character I've ever started with less than 12 INT is a Barbarian though, because despite all of that, it still controls how many Trained Skills and Languages you get, as well as being the base ability for Crafting, and the game shoe-horns in Crafting on a surprisingly frequent basis.
I haven't made a character that was concerned about crafting or languages known really.
I will however admit my group uses magic mart as part of the setting. Languages do matter to an extent, though I have a habit of picking ones that enhance my characters background than would necessarily be useful in game.
And even then, most things you're intended to talk to speak common. It's more if you want to talk with enemies you have to worry about it. Which is useful, but still hard to predict.
I do feel like, in PF1, there was a problem with Int, Cha and Str being kind of undervalued stats: Where if you don't have some key ability running off of them they don't matter much at all.
PF2 took some steps to make Str more appealing (mostly by making heavy armor feel better and diminishing Dx to damage options), but pretty much did nothing to fix Cha and arguably made Int even worse in this edition.
I'm not sure what could be done about it though. Letting you advance skills with Int boosts would make Int more attractive, but it would also create this weird scenario where boosting Int is better later in the game than at chargen (unless you let people go expert at 1 but that would throw off game math).
I do feel like, in PF1, there was a problem with Int, Cha and Str being kind of undervalued stats: Where if you don't have some key ability running off of them they don't matter much at all.
One of the things I really liked in 4E was tying saves to 2 stats: it opens up more varieties stat spreads without tanking your saves. IMO, it's not so much that Int, Cha and Str are undervalued but that all the save stats are more or less required so you only have scraps left for the others.
took some steps to make Str more appealing (mostly by making heavy armor feel better and diminishing Dx to damage options), but pretty much did nothing to fix Cha and arguably made Int even worse in this edition.
I wouldn't say Str more appealing but Dex was made a little less so: Str is still only taken if it's a secondary or primary stat, it just gives you more than it used to.
I'm not sure what could be done about it though. Letting you advance skills with Int boosts would make Int more attractive, but it would also create this weird scenario where boosting Int is better later in the game than at chargen (unless you let people go expert at 1 but that would throw off game math).
There is only so attractive non-save stats will ever be: I don't see a way forward that could ever make them as attractive so they will always be second fiddle unless your class makes use of the stat for some reason.
As to "boosting Int is better later in the game than at chargen", it can just be a matter of limits. The game already limits how high you can increase skills by level so it's in line with how later increases are more valuable than lower level increases. A 7th level increase is more valuable than a 1st level one and the 7th level one is less valuable than the 15th level one. Just add a 2nd level restriction to expert level skills and it's in line with everything else.
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IMO, it's not so much that Int, Cha and Str are undervalued but that all the save stats are more or less required so you only have scraps left for the others.
I think that's fair. PF2's ability boost system gives you 4 boosts per level which pretty neatly fits into the idea of having you boost your three saves and then your character's primary stat, with classes that treat Dex or Wisdom as a primary stat getting a little more flexibility.
You're also pretty limited in what you can boost in Chargen (insofar as that the game really encourages you to silo your attributes into a couple key stats).
Just add a 2nd level restriction to expert level skills and it's in line with everything else.
That's sort of where I think the issue would come in though. A character who starts with 14 Cha and 10 Int and boosts Int to 12 at 5 is going to have more flexibility in their skill breakdown than a character who starts with 12 Cha and 12 Int and uses a boost on Cha instead, which seems awkward to me.