One of the things that's been a little hard for me to come to terms with in PF2 has been the relative dearth of skills for classes that used to be good at skills, but not quite as good as a rogue — primarily bards and rangers. Swashbucklers probably fit well here too.
One of the problems is that while they start off with many skills (6 + Int trained, compared to the 8 + Int trained for a rogue and the 4 + Int that's the default), their skill progression is the same as everyone else. At high levels, they are likely to be amazing at three skills, and suck at the others because they are left at trained. In addition, they are classes that are likely to have certain skills "locked in" — bards are likely to push Performance and/or Occultism, and rangers Survival and Nature. They don't have to take those skills, but they feel more expected to than other classes.
So I'm considering options for allowing additional skill access for these characters, because skills are fun and many of the things I envision bards and rangers doing fall under skills rather than combat things. The easiest option would be to give them a class feat that lets them expand on their skills, but I'm not quite sure how to implement that.
One way would be to simply give them access to the Skill Mastery feat from the Rogue and Investigator dedications, which would let them boost one Expert to Master, one Trained to Expert, and gain a skill feat associated with one of those skills. Another would be a lower-level feat that lets them auto-scale one skill at, say, levels 4, 10, and 18 — this would provide more skill increases overall, but no additional skill feat, and would have a bit of delayed gratification feel to it.
So, hivemind, how would you go about "skilling up" existing classes?
Personally, I'd do specific Skill increases at specific levels.
For Ranger, which isn't an overwhelming Class, I'd probably just up Nature for free at 2nd, 8th, and 16th, and maybe toss on a free Skill Feat or three (look at Swashbuckler for an example how that might work), no investment needed.
I would not up Skills on the Bard for free at all since they're pretty unambiguously the most powerful caster, and very possibly the most powerful Class, in the game. That said, an in-Class Feat to increase some Proficiencies ala Skill Mastery seems reasonable enough if you want it (though, personally, for Bard I'd have it up either three Skills to Expert or up two to Expert and get a Skill Feat each...either way it's more broad than deep, which fits the 'jack of all trades' theme Bards have going). I'm not sure that's really necessary though, Bards already have plenty of Skill related tricks to fit their 'jack of all trades' narrative role, from Bardic Lore, to Versatile Performance, to Eclectic Skill. I feel like Bards are really pretty well covered.
Not a huge fan of specific skill increases. Kind of thematically pigeonholes them. Nature is good if you're playing into the monster hunter feat line, but might feel bad with a different build. Flexibility is important. Same thought process behind Rogues having open skill increases rather than just getting automatic bonuses to stealth or thievery or something.
i wouldn't give Bards anything extra tbh, they are already the strongest caster in the game and their skill functionality can be replicated with bardic lore, spells, and versatile performance.
if a bard wants to be more skillful he can easily grab rogue (or another skill based) archetype since that's their purpose.
Some other classes with slightly less powerful core i can see it though, like Ranger (giving him survival/nature related stuff), swashbuckler (giving him the panache afecting skill), alchemist (giving him the craft) and etc
shroudb wrote: i wouldn't give Bards anything extra tbh, they are already the strongest caster in the game and their skill functionality can be replicated with bardic lore, spells, and versatile performance. I certainly wouldn't give them anything. What I'm going for is allowing them to buy into more skills.
Both bards and rangers have some pretty strong class feats, so I believe giving one up for more skills is a pretty big sacrifice.
Quote: if a bard wants to be more skillful he can easily grab rogue (or another skill based) archetype since that's their purpose. The problems with that are four-fold.
1. You get a bunch of other baggage with the dedication, like armor proficiencies and surprise strike.
2. The dedication also starts out by giving you more trained skills, which is not what they need. Bards and rangers start out with plenty of skills, the problem is that they can't keep up with increasing DCs.
3. Skill Mastery can't be taken until level 8. That makes sense for that particular implementation because that's when you can become a master in a skill, but it also leaves a gap at lower levels.
4. It prevents you from taking other archetypes.
I'm considering a feat like this:
Skill specialist Feat 4
Bard Ranger
Increase your proficiency rank in one of your skills from trained to expert. At 8th level, increase the rank of that skill to master.
Special: You can take this feat a maximum of two times.
This is slightly weaker than Skill Mastery, because you don't also get a free skill feat out of the deal, but on the other hand doesn't require the dedication, and it's available at level 4.
Skill Specialist is probably too weak if anything, honestly. Look at Acrobat Dedication. That's a Dedication and thus a bit stronger, but it ups a Skill all the way to Legendary eventually, and provides additional benefits to boot.
I'd have Skill Specialist grant a Skill Feat, but restrict it to the chosen Skill. That's less flexible than Skill Mastery, which allows it in either of two. You could even make it a 1st level Skill Feat if you want to be really restrictive.
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