Can you refund a skill feat if you are granted it twice?
Our party recently turned level 2 in Agents of Edgewatch, and so our GM surprised us by promoting us to detectives and granting us the Edgewatch Detective Dedication feat (even though I don't meet the prerequisites and am already a Champion dedicated into Sorcerer).
I also have the Grizzled Muckrucker background, and so got the Experienced Tracker as a bonus feat at level 1. However, the new Dedication feat also gives me the Experienced Tracker feat for free, and says nothing about getting something else in the event of duplication.
What are we to do? I don't think I'm allowed to retrain bonus skill feats from my background. And the new Dedication feat literally does nothing for me save getting me a couple new skills (my Perception and Survival modifiers are identical). Not getting a skill feat would literally put me behind my companions, making this situation more into an unintentional punishment rather than a reward.
EDIT: Since this is the Rules Discussion forum, I should clarify that the GM will be allowing me get a new 1st-level skill feat that I qualified for. I am making this thread because I'm interested in what the existing rules allow for.
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As an aside... kinda goofy Edgewatch Detective gives you the ability to not use Survival to track, but then gives you a feat that gives you bonuses for putting skill increases into survival...
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I remember a similar conversation from quite a while ago.
I think the general idea is that if you get some feat or ability as part of some other feat or character build choice, you don't get to change out just part of what you get. You could retrain the entire thing if retraining it is valid. But not just part of it.
Another example is taking both the Herbalist and Poisoner archetype dedications. Each of them give you the Basic Alchemy Benefits and so both give you the Alchemical Crafting feat. You don't get to retrain the Alchemical Crafting feat for the second dedication into a skill feat of your choice.
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RAW, the basic issue is the lack of choice: Downtime
Retraining offers a way to alter some of your character choices, which is helpful when you want to take your character in a new direction or change decisions that didn't meet your expectations. You can retrain feats, skills, and some selectable class features. You can't retrain your ancestry, heritage, background, class, or ability scores. You can't perform other downtime activities while retraining.
Retraining usually requires you to spend time learning from a teacher, whether that entails physical training, studying at a library, or falling into shared magical trances. Your GM determines whether you can get proper training or whether something can be retrained at all. In some cases, you'll have to pay your instructor.
Some abilities can be difficult or impossible to retrain (for instance, a sorcerer can retrain their bloodline only in extraordinary circumstances).
When retraining, you generally can't make choices you couldn't make when you selected the original option. For instance, you can't exchange a 2nd-level skill feat for a 4th-level one, or for one that requires prerequisites you didn't meet at the time you took the original feat. If you don't remember whether you met the prerequisites at the time, ask your GM to make the call. If you cease to meet the prerequisites for an ability due to retraining, you can't use that ability. You might need to retrain several abilities in sequence in order to get all the abilities you want.
Since backgrounds and this particular dedication feat both grant a specific feat (rather than a choice of options), you can't retrain either of them because there are no other valid options to select.
That being said, RAW doesn't take the GM giving you a specific bonus dedication feat into consideration...