Reverse Engineer Errata?

[Krackne]

Around the release of Guns & Gears people noticed that the prerequisites of Reverse Engineer (expert in Crafting) meant you could not take it at level 2. I saw a handful of people justify that the mix of low level and higher prerequisites meant it was geared towards multiclass characters who could pick it up via the Basic Breakthrough feat. That does not add up to me because part of the appeal of Reverse Engineer is giving the Inventor extra breathing room with his skill selection by lumping the trap disabling niche of Thievery into Craft, as well as early synergy with gadgets. Having to wait until 4th level in order to take the feat not only puts the burden of trap disabling upon other party members for 2 more levels, but competes with the utility of Gadget Specialist and the damage of Megaton Strike.

The objectively negative dip in opportunity cost makes me feel as if the feat (or its prerequisites) got shuffled around during playtest but didn't quite end up where it was supposed to. My GM is willing to compromise/houserule this but I just wanted clarification if this was the intent all along or a genuine mistake.

[Errenor]

Krackne wrote:

Around the release of Guns & Gears people noticed that the prerequisites of Reverse Engineer (expert in Crafting) meant you could not take it at level 2. I saw a handful of people justify that the mix of low level and higher prerequisites meant it was geared towards multiclass characters who could pick it up via the Basic Breakthrough feat. <...>

I just wanted clarification if this was the intent all along or a genuine mistake.

It's very unlikely you could get any such clarification: the designers rarely write here.

It very well could be the intent: almost all 2nd lvl skill feats require expert in skills for example, even if no other class feats do (as I saw). Also I see no problem in having someone trained in Thievery in the party until you could make this your responsibility at 4th level. It's a skill which is rather popular and to have one skill at trained is not a huge cost to a party.
The people talking about multiclassing are probably right too.

[Squiggit]

There's been no errata or any developer comment. As said, the designers don't really like to talk about this kind of thing.

It's pretty clearly an error, but who knows which way makes more sense to fix it.

[Blake's Tiger]

Retraining exists. You're trained in Thievery until you're expert in Craft then you take Reverse Engineer and retrain the skill training in Thievery into something else.

[Ascalaphus]

Blake's Tiger wrote:

Retraining exists. You're trained in Thievery until you're expert in Craft then you take Reverse Engineer and retrain the skill training in Thievery into something else.

I don't think the retraining rules allow that, since you can only retrain into options you could have taken at the time.

[Errenor]

Ascalaphus wrote:

Blake's Tiger wrote:

Retraining exists. You're trained in Thievery until you're expert in Craft then you take Reverse Engineer and retrain the skill training in Thievery into something else.

I don't think the retraining rules allow that, since you can only retrain into options you could have taken at the time.

And he could take any other skill as trained, so what is the problem?

Though while retraining exist I wouldn't rely on it and use it as an argument. Unless we are talking about PFS, in all campaigns in all systems with all GMs I played we never had almost any downtime. Mostly because the plot never waits for the characters and something bad will happen very soon. So this is just mostly non-working rule.

[Blake's Tiger]

Ascalaphus wrote:

Blake's Tiger wrote:

Retraining exists. You're trained in Thievery until you're expert in Craft then you take Reverse Engineer and retrain the skill training in Thievery into something else.

I don't think the retraining rules allow that, since you can only retrain into options you could have taken at the time.

I don't think you read that in the way I meant it. :)

1st Level: T in Thievery
3rd Level E in Crafting
4th Level take Reverse Engineer, Retrain T in Thievery to some other skill

Errenor wrote:

Though while retraining exist I wouldn't rely on it and use it as an argument.

No. It's not--and I almost explicitly said that--an argument for what the designers intended. I don't know if its level assignment was intentional or a mistake. I made the comment so that people running into this conundrum don't search the boards and walk away thinking they're stuck with a dead Training if they wanted to be disabling devices from the start.

And you're right, not all campaigns are the same. You should always talk to your GM about the availability of downtime (and many aspects of a campaign) before getting excited about a particular build or character plan.

[HumbleGamer]

To me, they messed up with the crafting requirement.

The inventor is going to have by lvl 2 the feat the scrounger archetype gets by lvl 4 ( so the normal +2/+4 lvl on the archetype, compared to the class who has it ).

The scrounger came out with no inventor to deal with, reason why it was ok to give the expert crafting requirement for the feat.

Now that there's the inventor, they are probably going to simply remove the expert crafting requirements, because anybody but the inventor ( which automatically scales its crafting rank ) is going to get it buy lvl 4 ( whether it's from the inventor dedication or the scrounger archetype ).

[Wizard Level 1]

3 years, and one remaster later, and the feat reads the same.

[Tyriphian the Thread Psychopomp]

Fascinating.