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Would it be too strong to let the Armor Training feat (or similar feats if they exist — I can’t think of any off hand, but I’m sure they’re out there) scale with each class’s existing armor training levels? So that if you have Medium Armor training through the feat, and your class advances your Light Armor proficiency to Expert, your Medium Armor proficiency gained through the feat would also advance to Expert.
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Not especially. It would diminish the value of the sentinel feat but eh.
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I’m honestly not all that bothered by diminishing the value of Sentinel Dedication, because except for a character who already had Light and Medium, Sentinel Dedication would probably still be better, plus it opens up the entire Archetype, which has some value in and of itself.
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It would shift the balance a bit, but in a way that we can analyze and decide if we're comfortable with.
If we look at the Sentinel dedication, it has some interesting nuanced rules:
Whenever you gain a class feature that grants you expert or greater proficiency in any type of armor (but not unarmored defense), you also gain that proficiency in the armor types granted to you by this feat. If you are at least 13th level and you have a class feature that grants you expert proficiency in unarmored defense, you also become an expert in the armor types granted to you by this feat.
So say, a thaumaturge that takes Sentinel would scale up his heavy armor training to expert at 11 and to master at 19.
A monk that takes Sentinel (for... reasons...) would scale up his light and medium armor proficiency to expert at 13 but never any further.
A wizard with Sentinel would get expert and medium armor at level 13. A wizard who'd also taken two armor training feats would also end up with expert heavy armor proficiency.
The other big alternative is the Champion dedication. It gives us trained proficiency in all armor from the start, and at level 14 we can take a feat to bump all of them to expert.
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These clauses are pretty watertight. Particularly, it's closed off to tricks from monks trying to get abnormally high proficiency in armor.
If you applied this to armor training, it'd be pretty safe from shenanigans. So how would it shift balance?
- It allows clothy casters to use general feats for long-term armor instead of a sentinel or champion dedication.
- That frees up class feats
- That frees up the option to take a different archetype
- Medium armor classes like Magus and Thaumaturge who don't have an automatic bias towards Dexterity/Finesse weapons, probably find it very attractive to go into heavy armor. It only costs one general feat. It allows them to rely on Bulwark for reflex saves and so frees up one ability score (Dex). And it's an extra point of AC. At the cost of some movement speed. And these classes don't have to depend on Dex for ranged attacks. (spells, implements)
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So, it would definitely be good.
It also has the benefit of repairing a feelsbad game element.
But is it too good? I think for a lot classes (clothy casters and medium armor martials) it would become a default choice that you need a reason not to take.
But you could also try to balance it "forward"; if there are more other general feats that are really good as well, or if there are some more benefits to staying relatively lightly armored.
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General feats 'slots' are just 5, and some of the options are almost auto-picks. Having more relevant choices would be a good thing, IMO - the Armor/Weapon proficiency ones, as published, are things that you either ignore or have to retrain later on.