I'm currently DM'ing a mix of Abomination Vaults + Troubles in Otari that started in the Begginer Box to introduce Otari earlier and that is eventually is planed to jump to Stolen Fate. Tonight the party got to 5th level after cleaning up the 3rd floor of the Gauntlight and since we started I talked with my group that I wanted to test what changes would it have if players got access for free to the skill feats they met the prerequisites of and how it would play up. The results? I doubt our table is ever going to use skil feats again as the system intends to.
The party consists of a warpriest cleric, a storm druid, and a double slice fighter. Neither of them is particularly skilled, though due to the amount of skill feats they have just from being trained in the few skills they have they take all the juice they can from their skills and that even pushed them to be more creative with them, which is something that didn't happen before. I seen skill feats that I didn't even know existed in use for in, honestly, not very groundbreaking moments but that were useful nonetheless. Otherwise, those feats would likely never get much use in my table because, well, they are usually weak and situational and most players wouldn't bother to take them in the first place. They also plan what skills they are going to improve in advance which also didn't happen before since (at least one of my players) often struggled to pick up skill feats because he never knew what to take and in consequence always took Medicine skill feats with all his characters. This rule also made all of my players want to take skill increases with the more "non-conventional" skills because before they usually used skill increases in the skills that (like the aforementioned Medicine) had at least one decent skill feat they could take next, while now if they take something like Survival even if none of the skill feats is as widely effective as the stuff you can find in Medicine since you are getting a ton of new flavorful options they don't feel they are "wasting" their skill increases in them.
In practice, the balance of the game remains the same. For example, if you increased your Athletics to expert at 3rd level, it was very likely that either your 3rd-level general feat or your 4th-level skill feats was going to be an expert Athletics feat, and since most skills usually have the clearly better option to take or don't even have more than one option (like most master or legendary skill feats) it means that in most cases players gain access for free stuff that they were going to be taking anyways either at the same or the very next level. The most "troublesome" part in regards to balance would be 1st level, since players are getting access to dozens of feats that they really didn't have before, though the only true outlier here is IMO Medicine (ofc, why it wouldnt be huh) because just from being trained in it you get access to both Risky Surgery and Battle Medicine, though as I already said Battle Medicine was fairly common in my table anyways and it IMO it kinda is a feat tax too.
If having to keep track of dozens of feats could be a problem for your table, then make it so they write down the skill feats they actually want and that's it. None of my players wrote down the 40+ skill feats they technically have, they just took those that they were going to take anyways and those that fitted their character and that's it.
I wrote down the specifics here. What do you think about this approach I took? Do you think it actually adresses the problem I (and other tables as far as I could see online) have with skill feats? Or in an ideal world Paizo should be the ones that should balance skill feats to make them worthwhile?
So one of the reasons that skill feats exist is because skills are broad categories and skill feats allow you to express that you're good at part of it but not another part of it. Like if your character is from a seafaring culture you might want your character to be an exceptional swimmer, but not an accomplished climber or grappler; so you would have to invest in athletics, but you're only going to take the swim-related feats not the climbing related feats.
So giving all the skill feats for free would mean that you can't have a character who is very good at picking locks but doesn't know how to pick pockets.
It's possible this doesn't matter because you can just make your "legendary at athletics, but can't swim character" just refuse to get wet via roleplaying, but this is going to annoy some people.
You ask what would happen, and therefore I answer: this would happen.
... On a more serious note, you would have to decide what happens with Additional Lore, since it has no prerequisites and is infinitely repurchaseable.
You ask what would happen, and therefore I answer: this would happen.
... On a more serious note, you would have to decide what happens with Additional Lore, since it has no prerequisites and is infinitely repurchaseable.
Maybe you get additional (and autoscaling) lores instead of skill feats at every even level?
That's so much extra bookkeeping and so much more homogenization for extremely little return. For myself, I already have a somewhat hard time remembering all the feats I've taken. Now I'm going to be adding 25 to 50 feats that I need to write down on my sheet, just because my character has a couple of proficencies in skills.
Playing a Rogue or Investigator with your rules would be an absolute pain because now every decision is going to need to be looked at thinking of every possible skill feat in the entire game and how it applies, all because some people didn't like this extra step in customizing their character.
IF you had this house rule at a table, I would legit request the ability to opt out of it. No thank you, I have enough choice paralysis leveling up than to have to deal with this horse s+~*.
those feats would likely never get much use in my table because, well, they are usually weak and situational and most players wouldn't bother to take them in the first place.
In practice, the balance of the game remains the same.
Only for combat centered games.
Once you start throwing in skill challenges on a regular basis, those skill feats become very useful and powerful. Giving access to all of them automatically makes all the characters feel very much the same.
It would be like pointing out how some characters get spells and some characters get better weapon proficiencies. So to 'correct' the problem, we will just give all characters both spells and martial weapon proficiency at the same rate. Now everything is fair to everyone and the game is perfect.
I think I have to adress a few things here.
* I'm not giving access to every single skill feat for free. I'm giving access for free to every single skill feat that you meet the prerequisites of.
* In the link I provided in the post I list the few exceptions that aren't given for free.
* In regards to the "it removes meaningful choices" bit, I explain in the post why that isn't the case. If you take a skill increase in X skill it its very likely that you are going to be taking a skill feat for that skill next. What this optional rule does is that it skips step two and immediately gives you the feat that you were already going to be taking anyways. I also disagree that this takes away from skill challenges because in the post I also clarified that even with this the party is far from solving every single problem with their skills. No one in the party has Thievery so they don't have any Thievery skill feats either, so when they find themselves against a trap they either have to brute force their way in or simply avoid it. If the point is "if there was a party in the rogue they would make skill challenges trivial" I also disagree because this doesn't remove the fact that rogues are already the definitive skill masters and they can begin with all skills trained if they want. That alone is way more impactful than having a ton of skill feats at 1st level.
I would say the "it would make characters feel the same" comments are only true insofar that many campaigns are being played with this hosue rule, or if several characters are picking the same few skills to put in ranks in (and to the same degree), neitehr of which seems particulalry likely.
Knock on effects: INT becomes a lot more valuable becuase having skill points is esssentailly having more feats, even if they're only trained. INT by itself is already quite weak so I don't think this necessarily breaks the game, it's still not like CHA in how it can bring in effective third actions besides the quesitonable utility of RK and it's not like WIS, CON, or DEX that actually boost your saves. It possibly overtakes STR on non-melee characters, I don't think any of the INT classes stand out as problematically good.
By the same note, rogues get an extreme buff as their many, many skill increases are granting them some absurd utility. That one might actually be problematic, so there might need to be some sort of upper cap.
I would say that for most of the "flavor" skill feats, though, even if there's a lot, because they're often so niche it's not usually going to cause actual balance issues, especially if players are diversifying their skills. Players are more likely ot have something of relevance to the situation, but none of them are really goiung to make it to where problem solving becomes irrelevant.
My bigger concern are the combat relevant skill feats, that are either directly used in a fight or are otehrwise about effectively preparing you fro the next fight. *Especially* the ones that influence combat wihtout being used in combat might be a bit much if the party effectively just has all of them, on multiple characters.
It's possibly worth trying out and seeing how it goes. I think the main pitfall is going to be players even knowing they have stuff, but I don't think it's going to be particularly more unwiedy than rolling up a rogue, who can naturally just run out of relevant skill feats to take. I don't think it'll make the game simpler, as anyone optimization-minded is going to end up pouring over the enitre skill feat list looking for what skills to invest in to best exploit this, and again players will want to keep looking through their many feats to see if they've got a relevant one, but I don't think it's a terrible idea for a home game to try out.
It may be worthwhile to go through and sort the skill feats into the categories I mentioned earlier and only make the niche non-combat influencing ones a gimme, if giving them absolutely everything doesn't work quite how you want . I suspect that mgiht be more manageable, and then give them a preset number of combat-relevant skill feats they can choose from. More work, but I bet that would be an interesting game and take on an interesting tone where PC's are hypercompetent.
I agree rogues would get a huge boost with this, though I would want to actualy see if the boost is really significant or if its noticable by not by much. I also agree the combat skill feats are also in a grey area because their existance makes it so players would prioritize become trained with skills like Medicine or Diplomacy since that would give you Battle Medicine and Bon Mot automatically at 1st level, though there's ways to get both of them at 1st level already so the boost is there but IMO it isn't groundbreaking (at least, it hasn't been in my table so far).
I also agree this certainly doesn't make the game simpler per se, though it makes certain aspects of the system less time consuming. I already described what happens with my players but if I to speak for myself I'd say that I'm kinda tired of wasting hours upon hours to select skill feats for my characters. I like theory-crafting a lot and I have a whole google doc with tons of character builds I would want to play at some point (I'll likely end up playing like two of them, but that's how it is I guess) and while I can make most of the build in like, 30 minutes or so, I always left skill feats for last because I know I'll be at least one hour with that alone. I'm probably speaking for myself here, but I think most players already check out the skill feat lists for the skills they are planning to increase ahead of time so I don't think optimizers would change their course of action that much with this variant rule.
I would want to playtest this with rogues or investigators though. I want to see if those truly get a significant boost.
The end result of this is that skill feats are transformed into base mechanics; Bon Mot is now a function of the Diplomacy skill the same way Demoralize is a function of the Intimidate skill. I think this is an interesting idea for a very experienced group but is obviously way too much mental load to consider incorporating into the base game. I know my group tends to just complain every time the issue of selecting skill feats comes up because they are either must-takes or extremely niche.
I would think the biggest effect would be that the best skills would become even better since those are the ones with the best and most skill feats.
I agree, but if you were planing to take skill increases with those skills you were going to get those skill feats at some point anyways.
The more I think about it, I come to the conclusion that the only skill that is an outlier is Medicine here. Like you said, Battle Medicine, Continual Recovery, and Ward Medic are huge boosts. I also wouldn't sleep on things like Risky Surgery, Mortal Healing, and Godless Healing, but I'm also inclined to agree that some of these options should probably be things that Medicine should already have baked in. Continual Recovery and Ward Medic IMO make total sense as something you unlock when you become expert on Medicine, and I'm 50/50 with Battle Medicine because it is IMO a feat tax that it's very likely someone that isn't the dedicated healer in the party is going to take because if the healer is the one that is knocked out you need a way to heal him too, because the action economy to heal someone else with a potion is horrible even with the remaster changes, but at the same time I don't know if it would make sense for it to be something you should be able to do from the get go.
I agree, but if you were planing to take skill increases with those skills you were going to get those skill feats at some point anyways.
The more I think about it, I come to the conclusion that the only skill that is an outlier is Medicine here. Like you said, Battle Medicine, Continual Recovery, and Ward Medic are huge boosts. I also wouldn't sleep on things like Risky Surgery, Mortal Healing, and Godless Healing, but I'm also inclined to agree that some of these options should probably be things that Medicine should already have baked in. Continual Recovery and Ward Medic IMO make total sense as something you unlock when you become expert on Medicine, and I'm 50/50 with Battle Medicine because it is IMO a feat tax that it's very likely someone that isn't the dedicated healer in the party is going to take because if the healer is the one that is knocked out you need a way to heal him too, because the action economy to heal someone else with a potion is horrible even with the remaster changes, but at the same time I don't know if it would make sense for it to be something you should be able to do from the get go.
I can agree with this, and while I don't agree with the main proposal here, I do think it is a response to a valid problem: some skills, like Medicine or Diplomacy, feature must-have feats like Continual Recovery or Bon Mot, which are so important to proper usage of the skill that they feel like feat taxes at many tables. Rather than give players skill feats for free, I'd be more inclined to bake those particular feats directly into the skills themselves: for Medicine, removing both the temporary immunity on Treat Wounds and the additional time spent to double the healing would incorporate the effects of Continual Recovery and lead to less text overall, for instance. Implementing Battle Medicine and Bon Mot as trained skill actions wouldn't complicate the skills by much, given how both feats are almost automatically taken by experienced players committing to the skills, and neither would adding the crowd scaling with Ward Medic or Group Impression to the relevant actions. Perhaps we'd then need to add some new options to replace those feats (and truly optional ones at that), but the net result would still be an environment with fewer feat taxes.
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I can agree with this, and while I don't agree with the main proposal here, I do think it is a response to a valid problem: some skills, like Medicine or Diplomacy, feature must-have feats like Continual Recovery or Bon Mot, which are so important to proper usage of the skill that they feel like feat taxes at many tables. Rather than give players skill feats for free, I'd be more inclined to bake those particular feats directly into the skills themselves: for Medicine, removing both the temporary immunity on Treat Wounds and the additional time spent to double the healing would incorporate the effects of Continual Recovery and lead to less text overall, for instance. Implementing Battle Medicine and Bon Mot as trained skill actions wouldn't complicate the skills by much, given how both feats are almost automatically taken by experienced players committing to the skills, and neither would adding the crowd scaling with Ward Medic or Group Impression to the relevant actions. Perhaps we'd then need to add some new options to replace those feats (and truly optional ones at that), but the net result would still be an environment with fewer feat taxes.
The thing is, if you remove the "skill feat taxes" from the game then you are left only with the situational stuff, which would make the problem that a ton of people have with skill feats even worse because now the only thing that remains is the fodder. I agree the "just give all skill feats for free" approach has its problems as well but all the other alternatives don't really solve the problem that is being adressed here.
The advantage that (I think) my approach has is that it is very up to player to tweak it themselves. You dont' care and just want to play the character? You can ignore skill feats as a whole. Do you want to take all the juice you can from your skills? Then it is up to you to actually look up the skill feat list of your skills (which IMO is a thing you were already doing in the current system anyways). Also most people do already know which are the better skill feats, so even if you yourself don't want to care with skill feats it's very likely that someone in the party will remind you "hey, that skill feat could be useful here". Again, I would want to playtest this with a rogue or investigator because those are the ones that will truly have a HUGE amount of skill feats at their disposal, but so far with my players I have both one that doesn't care that much and one that likes to optimize, and neither of them has been overshadowing the other nor one felt overwhelmed with the amount of options.
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Don't forget the numerous Archetype Feats that are also Skill Feat which would in many cases empower a PC who takes a Dedication in a given Archetype to just freely and automatically "graduate" from it and be able to select another Dedication as soon as they gain another Class Feat (or in the case of Free Archetype instantaneously as you'll always end up getting two resources at the corresponding levels to invest in an Archetype non-Skill Feat or Dedication)
I mean, you need at least two feats from that archetype other than the Dedication to select another archetype. Free Archetype doesn't touch that rule, so if you plan to every six levels take the best Dedication to get the good skill feats, well, I don't really see a problem with it. I also don't recall a single "wow this is bonkers" archetype skill feat. In the worst case scenario just turn those into general feats like the feats I excluded.
The thing is, if you remove the "skill feat taxes" from the game then you are left only with the situational stuff, which would make the problem that a ton of people have with skill feats even worse because now the only thing that remains is the fodder.
Indeed, and I think that's a good thing. Skill feats aren't supposed to be game-changingly powerful, they're meant to be nice little additions to your character that reflect how they express their skillset in a bit more detail. If the feats are completely useless, then there's a problem, but situational and not too strong I think is a reasonable expectation to set for skill feats.
The thing is, the vast majority of skill feats find themselves between the "situational" and "useless" categories, usually leaning towards useless. Things like Eye for Numbers, Glean Contents, Read Lips, Sign Language, Hobnobber, Survey Wildfire, etc. are either useless or so niche that you aren't ever going to take them because you know you'll use them, at best, once in the whole campaign. Why take any of those feats when you can literally take any Athletics, Acrobatics, or Stealth skill feat which are likely going to come up way more often than any of those feats?
If the goal here is "give players a bunch of useless or incredible niche options for them to choose every so often" then I'm even more inclined to think an official variant rule that could allow you to skip that process should exist. Well, it technically already does. The (original) simplified skill feats variant.
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The thing is, the vast majority of skill feats find themselves between the "situational" and "useless" categories, usually leaning towards useless. Things like Eye for Numbers, Glean Contents, Read Lips, Sign Language, Hobnobber, Survey Wildfire, etc. are either useless or so niche that you aren't ever going to take them because you know you'll use them, at best, once in the whole campaign.
Have you ever played in or tried creating a campaign that wasn't focused solely on combat? One where the social interaction sections of the plot could actually end up in an effective TPK* if the party doesn't succeed at finding the information that they need, or defeating their social opponents? Or how about a terrain challenge or wilderness survival challenge that also has the potential of ending the campaign in a TPK?
*Effective TPK: The characters still live, but their role in the major events of the campaign is over.
Because yes, as I mentioned earlier - if combat is all that is valued to make a powerful character, then most skill feats are not powerful. Because most skill feats are not intended for creating powerful combatants.
But as soon as you have a campaign that involves more than combat, those skill feats are going to be a bigger part of character power and differentiation.
What this optional rule does is that it skips step two and immediately gives you the feat that you were already going to be taking anyways. I also disagree that this takes away from skill challenges because in the post I also clarified that even with this the party is far from solving every single problem with their skills. No one in the party has Thievery so they don't have any Thievery skill feats either, so when they find themselves against a trap they either have to brute force their way in or simply avoid it. If the point is "if there was a party in the rogue they would make skill challenges trivial"
I'm pushing back against this because there is supposed to be a difference between characters that take Diplomacy skill in order to use Bon Mot or No Cause For Alarm in combat, and characters that take Diplomacy skill in order to use Group Impression to influence multiple NPCs at a time, and those who use Hobnobber to gather information (getting dirt on their rivals, or finding out the underlying causes for contention) faster, or those who use Discreet Inquiry to find that information without alerting those rivals.
I mean, if you make a campaign in which a single failed skill check can literally end in TPK or an effective TPK then I would argue that's a badly designed campaign in the first place. There's usually ways to go around that in the case the skill check actually fails, there's ways to try again at a later date, etc.
I also feel you are here defending a type of campaign that isn't really suited for what PF2e has to offer. 100% social campaigns IMO really aren't a thing because even in high intrigue or investigation campaigns the end goal is usually going to end up in a fight too. PF2e is, at its core, a simulationist war game so the big climaxes usually revolve around fighting. You said that...
I'm pushing back against this because there is supposed to be a difference between characters that take Diplomacy skill in order to use Bon Mot or No Cause For Alarm in combat, and characters that take Diplomacy skill in order to use Group Impression to influence multiple NPCs at a time, and those who use Hobnobber to gather information (getting dirt on their rivals, or finding out the underlying causes for contention) faster, or those who use Discreet Inquiry to find that information without alerting those rivals
...when I don't think those characters find themselves in the same campaign, like ever. It's very likely that the one that is going to be the party's face is going to take all of those or the vast majority of those skill feats at some point, and IMO half of those you mentioned are either things the skill itself should do from the get go, when you become at least expert with it, or that you could house rule in the spot (Group Impression, Hobnobber, Discreet Inquiry) or that IMO is either situational or nor that useful to become an option you are likely going to consider (No Cause for Alarm).
Social / intrigue-heavy campaigns are already made in mind with the idea that the GM is going to be very lenient on how the skills are going to be used because I don't think neither the GM, Paizo, or the players should expect them to have that very specific skill feat that allows them to do that very specific out-of-combat situational action that is the one they need to solve an out of combat problem. For example, why would you need to force a player that could have a criminal background to take the Criminal Connections feat if its ever needed for the group to contact someone in the underworld? Not like I wouldn't encourage that player to not take it, in fact, if that player actually took that feat I would make it actually easier for them to get those connections, but IMO game-fy a social interaction because Paizo decided they wanted to gate the mechanics behind those interactions on skill feats is IMO wrong and encourages a kind of playstyle that is anthethitetical to social campaigns. If anything, this homebrew works way better on social campaigns than in combat centered ones because it lets you avoid the bureaucracies of a system such as PF2e in which the bulk of rules is actually a godsend when you do the stuff the system was actually built for but that when you don't becomes a little clunky in its execution.
Hell, even in official APs there's a ton of situations in which the book itself is telling you to do the rule of cool and allow players to do stuff they normally wouldn't if they don't have X skill feat. It's pretty clear even Paizo themselves know they screwed those early skill feats because pretty much all newer skill feats are either new skill actions that make sense to not be stuff you normally should be able to do or improvements over the actions you already have access to from the skill itself. The remaster itself even took those early feats and heavily buffed them so if you actually take them you are at least going to be hyper-effective at using them, like the aforementioned Group Impression feat.
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I definitely wouldn't be running a TPK worthy skill challenge as a single roll from one character. Just like I wouldn't be doing a combat challenge as 'One of you gets the jump on the enemy and if you can land a hit, then it dies - but if not, then it springs up and kills you all - no save, no recourse'.
So of course I am talking about using the Gamemastery Guide subsystems like Victory Point systems such as Chase scenes, Influence, Infiltration, and custom ones for things like climbing cliffs or fording rivers or navigating and surviving in inhospitable climates.
And no, I don't think enough of the APs have done enough of this either. That doesn't mean that I want to promote doubling down on combat centered gameplay.
You asked about what the implications of this houserule would be. That is my feeling on it - that giving everyone all of the skill feats that they have skill proficiency for means that there is no differentiation between characters based on skill feat choices. It also means that you are leaning towards a combat-centered campaign, because in a campaign that minimizes skill usage and skill feat power, there is going to be very little difference between this houserule of getting all of the skill feats, an alternate houserule where the skill feats are all simply excised from the game entirely, and the standard rules. All of them will play pretty much the same.
Which, for a lot of people - that means that this houserule really makes no noticeable difference for them as far as power level goes. So you might as well use it to remove problems of 'oh, you can't do that because you don't have the skill feat for it - just the proficiency'.
It isn't a bad houserule - it is just highlighting a preference for combat as the only measurement of character power.
It isn't a bad houserule - it is just highlighting a preference for combat as the only measurement of character power.
Focusing on that last bit, don't you think that the skill feat measurement of character power is kinda binary? In the sense that you either have them or not? If that is bad or good I guess its up to each for us to decide, though I'd say that's kinda weird coming from PF2e since the system is pretty much built on the assumption that there's always alternatives alternatives at your disposal, which is the thing that makes the system different from something like D&D 5e.
As a sidenote, I'd say its ironic that here I'm the one that would be in favor of officially introducing a variant rule that allowed you to skip skill feats but still benefit from them when most of the problems I had with other skill systems in other d20 systems like PF1e or D&D 5e is that they feel clunky for multiple reasons and investing into them was usually at the cost of your combat power. PF2e doesn't have this problem because skills actually work on their own and skills feats allow you to specialize into a skill without really touching the rest of your build, though the thing is that those social / flavor options compete with combat options, and even when you don't take those combat options into consideration what's left is usually situational, but well, I won't repeat myself here since there's a whole post with my ramblings here.
don't you think that the skill feat measurement of character power is kinda binary? In the sense that you either have them or not?
Not any more than having Reach Spell or Sudden Charge is binary - you either have them or you don't.
don't you think that the skill feat measurement of character power is kinda binary? In the sense that you either have them or not?Not any more than having Reach Spell or Sudden Charge is binary - you either have them or you don't.
Yeah, but those aren't things you 100% need to succeed or do something, while certain skill feats literally gate certain skill actions behind a feat tax. You need Alchemical Crafting, Magical Crafting, or Snare Crafting if you want your Crafting skill to be relevant, Secret Speech or Doublespeak if you want to justify how exactly you learned a secret cant or jargon, Discreet Inquiry if you want to be subtle when gathering information, even when you could technically already do that by increasing the DC or allowing the player to use Deception to gather information instead, Group Impression or Group Coercion if you don't want to be making Diplomacy / Intimidation checks against every single person in your vicinity taking 1 minute with each, not to mention that you also need Intimidating Glare if you want your Intimidation to work with the vast majority of creatures you are going to find, Tame Animal to, well, tame animals even when unlike Train Animal its effects are pretty much akin Make an Impression but only against animals, Eye for Numbers to do basic math it seems, Read Lips to, well, read lips, all the "Connections" feats to arrange a meeting with someone, Survey Wildfire to determine which animals live an area, Predict Weather to, well, I think it's self explanatory, etc.
Pretty much all of these could be either things that are already actions within their respective skills or things that you could easily handle as a GM with the rule of cool. I already said this but it doesn't make sense to game-fy basic social interactions and put them behind feats when the whole system is built to avoid feat taxes but for some reason leaves the very situational stuff as taxes for players. If the player wants to make a speech in public and you as a GM go about it as "If you don't have Group Impression I can't allow you to do that" then you are restricting roleplaying to be "RAW" about it. It also not comparable put in the same "tier" feats such as Bon Mot that can literally turn the tides of combat to your favor with something like most of the feats I described above that are situational and are basic actions that the system could assume the GM could handle already. It doesn't hurt the system to be a little more loose about how to handle skills since skill systems are loose by definition since each skill encompasses a very general group of actions under a single theme that you can't possibly think of covering every single thing you could technically do under their theme with rules. Again, this isn't a problem with the skill system itself because it does a good job at allowing some leeway for both GMs and players to be flexible with them, though there's a decent amount of skill feats that go against that assumption and feel the need to put rules in interactions that shouldn't have rules or at least shouldn't have rules that you need to pay your character resources to get. All of those feats could easily be handled with a little sidenote somwhere on the book rather than how the system currently does it.
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Is it really necessary to continuously argue against the premise of a house rule in the house rule forum? It's hard to actually iterate on the rule if people are constantly derailing it saying they don't want to play with the rule and making the OP constantly defend making the thread at all. It's a house role, just don't play with it, and let people who have more constructive things to say discuss the topic for those interested.
I mean, the only constructive feedback I got thus far was about how much of a boost this would have on rogues and investigators, because all the other criticism I got I already answered that aren't really a problem nor make things worse / more OP or anything like that.
"just don't play with it" isn't at all relevant because the thread isn't about the OP convincing others to adopt this house-rule. It's about analysis of the impact of the house-rule so the OP can decide whether they actually want to use it or not.
If "this rule should probably be avoided" were actually non-useful feedback to the OP that would indicate that the OP shouldn't have bothered posting in the first place because using the rule is a fore-gone conclusion, not a discussion, so they can "just play with it" like is being suggested should stop anyone else at "just don't play with it."
I mean, what you're saying doesn't make sense. That OP wants the thing they state in the OP actually is a given, and trying to convince them otherwise is clearly failing and unwanted. The goal should not be to convince people they don't want the thing they want, it's not about deciding people should not have even posted a thread in the first place, it is much more useful to take their premise and give advice towards that end.
To bring it back on topic, I think talking with people who play a lot of skill monkey classes wpupd be a decemt idea. I would also go with GM fiat to say that all the niche, non-combat relevant feats (and I'm including medicine as combat relevant as its impact on HP is what makes it so valuable) are free and see how many combat skills you actually want floating around. The three action system does limit the feats that grant actions but they're still powerful third actions.
I would also consider some ancestry feats to give out as freebies as well, if they are niche enough. The skeleton feat that lets uou pretend to be the actual, non-undead but just regular dead remains of a person if you lay down and stay still comes to mind of something that is just kind of a mild enhancement that would be fun to just have without it eating up a precious ancestry feat.
This steps on the toes of skill monkey classes but because they get increases more often I think it comes out in the wash.
Again, I would be curious to hear how it turns out in actual play. My guess is that the added versatility abd just having that toolbox of prompts coukd make out of combat stuff more fun.
I think a potential problem with this is that this puts pressure on the player to keep track of what all the skill feats for a given skill are. This is generally why the game gives the number of feats it does- to limit the number of things you need to keep track of.
Like there are 5 different level 1 skill feats for intimidation, deception, and diplomacy, and 6 for athletics. If I start trained in those 4 skills, I am being asked to keep track of 21 different skill feats at level one. This is doable, but is this fun? Like I might consider "give everyone twice as many skill feats" to see if they think that's fun before I give them much more than that.
I am being asked to keep track of 21 different skill feats at level one. This is doable, but is this fun?
That's why in the Playing with a Simplified Skill Feats Character section I give players the choice to write down the feats they actually want if they would feel overwhelmed with the amount of options. Basically, look at the skill feat once, write those you actually care for, and ignore the rest.
Would this actually benefit optimizers more? Yes and no. Obviously optimizers or someone with more system mastery is more willing to actually keep track of a larger amount of skill feats without much trouble since they likely remember most of the good ones already, but I feel the difference in both in terms of power would still be minimal and if needed the more experienced player can say "X feat would be really useful in this situation, does someone meet its prerequisites?" and if someone does meet those prerequisites, they have the feat already at their disposal. But overall, yeah, I agree it is likely most people won't actually keep track of every single skill feat they have access to because that's neither fun or easy to do, specially if you are playing a rogue or investigator I assume.
Sometimes, saying "this is a poorly thought out rule" is the best possible criticism - no matter how much it might feel like that's bad feedback. And if someone isn't open to hearing that their rule proposal might not actually be a net gain for their game, they definitely shouldn't post it in a public space.
I mean, when I answer to that criticism saying that I don't think that to be true and the answers I get to that is "no, you are wrong" instead of actually giving a counter argument is IMO bad feedback. You are also making it sound as I was immediately dismisive of every criticism when I said multiple times that I agree with the people that say this house rule would be kinda messy to use in some tables and that some classes would probably be getting a huge buff with it.
What I'm asking here is for someone to actually provide an alternative to this rule that actually manages to solve these issues without creating other issues along the way, or that it wouldn't require a ton of feat sorting to determine which feats should or shouldn't be appropiate for players to get for free, which IMO will kinda be a fool's errand since nobody is going to agree in which feats are or aren't appropiate for that beyond those that are universally known to be bad or feat tax-y.
I also thought about other alternatives that could be simpler to implement, but the fact is that those alternatives don't solve the issues that people that would like to use this house rule have with skill feats, so while I totally agree this one has its issues too I think that ultimately it at least solves the problem while the others I thought about or that been mentioned here don't. That's why I would want to theory-craft something that could find a middle point in which this house rule is actually less weird to implement in actual play but that also removes the "I have to sift through countless useless feats" feeling a lot of people have with skill feats.
To return to the topic, I added the following line in the doc under the Playing with a Simplified Skill Feats Character section.
A GM that would want to limit the initial amount of skill feats a character has could also adjust the prerequisites of skill feats that require you to be trained to instead require you to be expert, thus reducing the initial flood of options that characters would otherwise have at 1st level that could be troublesome to track for some players.
Do you guys think this helps with the issue of this house rule being a little convoluted to use at the beggining?