The Starfinder GM Core looks to have introduced this rule. Correct me if I'm wrong of course, but I don't think this rule has appeared in any Pathfinder book so far.
Essentially it grants a free skill increase at 1st, 3rd, 7th and 15th levels for a chosen skill as well as automatically gaining any general skill feats with the chosen skill as their specific prerequisite as soon as they qualify for them.
Just wanted to bring attention to it here because it seems like a fantastic addition to use in PF games as well.
I think its a step in the right direction but not something I would personally use because I already have my own variant that works better for me and my table. I don't grant a free auto-scaling skill with it, but I do grant free access to skill feats from any skills as long as you meet their prerequisites. The only exceptions are Additional Lore, Assurance, Automatic Knowledge, Kreighton's Cognitive Crossover, Multilingual, Skill Training, and Terrain Stalker (you only get this one once upon becoming trained in Stealth, so if you want to choose a different type of terrain you have to take it again using a general feat).
This not only removed the tedium of having to sift through countless useless skill feats to select the less worst one, but also indirectly increased the amount of general feats. I feel the discussion around skill and general feats often revolves around how bad skill feats usually are, but I haven't seen discussions on how small the list of general feats is. For example, at 7th level 3 out of 5 feats require master proficiency in Perception, while the other two require feats and dying at least once. Lol.
Getting all the skill tests you qualify for is interesting. I would worry that it would exacerbate the existing problem of some skills just having much better skill feats than others. Intimidate is already really popular and has a ton of good feats, where diplomacy has mid feats and deception feats are meh. Crafting gets a ton of feats but many of the Int skills feel lacking.
Still, skill feats are the least impactful feats and the most confusing outside of archetype feats. They also gate a lot of actions players might just want to try. I can't say I hate this idea, especially for newer players.
I could take or leave the extra skill increases, and would rather have them at the staggered even levels personally.
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It would perhaps help to list the variant, so that people can know what is actually being talked about. Incidentally, actually listing the variant I think tells a different story:
SKILL PARAGON
Skill feats allow characters to gain thematic feats that can help them in exploration, downtime, and social interactions. But given the high stakes of encounter mode, many players feel pressured to select skill feats that improve their efficacy in combat at the expense of selecting feats that better represent their character’s abilities. This can be especially frustrating if a character wants to specialize in a skill like Diplomacy or Piloting that includes skill feats that might only see use in one or two sessions.BUILDING A SKILL PARAGON CHARACTER
When creating a skill paragon character, after selecting the character’s class, choose a specific skill. The character becomes trained in it. If they were already trained in it, they become trained in another skill instead of their chosen skill. At 3rd, 7th, and 15th levels, they gain an additional skill increase they can apply only to their chosen skill. They automatically gain all common general skill feats that specifically requires proficiency in the chosen skill as a prerequisite as soon as they qualify for those feats. If they already gain one of those feats (such as from a background or heritage), they instead gain Assurance for the chosen skill or, if they already have Assurance for that skill, a related Lore skill. Not all skills have the same number of feats, and some skill choices will end up granting more bonus feats than others. Characters with two or more fewer bonus Skill Paragon feats than any other character in the party gain their choice of the Additional Lore skill feat in a category related to their chosen skill, or the Assurance, Automatic Knowledge, or Experienced Professional skill feat in their chosen skill or a related Lore skill.
So right off the bat, I think there are quite a few issues:
Personally, I think the same principle can be achieved in much simpler form:
So you'd get those extra skill increases and skill feats, except they'd be specifically for out-of-combat benefits. You could use this on social, exploration, or downtime skills, or even just Medicine to get the associated out-of-combat recovery feat taxes out of the way.
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This doesn't actually stop characters from selecting combat-focused skills and piling on lots of combat-focused skill feats, so this could very well make the stated problem worse.
Yeah, this. Take this in Intimidate or Medicine and you're getting a pile of combat relevant stuff from it.
It also makes the most sense to take this in something with more good skill feats, since you'll just get a lot more out of it vs the more thematic choices. That frees up investment to put elsewhere.
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It would perhaps help to list the variant, so that people can know what is actually being talked about. Incidentally, actually listing the variant I think tells a different story:
I shared what I knew about it as was told to me, so thank you for pulling the full rule. I mostly wanted to share here that it existed so anyone who might not see the Starfinder side might see and look into it if they wanted once the book is fully released and circulating.
Anyway, yeah, tailoring it as appropriate for your campaigns or limitations on what skills you can take seems like the way to go. I don't quite see the same issues as everyone else, but I probably just have a different kinda play group so don't really look at it that way. So tweak it, build off it, have fun with it, seems like a decent baseline to make a milder or more specific variant.
The basic principle is nothing new, though: GMs who want players to have access to more out-of-combat options have been giving players every skill feat they qualify for automatically for at least about a year now, if not longer. As much as that can induce ability overload, it's still a simpler variant than the above, as it requires fewer adjustments.
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>ducks snarky rants<
Interesting.
I am a skills nut myself, and may consider trying this out in a game...
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Skill monkeys already have too much and regular characters are starved for skills past 7. Three skills maxed doesn't make for a well balanced character at all, specially when you have to choose between filling a weakness in the group and actually supporting your characters theme and personality.
This rule however massively favors skills that have more feats as well as those with feats that are more generally useful like aforementioned medicine and intimidate. While nature and survival would just give you some niche rarely usable options.
It's a step in the right direction, and it's infinitely more useful to have good printed variants then hope a GM has their own homebrew that you like.
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Either way, all skill feats is way too much. A limited number of additional skill feats maybe. I like your idea of one skill feat per skill increase.
It can be too much at 1st level, but not really afterwards if you think about it.
Most skills don't have more than 4-5 expert-tier skill feats, 2-3 master-tier skill feats, and 0-1 legendary-tier skill feats. This means characters have a total list of 6-9 expert+ skill feats on average per skill, but since sadly its not common for all this feats to be good or at least decent (unless we are talking about Medicine or Intimidation), the real list goes down to something like 3-4. In practice, all the characters that become expert / master / legendary in a skill take the "best" skill feat from that tier or the one that suits their character the most and are pretty much done taking skill feats on that skill until they can bump their proficiency a tier higher.
Even in the case of Medicine or Intimidation where you want multiple skill feats from each tier, its very likely the other skills you are taking skill increases into are skills that don't have that many good skill feats to begin with so you aren't really losing much from not taking skill feats from them.
This is why I think that in practice getting access to all skill feats when you meet their prerequisites and you selecting them yourself is pretty much none because in most cases you were taking the good feats from those skill feats anyways, and while my variant of granting them for free makes this a level faster in some scenarios and can grant multiple good skill feats on a single level if you take increases into the "good" skills, I don't feel this really affects the balance of the game that much because, sooner or later, you were going to have them anyways. In the case of Medicine, I'm actually happy that they can access all the "must-have" feats from that skill by 3rd level since it means I can start throwing harder combats to them because I know they can recover from each of them faster.
As I said, the only real problem is at 1st level because you automatically gain like 50 feats. I see how this could become a problem for certain tables and certain players. In my table it really wasn't a problem because most of the time really don't think about their trained-tier skill feats unless those are the staples like Battle Medicine or feats that they would have taken anyways because they fit their character's concept. I think Teridax posted a variant rule of their own on the Intelligence thread that made it so instead of extra languages and trained skills you instead got skill feats. I feel a table that could feel burned out from receiving a bizillion feats at 1st level could benefit from using Teridax's variant rule. I personally don't need it myself, but I found it to be a really cool optional rule that achieves its goal smoothly.
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It's a great tool for a smaller party. It's easy to fall behind in skills when you only have 3 non-skill-monkies in a party.
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Another small thing to point is that SF2e have 2 more base skills (Computers and Piloting) than PF2e with all its set of skill feats.
So skill paragon variant rule is a bit less impactful there than it is in PF2e.
Another small thing to point is that SF2e have 2 more base skills (Computers and Piloting) than PF2e with all its set of skill feats.
So skill paragon variant rule is a bit less impactful there than it is in PF2e.
That is good to know as well. It also inspired me to look at the SF2 skill feats. It's mostly pathfinder skill feats + Computers and Piloting stuff. But there are a few neat skill feats for the old skills I would probably allow in my game.
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For a middle ground between the "Gain all the skill feats" and "Gain skill feats only when you get a skill increase", I would like to also bring up the option of "Gain a bonus skill feat at 1st level, 3rd level, and every four levels thereafter" (So 1, 3, 7, 11, 15, 19). You'll much more get the weight of the skill choice whilst not having to deal quite as much with the "Damn some skills have twice as many as others" (The only skills which don't have enough feats for a 1-20 with just the Starfinder Player Core for example are Performance and Lore. There'll still be the issue of some skills shrimply having better feats than others, but again, this is just another compromise option for people to think aboot)
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For a middle ground between the "Gain all the skill feats" and "Gain skill feats only when you get a skill increase", I would like to also bring up the option of "Gain a bonus skill feat at 1st level, 3rd level, and every four levels thereafter" (So 1, 3, 7, 11, 15, 19). You'll much more get the weight of the skill choice whilst not having to deal quite as much with the "Damn some skills have twice as many as others" (The only skills which don't have enough feats for a 1-20 with just the Starfinder Player Core for example are Performance and Lore. There'll still be the issue of some skills shrimply having better feats than others, but again, this is just another compromise option for people to think aboot)
I don't think the quantity a player receives is the problem with skill feats. It's that there's too many bad skills feats and the good ones are too clustered in a small number of skills. They are also more complicated to filter your relevant options than your (non-archetype) class feats or (non-skill) general feats. So you're spending the most work on building for the least impact.
IMO, Making people pick more skill feats kinda makes the situation worse, not better. "Get all skill feats you qualify for" at least removes the need to bother picking through them. And because there are so few good feats, you're probably not going to feel much difference between someone who has all of the feats vs someone who has all of the intimidation feats.
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Exactly. I don't want to make more skill feat choices. I don't grant all skill feats that you meet the prerequisites for free because I think the system has too few instances to take new skill feats, I do it because I don't want the tedium of having to pick the least worst one.