But you only ever get to be legendary in three frickin skills. Unless you're a rogue or investigator, but you shouldn't need to have one of those in your party. So if I want to knock people around and block things with my shield and be able to fix it up after a fight, should I just give up on meaningful contribution in other skills until 13th level where I get my third mastery skill? And should a whole party just give up on five out of seventeen skills?
You don't need to be Legendary at everything to get what you need. Master is enough unless you really desire a Legendary-level feat, if you want to go by the numbers.
Because you're a frickin' demigod at that point.
Which is why you can consistently beat a Master-level rating without any extra training, like being told the "Oh, I thought this was
my pocket" excuse one day and then by the end of your career you can basically pickpocket all but the most perceptive of creatures consistently without ever learning anything else.
The number of 20th level creatures I encounter at 20th level should be about the same as the number of 1st level creatures I encounter at 1st level. And yet, my options in dealing with 20th level creatures using skills are much more limited. Why should that be? I think that is bad game design. I want my characters to be widely competent. I want a party to have numerous people who can handle most challenges – one of them might be better, but multiple people should often have the needed competency.
I'll point out that 20th level creatures aren't the same as a CR20, which can be made up of multiple lower-level creatures. I much more consistently tossed CR0 and CR-1 creatures in groups, punctuated by the occasional CR 1 creature to start out.
And your characters
are widely competent
. The idea that only at-level challenges prove competence misses that over time you gain a ton of options over time that are way more generally applicable. Yes, you are able to do more with 1st level challenges... but also those successes are way more limited. Once you get into the DC20-30 range, that's where the most useful and common big challenges lie. The ultra-specialized are things that shouldn't be just tossed out, but focus points for your specialists. By merely being trained in something at 20th level you can absolutely due some crazy stuff for minimal investment.
I think a character should be able to operate at their level with any skill in which they are Trained. Investing more than that should let you operate aboveyour level. You shouldn't need to specialize in order to operate at your level, and instead operate below your level in non-specialized fields.
I dunno if that's for me. If you've put nothing into a skill from start, over time it should be come less effective if you don't upgrade it as challenges get more difficult. The way it's done in PF2 works well enough for having minimal paperwork, while still also allowing you to use that skill effectively. No, you won't take on leveled challenges, but as time goes on you still get to do more and more; just tunnel-visioning on only the top challenges misses all the things you can do besides those.
Im starting to have flashbacks of conversations about level in combat. "you dont feel awesome because your GM isnt sending goblins at you now that you are level 5..." So, skill stuff has a baseline and should only be increased occasionally to feel severe/extreme for the investors? Or are skills unrelated to combat in how they are run at the table and leveled?
PF2 has a habit of making things slightly more difficult relative to what came before; it's why leveled checks your secondary stuff generally loses a little bit of effectiveness over time. You're expected to have stuff to mitigate that, like spell buffs, talismans, skills, teamwork, etc, to make up for that.
If I were to give a fix,
@Staffan , you might want to have automatic upgrade point at certain levels. For example, once you reach 10th level all skills that were Trained upgrade to Expert, and at 17th all skills get raised to Master if they weren't already. You're paying skill ranks to be better
in your specialty at that time, and once the rest of your skills catch up you can further upgrade and specialize as needed. It's not really for me, but it might work out for you.