With the playtest packet having quite a bit more "choose from these/any skills" for culture/heritage/background options that give skills than the phb it's something that should be adjusted all the more.
This bit on page 62 is pretty similar to the blurb on phb125 effectively saying the same thing should be limited to choices not taken from ones already possible or be changed to give a bonus to the skill if you get and take it from multiple sources. We don't have the A5e classes yet, but at least in the phb ones every single one of them are choose two (or more) skills from this list of much more than two skills. It winds up pushing players to think of characters skills like a spreadsheet to a degree that puts the most cross indexed 3.5 splatbook hell characters to shame*. As an example, phbWizard gets: "Choose two skills from Arcana, Deception, History, Intimidation, Investigation, Nature, and Religion" while the sage gets an awesome feature plus history & choice of arcana or religion. Technically all three are on the wizard spell list but that shouldn't mean two from perception slight of hand, acrobatics, persuade & streetwise is suddenly a option once they have arcana & history.
.* They had to work to get select cross class skills as class skills & it usually came with some opportunity cost to get there even if the end result was better for them.
This bit on page 62 is pretty similar to the blurb on phb125 effectively saying the same thing should be limited to choices not taken from ones already possible or be changed to give a bonus to the skill if you get and take it from multiple sources. We don't have the A5e classes yet, but at least in the phb ones every single one of them are choose two (or more) skills from this list of much more than two skills. It winds up pushing players to think of characters skills like a spreadsheet to a degree that puts the most cross indexed 3.5 splatbook hell characters to shame*. As an example, phbWizard gets: "Choose two skills from Arcana, Deception, History, Intimidation, Investigation, Nature, and Religion" while the sage gets an awesome feature plus history & choice of arcana or religion. Technically all three are on the wizard spell list but that shouldn't mean two from perception slight of hand, acrobatics, persuade & streetwise is suddenly a option once they have arcana & history.
.* They had to work to get select cross class skills as class skills & it usually came with some opportunity cost to get there even if the end result was better for them.
