NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Esker" data-source="post: 7641050" data-attributes="member: 6966824">You can invest in INT, but you're not really making them a super-dedicated specialist; you're making them generally better at knowledge stuff, which has the side effect of also making them better at their specialty.Increasing the proficiency bonus is simple but it screws up game balance across a whole bunch of stuff. I like the notion that competence at a task is a mix of general-purpose and special purpose skill/ability, and that they matter about equally until late in your career, when characters become more differentiated by areas of focus. (I realize that the full range of ability modifiers is a difference of 6, which is where proficiency caps out, so that proficiency only matches the most extreme ability difference by the highest levels, but I think the more appropriate comparison between a generalist and a specialist isn't proficient with 8 in the stat vs non-proficient with 20; it's more like proficient with a 12 vs non-proficient with a 16 to start, increasing to 20 over time. That means the generalist and the regular specialist are on roughly equal footing. assuming the generalist prioritizes stat bumps over feats, until mid-levels, when the specialist starts to pull away.)Super-specialists (i.e., characters with expertise and a middling stat of 12 or so) get to accelerate the differentiation process, getting about a +2 edge over the untrained generalist (starting 16 in the stat and devoting ASIs to it) in Tier 1 (+5 vs +3), which increases gradually to +3 then +4 in Tier 2 (+7 vs +4, then +9 vs +5). Then, just when the ordinary specialist is pulling away from the generalist, the growth in the expert's edge accelerates, allowing them to also overtake the character who is both a generalist and a regular specialist. But this doesn't happen until level 13.</blockquote>

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