A player at my table is making a Ranger/Rogue that has multiple skills with Expertise thanks to this multiclass and the Tasha's option for Rangers. The question we have comes from the Primal Bond feature of the Primal Companion: Primal Bond. You can add your proficiency bonus to any ability check or saving throw that the beast makes.
And Expertise (or Canny) is described as this: Your proficiency bonus is doubled for any ability check you make that uses either of the chosen proficiencies.
The player and several others think that Expertise should apply to the same skill as the companion. I'm on the fence for RAW; especially as I read this and see that Expertise specifies "any ability check YOUmake"
The reason the player is wanting it is solely because of Perception, and the Primal Companion does not have the Keen Sight feature that a real Eagle would. So I'm also not thinking this is game breaking in any way to allow Expertise.
No proficiency bonus is a number determined by your level and nothing else. Adding your proficiency bonus twice to your checks does not mean your proficiency bonus doubled. The primal companion only cares about the proficiency bonus number, not what skills you are proficient/expert in.
In short, if your proficiency bonus is 2, your companion adds 2 to its ability checks and saves in addition to its own bonuses. Period.
A player at my table is making a Ranger/Rogue that has multiple skills with Expertise thanks to this multiclass and the Tasha's option for Rangers. The question we have comes from the Primal Bond feature of the Primal Companion: Primal Bond. You can add your proficiency bonus to any ability check or saving throw that the beast makes.
And Expertise (or Canny) is described as this: Your proficiency bonus is doubled for any ability check you make that uses either of the chosen proficiencies.
The player and several others think that Expertise should apply to the same skill as the companion. I'm on the fence for RAW; especially as I read this and see that Expertise specifies "any ability check YOUmake"
The reason the player is wanting it is solely because of Perception, and the Primal Companion does not have the Keen Sight feature that a real Eagle would. So I'm also not thinking this is game breaking in any way to allow Expertise.
RAW, it does not work, as DJC and you yourself said. Expertise only applies to checks you make. Likewise, Reliable Talent would not apply to the Companion, and neither would Jack of All Trades or the like.
The companion already has double-potency Jack of All Trades, so I doubt giving it even more skill monkey powers is a great idea - although depending on how you rule other facets of the companion, I suppose it could be balanced. I was recently talking to someone who's probably going to end up DMing a one-shot I'll be playing in, and they said they were ruling the companion to be illiterate, which caught me completely by surprise. That's a pretty severe nerf to the standard assumption that any DnD creature which can understand a language understands it both verbally and written, and cuts down quite a lot on the utility I was expecting to get out of it - I'll need to play a telepathic race to reliably get reports from my companion. Same thing applies here: the more you limit the companion's ability to communicate with its ranger, the less you need to worry about letting its sensory skills explode, because the companion perceiving something isn't helpful unless it can communicate that to the ranger.
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A player at my table is making a Ranger/Rogue that has multiple skills with Expertise thanks to this multiclass and the Tasha's option for Rangers. The question we have comes from the Primal Bond feature of the Primal Companion:
Primal Bond. You can add your proficiency bonus to any ability check or saving throw that the beast makes.
And Expertise (or Canny) is described as this:
Your proficiency bonus is doubled for any ability check you make that uses either of the chosen proficiencies.
The player and several others think that Expertise should apply to the same skill as the companion. I'm on the fence for RAW; especially as I read this and see that Expertise specifies "any ability check YOU make"
The reason the player is wanting it is solely because of Perception, and the Primal Companion does not have the Keen Sight feature that a real Eagle would. So I'm also not thinking this is game breaking in any way to allow Expertise.
No proficiency bonus is a number determined by your level and nothing else. Adding your proficiency bonus twice to your checks does not mean your proficiency bonus doubled. The primal companion only cares about the proficiency bonus number, not what skills you are proficient/expert in.
In short, if your proficiency bonus is 2, your companion adds 2 to its ability checks and saves in addition to its own bonuses. Period.
RAW, it does not work, as DJC and you yourself said. Expertise only applies to checks you make. Likewise, Reliable Talent would not apply to the Companion, and neither would Jack of All Trades or the like.
The companion already has double-potency Jack of All Trades, so I doubt giving it even more skill monkey powers is a great idea - although depending on how you rule other facets of the companion, I suppose it could be balanced. I was recently talking to someone who's probably going to end up DMing a one-shot I'll be playing in, and they said they were ruling the companion to be illiterate, which caught me completely by surprise. That's a pretty severe nerf to the standard assumption that any DnD creature which can understand a language understands it both verbally and written, and cuts down quite a lot on the utility I was expecting to get out of it - I'll need to play a telepathic race to reliably get reports from my companion. Same thing applies here: the more you limit the companion's ability to communicate with its ranger, the less you need to worry about letting its sensory skills explode, because the companion perceiving something isn't helpful unless it can communicate that to the ranger.