Chris Groff, yes but in a way that doesn’t just let you double up on effectiveness.

The neat thing about the talent trees are that they give you unique little things that (mostly) no one else can do. The things make you better, but make you better in a way that also makes your character more interesting than just raw ability. So this way you don’t have to choose between, you get to be both better and cooler.

If I were lead designer on this product, I actually would have skipped paying to level up skills with XPs completely, made all Improvement tree based, and then just tied a choice of skill level ups to each Talent.

“Oh, so you bought Talent X? Ok, also take a level in either Skill A or Skill B”