Going with an Easily Distracted build ended up perfectly viable and the remainder of the game turned out much like the beginning. The skill check thresholds rise in sensible increments, so as long you do all the sidequests there shouldn’t be any fear of missing ones for the skills you’ve chosen to focus on apart from a handful of outliers which mostly have bypass methods:
- Market Station + 2nd Planet (Level 10-11)
- Low 5, High 8, Hack/Engineering outlier at 11
- ACS Undisputed Claim + Praetor (Level 19)
- Low 7, High 11, Medical outlier at 14, Guns/Science/Hack/Lockpick/Explosives outlier at 17
- Various Sidequests + Cloister (Level 25-26)
- Low 7, High 11
- Various Sidequests + Archive (Level 30)
- Low 9, High 14, various outliers at 20
- Horizon Point (Level 30)
- Low 13, High 18
I plan to play through the game at least once more with the skills I didn’t take this time around (Guns, Speech, Lockpick, Leadership, & Medical), but first I think I’ll go back and try to complete Veilguard.