TheSagaContinues

What I see as "punishment" is saying that PCs get less XP for an encounter because it is a "walkover" for a character who has a certain skill set which will not fail.  I'll agree that players can be good at things but there is a difference between being good and being unstoppable; when you look at UtF at low levels you are often looking at unstoppable as some things don't even need to roll as even a 1 will still "win."

SAGA may not have a perfect "balance" but it is pretty good in most cases and provided you avoid certain outliers.  I don't see skill focus as a problem in SAGA when it is used to boost a skill check made against a task with a fixed DC.  The problem that SAM addresses is when skill checks are being made against a DC that is set by completely different criteria and meant to measured against other rolls.  The typical attack roll vs. REF Defense of a similar level hero is successful about half the time and both scale at nearly the same rate.  When looking at typical damage rolls vs FORT Defense (really DT) these number usually start close (3d8 averages 13.5 which is a little better than DT 11 but not much) although FORT increases faster than damage.  Where checks against DEF break down is when you look at skills vs. defense; that early (and easy) +10 completely overwhelms typical defense scores and while defenses increase faster than skill mods they just start way too far behind.

The purpose of the SAM is not to keep a character from "shining" but rather to keep them from "blinding" other possible options by removing the auto-win function.