Outerworlds 2: Always 1 or 2 away from the necessary level

This game is beginning to be EXTREMELY frustrating. In basically every single check (e.g. speech, engineering, observation) i am always pff by 1 or 2. So far im level 14 about to be 15 and I never have the right points in anything! As with fallout I like to be a speech/lockpick guy and talk my way through things, but this game doesnt allow that! Speech at 6? Hmm you needed observation level 4. Oh did u want to finish all the missions on the first planet? You need engineering level 3. Oh you wanted to get the info necessary to pass that speech check? Hack level 6. Look im all about distribution of level ups, but this has never been a problem for me in the fallout series, OR the first Outerworlds. They made this so incredibly frustrating this time around and I doubt ill give it a second playthrough.

(And yes I saw the flaw you can take to get more skill points, but at the time it looked like it would force me to level every single skill from 0 at a time, the wording of it confused me, still shouldn't need a flaw to play the game like the previous one)