From Dark and Darker Wiki
This is standard procedure, called the perk tax. Rogue for example has to equip Traps & Locks perk to deal with locked containers. A Bard however can just equip a single song and get the same thing, and in an area with its perks intact. I hope that they get rid of these perks and bake them into the class itself, because they are usually a no-brainer to pick and only serve to diminish build variety because they essentially remove a perk slot.