Character Creation: Skills Question

[Aelios]

Page 30: "Although it is possible to double-up on one single packet, most characters ..."
So what happens when you double up? Do you reapply the modifiers? Do all the skills get better by one point?
And what happens when both your packets have the same skill, like Ritualist and Thief, both have Sneak.  Do you take the best rating or does one package improve the other?

My Guess is that it would be like adding a skill point into the skill, improving it by one point. But I couldn't find it in the text anywhere.

Question 2: Do you get basic combat maneuvers (Bash, Cut, Counter, Parry, etc.) if you don't have any weapon proficiencies. Bash says "All beginning fighters -- and most people in general -- know how to bash." Does that include poor Grandma Wallace who may have to use her cane to fend off a thief, but has never trained with any weapon?

[Lxndr]

We played that doubling-up on skills or whole packets was always "Best value, reduced by one."

I have no idea about the other question, but I'd probably rule "yes" in any game I run.

[Caz]

I think it's written in there somewhere that if you double up packets or just take an individual skill twice it takes the best value and reduces it by one, like he said.
   And yes, if you don't have a proficienc you can still strike with a weapon, whether it be bash or cut, you can still thrust or stab with it, and you can still put it between you and the other guys weapon (parry).  Everything else I'd leave for actually having a proficiency, so grandma won't go doing counters hooks and things with her cane.

[Lance D. Allen]

Counter isn't a basic maneuver, is it? It certainly shouldn't be, if it is.

I'd rule that cut, thrust, bash, parry and block are the only maneuvers available to an untrained character.

[Ingenious]

I just had an idea.
Though after writing this entire thing, I offer to you a condensed version first because we all know how incessantly I babble whenever I post about something I feel is worth mentioning...

Have each player individually choose each skill he thinks would be appropriate for their characters. The seneschal is charged with using common sense in this. A skill should fit the background, personality, SA's, etc of the character for example.. But what is a good number of skills that a player can have? If you create your own packets, they're suggested to each be limited to 15 skills. So, 30 skill points for a starting character? 20? That is the problem I have with this idea. Your characters can still use MA skill points as normal, you can either broaden your repertoir(mis-spelt I know, as I am not French... thank god) of skills, or to make yourself better at some of them.


Okay the long version...and the logic behind it all.

This rule works for me, as with some of my more exotic characters I have had trouble coming up with a combination of skill packets to make them even half-way resemble what I was shooting for.

Aside from that, it helps best with distinguishing one character from the next.. as we all are unique on this world.. why should it be different in Weyrth? I, as a person, know how to fly a plane. Does this make me a pilot? Not necessarily. Each of us on here knows a given amount in various areas of knowledge... does this mean that we are to be classified as 'thieves' 'courtiers' 'knights' 'sailors' etc as our characters currently are?

Example the first: a 'knight' might well know everything involved with its packet.. but that same knight might also know a bit about court etiquette too, or reading/writing, singing, gambling, stealing, building something, swimming, leadership..etc.

Example the second: Me. I know how to swim, how to fly a plane, drive a car, perform mathematics to the level of trigonometry, ride a bicycle, build a plane, a car, a motorcycle, a jet engine, a house...etc. I can even build a computer. But what exactly is the point to this?

The point is, is that under the skill packets and the things that I listed of myself.. I would resemble a 'craftsman' the most. But I still have a very broad range of skills at my disposal. So I seek to individualize the TROS character and their skills and so forth more-so than is possible right now.
Aside from throwing the remnants of the 'class' system out the window, and helping to differentiate characters.. each character can still fit a specific 'type'. It also helps to bring more equality to the table.

Example the third: the Knight skill packet contains 7 skills. Knights historically were members of the nobility were they not? They were therefore part of the more knowledgable 'types' of people in the world. They were educated far more than a peasant. Yet in TROS a peasant appears to know more via the 9-10 skills that they have at their disposal.

Now, before everyone starts going ape-shit and yelling about the reason behind MA.. my view on the MA skill points is to either express one's specific talent at various skills.. or it is used to buy other skills and show off on paper your character's personality more. This is another reason to just throw skill packets out the window IMO.. because while you can have both, it seriously takes away from your ability to be unique as you either use up most of your MA points towards becoming good at a skill, or you use most of them to broaden your character's horizones.

This is all fine and dandy to most, but to me.. I like a hell of alot of individuality in characters. I find this out now, after tracing the parallels between previous characters of mine, and recent ones. They are very closely related, even though I was shooting for a vast difference between them all.

So, what distringuishes an 'evil' knight from a 'good' one eh? Except for their personalities and SA's.. in terms of skills they have the same basic format. I am sure the evil knight knows how to steal, break and enter, take hostages, and all manner of malevolent actions..where-as the 'good' knight wouldnt. Would a good knight have the skill of sincerity(essentially lying)? In my opinion, no. But the bad guy would.

YMMV, and pardon the circular thinking and ranting.
-Ingenious
:edit I intented for this to be put into a new topic.. but as a force of habit I clicked reply while I was in the wrong window. And I'm too lazy to correct it. I'll let Leybourne split it if he feels like it. But it does skill talk about skills, which is part of the topic of this thread.

[Bill Cook]

That is the problem I have with this idea. Your characters can still use MA skill points as normal, you can either broaden your repertoir(mis-spelt I know, as I am not French... thank god) of skills, or to make yourself better at some of them.

Don't forget: this is an international community:)  (Mon Dieu!  Zee French, zay may post ear!)

[Thanaeon]

In any case, it's also an English word, not just French. 'Repertoire', methinks.

Other than that - well, the character generation rules do state that you can build your own skill packets. For some very exotic characters, you may well have to. The skill packets are mainly a tool to speed up the character creation process, to quickly jump over what would otherwise be the most time-consuming aspect of the whole process. (Other than deciding on the philosophy and SA's, anyway.) Yes, they're an approximation, but typically close enough. However, the MA points are what are used for skills that aren't necessarily a part of the basic requirements of the profession. Hobbies, so to speak. So if the evil knight wanted to know torture or whatever, he'd pick up the skill on his MA points. That's what they're for.

[Ingenious]

I never said it was a perfect well-thought-out idea..
I just threw it out there for general consumption and debate.

However, let me list a few examples of characters that I have no idea which skill packet would even remotely resemble...
A beastmaster, a leader of animals you might say. I.e. Tarzan-esque.
A voodoo priest or a shaman. Druid/ritualist perhaps?
Taking a stab at the 'concepts' section of book two..
Roadwardens or marshals.. or anything involving law-enforcement etc..
A crusader would be most likely a knight and some form of clergyman or other religious packet..

Page 30 does explain the process of creating/modifying skill packets.. so I guess that's covered. However, I still want to explore this a bit more as it interests me.. you are not as limited as you normally would be.

However, there would be alot of headache involved, both on the part of the player and the seneschal. The major concern is that a player tries to this skill point creation stuff to the extreme, say for example that they want to put more than X number of points into one skill.. either to attempt some min/maxing or to express the amount of training in a certain skill that a certain type of character might go through in his life.

Let's dive into that a bit more shall we? I think it's good that certain 'types' of characters have lower skills than another type of character that possesses a shared skill.. example, thieves and their various forms.

Having undertaken the completion of the riddle of gold/the lure of gold/whatever the title finally becomes.... I find that this system of choosing one's skills goes well with the premise of the supplement.. since there are so damned many forms of thief. An assassin would be a hell of alot better at sneaking, using camo, disguise, etc than a con-man would be.. A con-man would be particularly more adept at lying, and games, and gambling than a spy would be.. and a burglar would far outclass an entertainer in breaking and entering, where-as the entertainer might be able to juggle his/her ass off compared to the rest of the known world.

These types of characters NEED to be better at given skills compared to their closely-related underworld counterparts.. it is pivotal to their survival. If the pickpocket was only as good as his base skill rating(chosen from priority) he might not even live long enough to see the end of the day.. having been caught for failing a pickpocket roll or B&E etc.

So that is the reason behind why I brought this up. I need to know everyone's take on this because well, the supplement is for those who want it, and I would like for it to contain mostly acceptable stuff in general.

-Ingenious

[kenjib]

A very nice effect of the skill packets which hasn't yet been mentioned is that it tends to create characters who have a body of knowledge in related fields, which I find creates a more well rounded and typical type of character instead of what you might see if there were no skill packets.  For example, I would find it odd (granted not impossible, but odd) to see someone with panhandling but not streetwise, or pickpocket but not scrounging (note that I don't claim either of those examples in reverse though).  The skill packet system helps out in this regard whereas if you were to cherry pick skills it would be much more likely a player would just grab the skills that are functionally useful to them with less regard to the broad kind of cross-knowledge that would reflect skill selected more on character concept.

Either way you get slightly screwy results.  I prefer the screwy results from skill packets though.  It's easy enough to swap a skill or two out for another, or even create a new packet if necessary, to cover the oddball cases.

[Ingenious]

Yes, but I did throw the caveat of seneschal discretion in there..
It would be stupid indeed to have a knight who upholds honor, virtue, etc to lie, steal, cheat, etc.
It will have to be done on a character by character basis mind you, with the almighty seneschal guiding the flock.

I particularly like the screwy results myself compared to the skill packets. Those packets don't leave much room for variation, so it appears that every character owning a skill packet came off an assembly line. And that to me just seems wrong.

Though, if an assassin were the character in question.. he wouldn't really care so much about panhandling, pickpocketing etc. But perhaps in a pinch he would use them if he could. So maybe for the riddle of gold you should choose the thief packet, and then you'd have X amount of skills left to choose? That seems quite more logical for the supplement to me.
And it half's the time it takes in creation, and it also leaves alot more room to improve the skills pertinent to your type of thief.

-Ingenious

[kenjib]

Would it be easier to just quickly customize the package by swapping out skills that don't fit for ones that do?  It might save the time of buying up a couple dozen skills one by one.

[Lxndr]

If there's a call for another package, there's no harm in making one.  Of Beasts And Men gives us the Bounty Hunter, and I would be surprised if there wasn't going to be a few new packages in TFOB, if only to round it out.  (A new, improved, revised Swordsman?  I can only hope.)

Of course, I'm of the opinion that between the fact that all but F-Skill characters get two packages, plus their MA skills, they don't look nearly as cookie-cutter in the end as they might seem.  There's not much variation within ONE package, but there's a lot of variation between the three variables of "package 1, package 2, MA skills."