Skills:- What types and how many?

[Autocrat]

No, no no.... not taken as a slam, this is what I was after in the first place.

Ok, now I am getting towards the point I wanted!  YEAH!!!!!!

hmmm, deep breathe, and go..... (LOL)

OK, Skills and categorising them is difficult, and only partially realistic, yet the goal of doing so is to make referencing, allocating and finding them a little easier, not to mention permitting certain applications of optional rules to expand the Characters abilities, (defaulting).
So saying, each category of skills is divided straight away, you have different facets of each, such as you have Applied, Knowledge and Aspect skill types, then you have the groups, such as Academic and Combat.  So, you have knowledge and theory based combat skills - Tactics, Applied and physical combat skills - Weapons, then you have Aspected and specialised Combat skills - Fighting styles.

Now, lets see.... you raised several key pointers, which I can clarify.... the Group Title is a very broad catch all to help loosely define what type of skills you will find there; Remember that you Have Title/Type, then you have Main Groups, Sub-groups and individual skills all in a tier/cascade system, so any single Main group will have several sub's, which inturn will have several individual skills, (make sense?
..Academic skills are those that are more mental, and cover Main groups such as Technical, (computing, demolitions, Engineering, Mechanical etc.), MEdical (Minor, Major, Surgery etc.), Science (Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Hybrids etc.).
..Character Skills are those that permit improvement and reflect personal advancement.  It also acts as a sort of catchall for Characters.  It contains three large Main Groups, Physical, Mental and Spiritual.  These contatin sub-groups such as Aerobatic/Terran/Aquatic/Space Movement, Focus, Memory, Mental Expansion etc.  Things that permit the Chracter a slight edge over what their Stats give them!
..Magic.  Right, Arcane is simply Spell Casting.  Conjuration is the summoning/Raising/Calling of spirits, entities, elementals etc.  Faith is purely a matter of belief.  Make more sense?  A Arcanist is going to learn spells as they would skills, a Conjuror would have to Conjure a entity to perform tasks or cast spells etc.  Faith users will use their belief to influence events or pray to spirits, powers and gods for spell like intervention etc.  The MAgics are just different ways of using the same skills, i suppose is the easiest way to describe it.  The Skills themselves are split into groups, which I can't really decid on as yet!
..Psionics is different from Magic, as most of the Magic Stypes will use the same spells, where as Psionic powers are meant to be different, (not to emulate each other, though it is possible to cross learn them if people want to!).  THus Psionics falls into loose groups of Psyco-Kinesis, Psyco-pathy and Psyco-sentience.  PK is then grouped as Techno, Portive, Kinetic, Vita, Metabolic etc., PP is grouped into Telepathy, Telempathy Telesense, and PS is grouped into Pre, Post and Hightened.  That sort of better?
..Vehicles... is a paion.  The loose groups are for the terrain type, thus ground, sea, air and space, then into rought forms, thus car/truck/bike, glider, ballon, VTA, Helo etc., submersables, ailing, rowing etc. and so on., then further split into a little more detail, thus sports, urban, 4wd, that sort of thing.  Damn interesting point about the animals and riding though.... at present animals are to do with survival and outdoors, can't find an adequate way of grouping them and seperating them.... may I need a seperate group for animals, then divide it into riding and handling etc.?
..Mutagenics is there to accompany the Mutation options for Characters... it cover s the study and application of mutagenics and mutational subjects.  It also permitss the Character to learn control over mutations, (incase they have Wild or Partial control).
..Augmentation...Cybernetics, Bionics and Bio-genetics... siilar to Mutagenics... they are narrow, but that is because they go as Aspect skills, (specialised and not likely to appear in most settings, only in specific ones).  Yet they offer three different ways to achieve siilar, though altering, things.  Cyber permits electronic interface and is quite invasive, Bionics permits mechanicsal and is basically extrernal, whilst Bio is ingrrained, yet takes a fair amount of time.  Each has it's own pro's and con's.  The skills are there to help facilitate those aspects.  As for the querry of power types and technological advances, these come under the ACADEMIC-Technology group.

So, does that help explain a bit more?

What really gets me though is the line between applied and theory.  For instnace, the Sciences in Academics, such as Bio-chemistry, Pathology, Chiropractry etc.  are thy practical, or theoretical, or both?
Knowledge skills can be used to perform tasks...if it is a mental test, then they rate a 10 % per level modifier.  If added to any applied checks, they rate at 2% plus the practiacal skill at 10%, (so having both practical and theoretical pays).  Another problem area is Communications... I have it broken down by language type, which then splits into relevant modes of communication...language as read/written, spoken, math, body language, phermones and signals if applicable etc.  The same problem applies with ettiquette.....I can have the Social Skill etiquette, yet that shouldn't cover everything, so should it be linked with a Knowledge of each culture, or should it be specialised when choosen?  Should it be a Sub-group, with individual skills listed relating to the vcampaign, covering those species and cultures?

Well, what do you think?

[M. J. Young]

I think that if you lived nearby (New Jersey Delaware Bay area) I would say come over and borrow my copy of Multiverser to browse through the skills information--I've got between two and three hundred pages of information about skills, dividing them, identifying them, sorting and grouping them, and at your current level of detail you need more information than I can easily convey over the web.

I also think you need to come to grips with the idea, What makes a category?

One of the things we realized early on was that there really was no such thing as "combat skills" as distinct from everything else, except that they were being used in combat. I knife can be used to chop onions, cut ropes, whittle wood, entertain circus crowds, or stab an opponent. A light spell can be used to illumine a manuscript, reveal a path, counter an ambush, or blind an adversary. Combat is not about "what does this do" but about "how is this used". If you make "combat" a category, you'll find that nearly every skill you list in a non-combat context has a combat application as well--

[*]Ride horse/Charge opponent[*]Blast rocks for mining/Demolish enemy stronghold[*]Build house/Construct fortification[*]Lubricate surface/Create oil slick[/list:u]I don't say that you should divide skills the way we divided them; but you should attempt to focus your divisions so that they are all based on the same core concepts. That way every skill will appear in exactly one place, and you won't have players trying to figure out where to find that one skill (at least, not so much).

For what it's worth, we made all domestic animal skills low-level parasitic/symbiotic skills. Don't know if that helps you at all.

--M. J. Young