Byuing new skills vs. skill packets.

[Zhores]

Greetings one and all.
This is my first post to the forum. Let me first say that TROS is an excelent game, though, exempting the combat rules, a little rough at the edges. This forum is also great. I've found many gems of information here, most of which I am currently using in my campaign. How ever, despite my efforts of reading every bit concerning it, one answer still eludes me.

In short: What exactly is the difference between a skill (in a packet) selected during character creation, and new a skill bought with SA points? This question came up when a player in my group selected a packet which included the skill "style analysis" at +3 (raising the SR to 10), while another bought the skill with 2 SA after the first session and got it to SR 9.

The main argument was: Shouldn't the SR be lower in a skill a character has trained perhaps years in (skill packet), than in a skill a character is just starting to learn (a new skill bought with SA)? In other words, how can you know less than the guy who knows next to nothing?

Im sure there is a logic behind this, i just need to hear what it is. (And then tell my players :)

My initial answer was to start of skills bought with SA at default-1, but my players objected to that.

Mikael Kulma

[Lxndr]

That's a common issue with the Swordsman skill package, rather than something more generally defined.  The issue is even more sharply delineated when using MA points - one guy gets the skill at 10, the other gets it at 7.

Some people have suggested changing the skills that Swordsman get.  Others have suggested a not-quite-minor rules change that involves requiring new skills purchased to have the same modifiers that are given in the skill packages.

[Brian Leybourne]

All I do is specify that when a player buys a skill packet, the worst value a skill in that packet can have after modifiers is 9. That way, you're never any worse off than someone who has bought the skill from scratch.

That's just a house rule, of course. Seems to work though. Occasionally someone will gripe that they have 6/6 and the +3 skill ended up just as bad as the guy with 9/9 buying the same packet, but a swift kick to the goolies usually curtails any such objections.

Brian.