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Reduced Skill List & Character Sheet

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Sun, 2013-10-20 05:15

Count_Zero Count_Zero's picture

Reduced Skill List & Character Sheet

I have cut down and condensed the skill list and as a result I'm thinking of reducing the character creation points to 600. Attached is the revised character sheet (It incorporates the wealth abstraction rules found in the resource section). Any thoughts?

Attachment	Size
Eclipse Phase Character Sheet.pdf	243.42 KB

Sat, 2013-10-26 22:14

Skelshy

its hard to compare, do you

its hard to compare, do you have a list of items changed or removed?

Sun, 2013-10-27 06:58

Count_Zero Count_Zero's picture

Ok, here's a list of my

Ok, here's a list of my skills with some of the incorporated skills in parentheses. Academics: [Field] Animal Handling Art Athletics (Climbing, Flight, Free Fall, Freerunning, Swimming, Throwing) Deception (Impersonation, Palming) Demolitions Disguise Fray Hardware Infiltration Infotec (Infosec, Interfacing, Programming) Intimidation Investigation Kinesics Language: [Field] Medicine, Melee Weapons (Blades, Clubs, Exotics) Navigation Networking: [Field] Perception Persuasion Pilot Protocol Psychosurgery Ranged Weapons (Beam, Exotic, Gunnery, Kinetic, Seeker, Spray) Research Scrounging Unarmed Combat

Tue, 2013-10-29 04:22

Smokeskin

You're only bundling physical

You're only bundling physical and hacking skills together. Perception, investigation, scrounging could be one skill. Social skills could be bundled too (maybe a "soft" one with persuasion, protocol and kinesics and "hard" one with deception, impersonation and intimidation). Disguise and Infiltration could become Stealth (I'd place palming here too).

Tue, 2013-10-29 09:32

Count_Zero Count_Zero's picture

You.re right Smokeskin,

You're right Smokeskin, thanks for the input. I'll amend the list. Has anyone else reduced the skill list? Or is this not a major concern for most players and GMs?

Tue, 2014-03-25 18:48

bblonski

My Reduce Skill List

I had to put down EP since it was too crunchy for my group, but it's still my favorite setting. I've been playing EP flavored Fate games, so I've been working of a Fate style skill list for EP. Then I realized my group never really had any issues with the core mechanics, in fact I remember most people thinking the dice mechanics were pretty cool. I think the biggest issue was there were too many skills. This resulted in 3 primary problems; character creation took too long, there were too many numbers for players to keep track of, and players were often unsure which skill applied or would be upset when they had overlooked a skill (taking perception but not investigation for example). This got me wondering if I could backport my Fate skill into EP. I had to make some adjustments, but I think it turned out pretty well. Here it is: Academics <COG> (Programming) Arts <INT> Freerunning <SOM> (Fray in Gravity, Swimming, Climbing) Free Fall <COO> (Flight, Fray in MicroG) Hardware <COG> Infiltration <INT> (Disguise, Palming) Infosec <COG> Interface <COG> (Research) Investigation <INT> (Perception, Scrounging) Language <SAV> Kinesics <INT> (Intimidation, Impersonation) Medicine <COG> (Psychosurgery) Melee Combat <SOM> (Unarmed, Clubs, Bades) Military Hardware <COO> (Demolitions, Gunnery, Seekers) Networking <SAV> (Protocol) Persuasion <SAV> (Deception) Psi <WIL> (Sense, Psi Assult) Ranged Combat <COO> (Kinetic, Beam, Spray, Thrown) Survival <WIL> (Navigation on land) Vehicle <INT> (Navigation in space, Pilot) Training [Field] (Animal Handling, Exotic Weapon, Professions, Interests, etc) I dropped the Reflex aptitude completely, instead using INT or COO. Will is a bit under utilized in skills, but is probably important just for making sanity checks. This is a pretty aggressive skill reduction; less then half the original amount of skills. I haven't had a chance to playtest it, but I'd estimate 300-400 CP to build a character. Costs for things besides skills should probably be 1/2 to 1/3 their original CP cost to account for the much higher value of skills. I've largely eliminated [Field] skills and instead rely on specializations to help differentiate Chemists from Mathematicians, for example. Some of the original skills would make good specializations. I think this solves a lot of problems I had with the system. Character creation should hopefully only take a third the time. There are a lot less numbers and skill bonuses to keep track of. And skills give a much broader level of competence so you are likely to have everything you need, but can still specialize if you want. Personally I'll probably stick with Fate, since if solves a lot of other problems for my group, but I'd be curious what an "EP Lite" session would look like.

Tue, 2014-03-25 21:05

DivineWrath DivineWrath's picture

bblonski wrote:Academics

bblonski wrote:
Academics (Programming) Arts Freerunning (Fray in Gravity, Swimming, Climbing) Free Fall (Flight, Fray in MicroG) Hardware Infiltration (Disguise, Palming) Infosec Interface (Research) Investigation (Perception, Scrounging) Language Kinesics (Intimidation, Impersonation) Medicine (Psychosurgery) Melee Combat (Unarmed, Clubs, Bades) Military Hardware (Demolitions, Gunnery, Seekers) Networking (Protocol) Persuasion (Deception) Psi (Sense, Psi Assult) Ranged Combat (Kinetic, Beam, Spray, Thrown) Survival (Navigation on land) Vehicle (Navigation in space, Pilot) Training [Field] (Animal Handling, Exotic Weapon, Professions, Interests, etc)

Lets see if I got this right. All the above skills are now the only skills in your "EP Lite" version of the game. Anything in the brackets (like this) following a skill represent skills that became merged with it?

bblonski wrote:
I've largely eliminated [Field] skills and instead rely on specializations to help differentiate Chemists from Mathematicians, for example. Some of the original skills would make good specializations.

Perhaps you could use something else for that stuff. Lets call it a focus. For any skill with multiple focuses, you get to pick one focus. The main focus of a skill can be used without penalty, while trying to use different focus with a skill would suffer a -30 penalty. An example of skills that could have multiple focuses might be your ranged combat skill, with focuses for kinetic weapons, beam weapons, spray, and thrown weapons. Think defaulting to related skills. I think that you should be able to buy multiple focuses.

Tue, 2014-03-25 21:52

Undocking

If you are interested in a

If you are interested in a bare-bones EP, the Rag-nerd-rok guys came up with one here: http://eclipsephase.com/delta-fork-rules-light-version-ep

Wed, 2014-03-26 04:25

bblonski

Yeah, that's the general idea

DivineWrath wrote:
Lets see if I got this right. All the above skills are now the only skills in your "EP Lite" version of the game. Anything in the brackets (like this) following a skill represent skills that became merged with it?

Yeah, that's the general idea. Of course players are free to add skills if they think anything is missing. The generic Training skill is for specific skills like Ship Navigator or Animal Trainer.

DivineWrath wrote:
Perhaps you could use something else for that stuff. Lets call it a focus. For any skill with multiple focuses, you get to pick one focus. The main focus of a skill can be used without penalty, while trying to use different focus with a skill would suffer a -30 penalty. An example of skills that could have multiple focuses might be your ranged combat skill, with focuses for kinetic weapons, beam weapons, spray, and thrown weapons. Think defaulting to related skills. I think that you should be able to buy multiple focuses.

I'd probably still call them specializations, but I'd allow characters to take multiple specializations, either stacking up to +20 or +30 on the same specialization, or specializing in multiple focuses. Although I don't know why you'd want to specialize in multiple focuses since specializing in two areas is the same cost as just raising the whole skill. @Undocking I'm somewhat familiar with Cthulhu Dark. It's a bit bare bones for my taste. Some people say the same about Fate I guess. To each their own. I'm pretty happy with my Fate hack, but the OP seemed interested in reduced skill lists, so I thought I'd share.

Fri, 2014-03-28 03:02

#10

DivineWrath DivineWrath's picture

I think you have misread what

I think you have misread what I suggested. I did not suggest renaming specialization into something else, but instead offer something new. What I suggested was, if you were going to group up a bunch of skills together (skills normally separate under the default rules), then maybe only one subset of the new skill gets the full rating. Under the normal system, it is possible to default to another related skill at a -30 penalty (see p. 173). I was kinda trying to incorporate that idea using my suggestion. Basically, if you tried to use a skill for something that you don't have a focus for, you would instead be defaulting to a related skill. The focus you pick would be the skill you are actually trained in. When you try to use the other focuses you did not chose, you default using a -30 penalty. You could opt to buy more focuses to negate the -30 penalty to other focuses, saving you trouble spending another 100 points on something similar enough. If you don't like my suggestion, you could opt out of using it. I just thought it was worth using.

Fri, 2014-03-28 20:09

#11

bblonski

@DivineWrath

Yeah, that's about what I thought you ment. I guess I skipped a few steps in my head. I figured specializations already solve the problem and defaulting isn't necessary anymore. The fact that defaulting is in the book already suggests that those skills are part of a larger skill group of which your top skill is your specialization. Training your top skill raises all your related skills and makes putting ranks in any related skill pointless unless you are at the upper limits in your top skill, which is an issue I never really realized until right now. Instead I treat the base skill as the defaulting level, and specializations as the original skill rank. Reinterducing defaulting through focuses undoes most of what the shortened skill list sets off to accomplish. 1) Requiring players to choose a focus for every skill puts character creating back to it's original complexity, if not more so. 2) The player would have to keep track of each focus and the associated penalties which adds extra book keeping. And 3) the -30 penalty also undercuts the generalized compentence I was going for so players might be suprised and upset when they have to roll their rank 60 skill at rank 30 because they overlooked an important focus. Also, the -30 might be problematic if the player has a skill rank less than 30. To me, it makes more sense to have positive bonuses for a base level. The bonus can be optional so players who don't care about the different focuses don't need to choose one. This is what specializations do already. You do loose some granularity, but you could easily make the orignal specializations (specailizing in Knives instead of just Bladed Weapons) give double the bonus. Thanks for the suggestion though. I didn't mean to pick it apart like that. I can see why you'd want something that resembles the core rules a bit more if you like things how they are. Shortening the skill list as much as I did radically changes EP in a lot of ways. Pretty much everything would need to be rebalanced, which is why I'll probably stick to a Fate conversion where things are easier to improvise.