First of all, yes, you can combine archetypes. And a lot of archetypes have overlaps with each other that make them easy to combine. For example, the Socialite and RO generally both benefit from good rep and high Networking skills. While their specialization is different when it's all said and done, they have enough in common that your RO can easily fill your Socialite's shoes and vice versa. In fact, most parties WILL combine these archetypes on a single player because it's so easy to do, and it frees up a player to better round-out the team by taking a different role. Hacker and Socialite on the other hand don't combine easily, because they have much less in common and hackers tend to need to dump lots of points into Interfacing, Programming, and Infosec, meaning they won't have much left for all the various and sundry social skills a Socialite needs. It can be done, you can make a smooth-talking con man who "hacks" stuff mostly by sweet-talking people into handing over their password, but it'll be a lot of work. Muscle tends to be a fairly CP-intensive role, mostly due to morph and equipment costs, but as long as they choose to specialize in one weapon type, two at most, they might have enough CP left over to dabble in other roles on the side. Of course, if you can get away with putting off the morph and equipment until your RO can get them for you in-game this frees up a lot of CP for character creation, but whether you can get away with that depends on your campaign and GM. That said, that assessment isn't 100% ironclad because your "muscle" doesn't necessarily have to be Butch Deadlift. A drone jockey can bring a lot of firepower to the table with very efficient CP expenditure. Their skillset will often overlap with both Hacker (Interfacing, Infosec, Programming, for commanding and protecting the drones) and Transporter (Pilot, Gunnery, for controlling drones directly), allowing you to roll three archetypes into one character. Drones also tend to be cheap and easy to acquire in-game, especially if your character is a good enough hacker to steal hostile drones in combat. Investigator is usually a flexible and very CP-cheap archetype, making it very easy to combine with just about anything else. This is mostly because there are myriad ways to investigate things, all of which are potentially useful. Your hacker can investigate things by doing Research to locate and hack into secret documents. Your Socialite/RO can chat up their contacts. Your Muscle probably has a high Perception for combat anyway, he can use his sharp eyes to look around. It's very easy to mix in a little Investigator with whatever else your character does, and very little reason not to. So everyone can be an Investigator on the side, no matter what their primary is. Those are just some examples and I'm sure other people here can think of a lot more, especially if you find unconventional ways to fill certain roles. In general, most EP characters will fill at least two archetypes most of the time.

One skill does not make a role. To be truly effective in a role often requires multiple skills brought to a fairly high level, plus relevant equipment. For example, a gunfighter doesn't just need Kinetics. They also need Fray for defense, some movement skills (Freerunning, Freefall, Flight, Climb, etc) to help them get around, Perception to locate targets, a solid combat morph and a good gun. Similarly a Hacker needs more than just Infosec. They need Interfacing to use the computer, Programming to write scripts, install backdoors, and perform many other hacking actions (Infosec gets you in, Interfacing and Programming get things done). They're going to need a suite of hacking software, which ain't cheap, and some computer-based Knowledge skills. Research also helps the hacker, since often if you're breaking into a computer, you're probably looking for something on that computer. Now, even with all that taken into account you do get enough points that most characters can still fill multiple roles fairly comfortably. Like I said, you can even expect that the vast majority of characters will have *at least* two roles. But be careful not to make the mistake of thinking "Oh, I'll just pick up Kinetics to be the muscle, Infosec to be the hacker, Networking: Hypercorps to be the RO, Persuasion to be the Face, Medicine: First Aid to be the Medic... I'm a one-man party!" You have a party for a reason. You'll generally want to pick a set of closely-related roles to maximize synergy (Role 1 needs skills A, B, C, and D, Role 2 needs skills B, C, D, and F, you can easily and efficiently become very good at both roles), and talk to your party about how they're going to cover everything else. Not trying to be harsh of course, it's just that it's very common for RPG players to try to do too much by themselves, and they often forget that they have a party to cover their weaknesses. Though of course, another common mistake is they don't take note of how they can cover for other party members, and so don't give others the help they need... but that's an entirely different topic.

R.O.S.S.-128 wrote:

One skill does not make a role. To be truly effective in a role often requires multiple skills brought to a fairly high level, plus relevant equipment. For example, a gunfighter doesn't just need Kinetics. They also need Fray for defense, some movement skills (Freerunning, Freefall, Flight, Climb, etc) to help them get around, Perception to locate targets, a solid combat morph and a good gun.

Similarly a Hacker needs more than just Infosec. They need Interfacing to use the computer, Programming to write scripts, install backdoors, and perform many other hacking actions (Infosec gets you in, Interfacing and Programming get things done). They're going to need a suite of hacking software, which ain't cheap, and some computer-based Knowledge skills. Research also helps the hacker, since often if you're breaking into a computer, you're probably looking for something on that computer.[/quote] I'll concede on combat; adding Fray is fairly useful, as is Freerunning (I'd forgotten that despite its name, it's actually the skill for, among other things, jumping). I didn't really consider Free Fall necessary because either you're in a place where you don't need it, or you'd need it even if you weren't in combat, making it not a [i]combat[/i]-relevant skill as such. However, for hacking, I'm less sure that you need more than Infosec. By my reading, most things you do on a hacked network are done with the Infosec skill, as is the actual hacking itself (though I see now that the wording can also be taken to mean that you need to make an Infosec roll to be allowed to make the Interfacing roll to give orders to a robot, rather than using the Infosec roll to give the order despite not having the permissions, which would make Interfacing rather useful). However, Programming has really only two uses; creating backdoors and creating scripts, which are of somewhat niche utility. Even moreso, a computer-based Knowledge skill doesn't actually do anything in the basic game.

uwtartarus wrote:

Comp sci skills ought to provide a complementary skill bonus.

The academic field of Computer Science is in many ways far removed from the practical use of software. The complementary skill rules is also firmly in the territory of GM fiat, so making generalizations about its use will be difficult without a standardized way of interpreting the rules.

The EP skill system is somewhat bizarre in how you can have 80 in Academics: Cryptography and default your Academics: Mathematics, so it's entirely legal by the rules to have no formal knowledge of Computer Science and still be competent in programming, software engineering, and applied information-security. This muddles the concept of complementary skills somewhat, since it follows "logically" that someone with Academics: Mathematics 80 and Academics: Cryptography should be better at cracking codes than someone who only knows Cryptography, even though the knowledge of mathematics really should be a prerequisite for cryptography. I guess what I'm saying is that we should use GURPS's skill system instead. :V

Well, I think one way to look at it from the skills angle, not so much the roles angle, is that even in EP, you have three big broad avenues/approaches/attitudes: Physical, Mental, Social. Physical is your actual actions in the world, interacting with the environment. Your movement and combat skills mostly. Social is whenever you interact with another person. Mental is Non-interactive knowledge skills, mental actions and typically computerized interactions. Aptitudes can be broken down this way (even if technically, all Ego aptitudes are based on your brainprint). COG and INT are very mentally linked. SAV and WIL are socially linked (I say this because SAV and WIL are usually the two stats you draw on to oppose social rolls) and COO, REF and SOM are physically linked. Now, with skill points, morph and equipment bonuses, you can kind of mix and match which you draw from, but in general, if you focus on one, you will be good at anything linked to that. IE, if you have a high COG, you can get a leg up to utilize multiple COG based skills (which includes hacking). If you have a good SOM, you're better placed for running and jumping and also punching people. Basically all the social skills default to SAV, so if you want to be a social character, boosting your SAV is just saving you skill points. From that kind of Physical/Mental/Social triangle, you can further specify and specialize in what exactly you do. A mechanic and a hacker are both Mental types of characters, but use entirely different skill pools. However, you can easily combine them and have one Mental-y guy. In archetypal terms, this would be Face/Muscle/Brain. And then you're just generating further subsets. Your Face might be a lying liar who lies, or might be more of that femme fatal temptress. Your muscle might be a street samurai or might be a gunlugger. Your brain can hack that gibson, or they might stack in deep the Hardware skills and physically "hack" that door.