I may be biased towards art, I myself draw as a hobby, and have been for a long time. Anyone I ask the community around me professes some inability to draw, or having very poor skill at it [i]because they haven't practiced at for as long as I have.[/i] I have personally found it easier to learn about a new subject, or read up on some topic of interest, than it has been to evolve my drawing style over the years. Even trying to get away from that bias, Art as a skill is, at it's simplest, the act of taking raw products and creating something new. This folds neatly into the crafting/creation skill fields - like Hardware. Even the act of altering something folds cleanly both into Hardware (for objects/synths) or Medicine (for biological creatures/morphs). Taken in that context, I find it extremely questionable as to why it's necessary to revert art back to a knowledge skill. This flies both in the face of it's apparent mechanical usage, and the in-universe lore about art being this rare and treasured cultural thing - that EVERY character in 1st Edition apparently had - thus completely negating it's rarity and any cultural implications behind it.

Of course, thought has to be given not only to difficulty in learning the various subtypes, but in how useful they actually are at the game table in play. They do have a real cost in character build points, and there's a whole Career of the Academic. His extrem focus on Know skills means that it'll really suck if he turns into a trap option that can't get some useful stuff from knowing as many subjects as they will.

ThatWhichNeverWas wrote:

That said, I can definitely see many knowledge skills applying to Art - I just think it's more likely to see play if it's something that can be drawn on in multiple circumstances.

I'm really starting to like the idea of replacing Hardware and Medicine with Build/Repair and Design as active skills (without fields or with Organic/Inorganic as the fields) and then pushing everything else, from types of hardware or medicine, to Know skills. The main difference between a SpaceVet and a SpaceDoc is just the education aspect. The tools are largely the same. This would definitely make Art an exercise in Build/Repair and Design with the Art skill being the complementary skill.

One question that struck me: do the +Aptitude check traits stack? EDIT: Had a thought that struck me with the MP/Availability revisions - people being what they are, and the in-universe risk of being swindled, or having to settle for second/third picks due to availability issues, could there be some kind of bonus to Morph Availability if a player picks a morph with some negative traits? I.e. A player wants a certain morph with a local Availability of 50, but they only need it for a very short time. So they look for a version with a bunch of negative traits, and instead of reducing the MP cost of the morph (or in addition to reducing it) they get a version of their chosen morph loaded down with some 'unwanted extras' that works for the task at hand - with a boosted availability due to the negative traits taken. Something like: Reduce MP cost of the morph by the negative trait score And/Or improve morph Availability by +5 per negative trait MP

To dig out old topics, I noted a few things that were said while debating about the Art skill's importance. To me, Art skills were a good solution to make my players spend all these Knowledge points in 1Ed, because coming up with good suggestions was fairly hard, and players didn't need a ton of Language skills either. Surely 2Ed will see far less artist characters since there are only two packages that provide an Art skill, regardless of being a Know skill or not. For all chargen where there's no time to make fine adjustments or simply no will to do so (streamlined chargen, remember?), I think the question will only be "will I do a bard character by taking one of these background-associated packages? » Now, I was wondering about the artistic percentage in the population. I always told my players that there were high-end specialized AI and just too much indentures to get the job done cheaper and faster and that freelancers or normal employees would have a hard time finding work. As a result, this would make Art the only field to which free transhumans could really bring a betterment, particularly for purists. I mean, obviously artist indentures are a thing, but it can't be done on an industrial scale like the mining job, so there's room for freelancer artists. Now, about the difficulty-to-become-an-artist point.

Lurkingdaemon wrote:

Urthdigger wrote:

A few counterpoints. First, this is a world with time-accelerated simulspace and the ability to immediately look up anything you want. It's logical to assume that people in general learn far more things than the average person today.

Certainly those technologies exist, and probably are used for the purpose suggested, but to use a (admittedly extreme) example from in-universe: the failures of Project Futura and the 'Lost' generation show that time-accelerated simulspace is perhaps not the magic resolution for long term learning.

Unless I am mistaken, the Futura Project’s failure is due to the use of TITAN’s technology. A mere time-acceleration can’t make an async on its own. In my opinion, this failure is only plot tool to discourage the generalization of this practice, on both player and in-universe scales.

Lurkingdaemon wrote:

I may be biased towards art, I myself draw as a hobby, and have been for a long time. Anyone I ask the community around me professes some inability to draw, or having very poor skill at it because they haven't practiced at for as long as I have. I have personally found it easier to learn about a new subject, or read up on some topic of interest, than it has been to evolve my drawing style over the years.

Now, imagine a world where an AI is able to indicate that you have to turn left with a tingling on your left hand. Why couldn’t it use AR to let you feel and show you through your very eyes how you are supposed to move your hand to draw? The vast majority of the population is now part of the clanking masses – meaning they have a puppet sock. Then how about an AI that would take control over your body to correct your movements and have you avoid making any mistakes while playing the guitar for example? More than that, XP are a thing, aren’t they? Maybe major artist XP cost a morph, but buying an able artist an XP where he performs to actually feel how to play should be largely available. Therefore muscle memory is no longer a problem. Add the fact that paper has been replaced by a virtual interface or that nanoswarms can easily undo your mistakes so you can correct them turning the risk-taking aspect of adding a stroke to your painting to past - and no, in my opinion, Art is no longer a problem in matter of technique itself. So, what’s left to Art? Expression, feelings. Since the majority of the artists would learn from the same few Skills sources, the challenge would be to be able to uniquely tweak what everybody else is able to do, and use their own feelings as an addition to the process as well. And unless your empathy is very weak, you should be able to do so, given that feelings can come with XP too, so you even already know how it feels to be inspired. On the other hand, an academic knowledge of the diverse artistic movements would also provide with useful practices and starting points in order to acheive one's own Art, making this knowledge as important as practice (or more?) when it comes down to innovation. However all this is nothing but my personal opinion and I would love to hear about yours and the creators' points of view.

RobBoyle wrote:

Ultimates have indeed been dropped as a PC faction. As you noted, we pushed them more in the fascist/x-threat direction, and we don't want to be encouraging people to play fascists.

I really don't like this direction at all. Turning an entire faction into a "fascism" caricature seems far too political for me, and honestly is rather off putting. Not to mention that there's three factions of Ultimate, and at the very least Iconics seem rather decent and certainly playable. Lumping them all in together is a massive simplifying of the complex setting that Eclipse Phase is supposed to be, and I hope this will be reconsidered. I mean, if you want to boil it down, the Jovian Republic is just as facist if not more so. So why do they get to slide despite being quite possibly worse than the ultimates? Comes across to me as being too political and hypocritical. The only reason I can see for this is that the ultimates like to engage in radical self-improvement, which in a game about transhumanity and extensive body modification with advanced technology it seems out of place for this to be portrayed as bad. This is especially jarring when an equally 'bad' faction like the Jovians get a free pass because they're Luddites... presumably. I just don't get it. It feels really out of place and very double-standardry. I'd really like a better explanation for this decision other than "FASCISTS ARE BAD."

Voormas wrote:

Just because they don't [i]encourage[/i] people to play a faction that is predominantly fascist doesn't mean you can't play one. I think it's a good move to push the setting of eclipse phase along a bit, the Ultimates beginning to consolidate / their aspirations becoming clearer to the rest of Transhumanity.

As is, they've cut out their background from character creation. I'd say that's pretty much "you can't play one". I don't think that turning the Ultimates into just "Space Facists" is an organic growth of their society. I'd expect a faction that is really three factions to, at the very least, fracture over ideological conflicts. The ultimates aren't a hive mind, they don't all think exactly the same. Just turning them into Bad Guys™ I don't think benefits the setting at all. Jovians are still in as a playable faction, but the Ultimates are out, despite both being fairly 'facist'. The only real difference is that Jovians are bioconservatives and Ultimates eagerly embrace augmentations. Saying that one is considered to be a 'good guy' faction and the other isn't kind of ruins the premise of the setting a bit when it's supposed to be exploring transhumanism. All in all I don't think that forcing politics into Eclipse Phase is really a good idea. But hey, while we're at it, let's also take out Anarchists, Criminals, Hypercorps, Jovians, and Scum, as those are all offensive to someone somehow. I mean why would you want to encourage players to be Anarchists and Criminals? It's the same logic with them as it is with the Ultimates, if the developers allow you to play them then they're encouraging people to be criminals and/or anarchists. Let people come to their own conclusions about the setting and the factions within it, don't cut out factions or boil them down into paper-thin caricatures for facism. (Not to mention the implicit value statement that it's worse to be an Ultimate than it is to be a Criminal or an Anarchist) Honestly, if anything I'd have dropped Eugenics from Ultimates as it has basically no relevance and is based on bad science. Instead replace with "Directed Evolution" which is more along the lines of what the Ultimates want to achieve. Rather than using the form of Eugenics most people think of when they hear the word, Nazis.

As I've read so far the Exotic skill is supposed to be a grab bag of skills too esoteric to have a skill of their own. Based on what I've read here so far it might make more sense to merge the Profession and Exotic skills together and call it Profession. Profession then becomes the active grab bag skill but with roots in the character's past.

For the summary of the Qubit Reservoir in the gear kits- it calls the stored videos "Hi-rez". I may have missed some of lore somewhere, but if it's a video, shouldn't it be "Hi-res", as in "High Resolution"? I also noticed that many of the kits come with what look like mandatory implants. How would these work if someone took the "Hypersensitivity" trait? Are they just unable to use them outright? Overall, I'm not a huge fan on the background-based kits. I liked the customization options of previous versions and this limits that a good bit. It hardly breaks the game but I do miss being able to build kits from scratch. I always thought it helped add more personality to a character.

I'm quite new to EP and I decided to start playing the second edition playtest right away to prepare myself for full game, so maybe my question will be more obvious to people who have played the first edition. I'm confused about how the traits are bought. More specifically, is the cost cumulative? So if during character creation I want my character to have level 2 psi, is the total CP cost going to be 4 or 6? My second question is, if during character creation I buy level 2 resouces, do I get extra 2MP right away to spend towards my first morph and/or gear or will it have an effect only during the play. I tried reading about those things in the playtest files, but couldn't find any clear answers. In case my questions don't belong here or I somehow managed to miss the answers to them, I apologise in advance.

Fearsomesole wrote:

More specifically, is the cost cumulative? So if during character creation I want my character to have level 2 psi, is the total CP cost going to be 4 or 6?

Fearsomesole wrote:

My second question is, if during character creation I buy level 2 resouces, do I get extra 2MP right away to spend towards my first morph and/or gear or will it have an effect only during the play.

These two questions also came up during our character creation. We ruled them as ubik2 described (not cumulative; get resource level for starting MP), but they should probably be clarified.

What made you think WT is not derived from DUR? EDIT: If it was not, it would be theoretically possible to accumulate modifier from wounds and traumas higher than -100. EDIT: spare with structural +10 DUR and WT 3 could get 8 wounds if it took 3 damage at a time.

I am mostly certain the third example is the intended application of the trait, and the DUR/Wounds/DR rules. Definitely agree that final text for determining those stats (and the traits in question) should be clarified. Would help folks who get in to EP from 2nd edition, and aren’t aware of the DUR/Wounds rules as they are from 1st edition.

Latest release clarifies the rules for Composure et al. Everything works like it should (modifications are to the base stat, and "derived" stats are updated accordingly).

Really, really like the return of Attribute presets/templates that appeared in Transhuman. Especially for newcomers dipping a toe into chargen (vs pregens), the presence of attribute tweaking late in chargen brought the process to a big screeching halt. I'd still love to see it happen before packages are selected, BUT the use of templates as the default rather than point-by-point tweaking is a huge improvement. Still chewing on the other stuff, but that makes me super happy.

p. 27: Psi The summary indicates that you must take Dominant Strain et al. "...all at no CP bonus". Since Dominant Strain requires taking Psi, and it costs 2 points, I assume it costs another 2 points, but maybe it's free. There's also a slightly odd bit with Mental Vulnerability, where Psi says you must take it, but the description of Mental Vulnerability says you cannot take it if you have Psi. I assume the intent is that you take as many levels as you need for Psi, and no more than that are allowed. p. 27: Stalwart The summary of this trait doesn't have a trailing period like the others. p. 28: Good Instinct This is called Good Instinct here, and Good Instincts on page 30. Poor Instinct is singular on both page 29 and 35. I have a slight preference for Instincts, but consistency is more important. p. 28: Instability and Skill Artifact The summary of these traits don't have a trailing period like the others. p. 29: Skill Glitch The summary of this trait doesn't have a trailing period like the others. p. 28 and p. 36: Timidity Timidity only has 2 levels, unlike all the other aptitude modifiers. I assume this is intentional, but mention it, just in case. p. 30: Dominant Strain I'm glad to see this make a comeback. It looks like a Psi 2 character will still have Mental Vulnerability 2, so at low infection rating, they'll have a total of -10 to COG and WIL infection tests (and +10 to other infection tests). p. 31: Natural Immunity Missing a period at the end of the description. p. 34: Low Pain Tolerance "increase the modifier for each wound take by" should be either "increase the modifier for each wound taken by" or "increase the modifier for each wound you take by". p. 34: Mental Disorder The last sentence ends with a "/" instead of a ".". p. 35: Neural Damage Repetitive Behavior Presumably intentional humor, but "You unwillingly repeat your actions." is repeated. p. 35: Real World Naivete Two problems First, "the GM may intentionally you when" should be "the GM may intentionally mislead you" or something. Second, "even when the player is aware of if the player realizes the character’s mistake." should be something like the following options: even when the player is aware, or if the player realizes the character’s mistake. even when the player is aware of the character’s mistake. even if the player realizes the character’s mistake. p. 36: Zero-G Nausea "does not fair well" should be "does not fare well" p. 40: Utilitool is still listed as Minor in the Scientist gear list (Moderate in Academic and Techie). Assuming the correct price is Moderate, the Scientist does have the proper 16 point gear kit.

I like the concept of story arc that was introduced with Patron. Could we use these (and similar) for pool refresh and favors as well? For example:

• campaign (1x major favor, full pool)
• story arc (1x moderate favor, +1d6 pool)
• scene / session(?) (3x minor favor, +1 pool).

Lurkingdaemon wrote:

Dislikes: [list][*]Art is back to being a Know field. [i]Sigh[/i]. Not keen on this for personal reasons, but it’s not worth raising a big stink over it.[/list]

Makes sense to me, as it's not about *doing* art (which would be the Provoke skill), but about the history, theory, and as-some-snobs-would-say appreciation and interpretation of art. So, the knowledge side of art, not the creative one.

I'm not entirely sure, but in your example wouldn't that fall under 'The Knowledge Behind Active Skills' section in the Making Characters guide? It says Active Skills effectively come with the Know to put them to use, and Know skills can add to Active skills as per the 'Complementary Skills' paragraph right afterwards. If you have a related skill or some Know, such as the brilliant paramedic or biotechnician, wouldn't their related knowledge spill over into a good check on what killed someone, instead of them being clueless? I'm not trying to be confrontational and don't have enough of a grip on things to comment on your actual point about medicine skills and subskills; I am still learning the system and just want to make sure I understand how skills and knowledge carry over to related topics.

Huh. I might be getting the difference between Active and Know skills mixed up, in this specific example. I assumed you needed knowledge to find out how they died, so that would be using an Active Medicine skill as a Know: Forensics or similar which says it uses the Active Skill at a -10 to -30 penalty. I guess I was interpreting 'The Knowledge Behind Active Skills' as equating to Know with a lower value (the penalty), which could then be used as a Complimentary Skill, but on second look I'm not sure that works, since it's not actually Know, just equivalent to a lesser amount of it. Good to know. If they are both Active and can't do that then I see where you're coming from, and that does seem a bit odd.

Baribal wrote:

That's for "defaulting" to an Active skill when a Know skill roll is called for (i.e. someone versed in Guns could smalltalk with someone about makes and models, although that'd usually call for a Know: Guns roll), and for augmenting an Active skill with a Know skill (where the Know skill has to be different enough so as to cover a different area than the Active skill, so that there is additional knowledge to augment the action).

To me, this mechanic raises a question: If an active skill like Guns overlaps with a Know skill like Gunsmithing or Armourer, and if Know skills give you a bonus on the corresponding Active skill... What mechanically is the difference between having both skills versus having only the Active one but at a higher rating? edit:

So this text appears in the advancement rules: "an additional 1 RP must be spent per linked skill over 60 (with the exception of the character’s native language skill and skills capped at 99)." This is a 1e holdover and makes no sense with the significant reduction in RP scale in 2e.

I got some time to make characters. I have a few questions. Fray and perceive start at x2 their corresponding aptitude right? So a REF of 30 gives you Fray of 60? In general, I don't like freebie points like this. I think it opens the door for unbalanced builds that are built to maximize what you can get during character creation. I'd rather you assigned extra skill points and recommend that characters with good REF and INT should invest in those skills. The same goes for extra languages. Flexbots. How many systems may a flexbot have at a time? 2 minor or 1 moderate? What about forming extra limbs and other mobility systems? I'm under the impression that flexbots could do a lot back in EP 1st, so I'm looking to do a lot in 2nd edition. Familiarity Trait. Can I pick flexbots and expect it to cover all types? Can I do the same with infomorphs? Are there any other broad applications? Does this trait allow me to add and remove flexbot modules without integration tests?

I've been playing around with flexbots. The problem with them is that you need many flexbots to do the whole combining business. This gets expensive quickly, but by using negative traits, you can reduce them to 1 CP. As for buying gear, CP has considerably less buying power. You also have less of it to spend on gear. This has made it difficult to design characters that have the skills to fill multiple roles. For instance, a character might be a good techie person, but also has maxed out infosec skills (80). Getting exploit software will take up a good 1/5th of your given CP. In EP 1st edition, it would cost you 1/20th of your possible wealth, and you had much more CP that you weren't allowed to spend on wealth.