Skill Issues

Reading through the skill list in the Player's Guide, I found myself tinkering with a couple of the skills:

Unarmed Combat: A lot of ground could be covered by defining the Unarmed Combat skills as Striking (Specialties: punching, kicking, parrying, etc.) and Grappling (Specialties: holds, throws, escapes, etc.). Likewise, include some combat rules for holds and throws.

Indoctrinate: This skill is presented in an unneccessarily evil light; psychotherapy is very much the same thing as indoctrination, except that its aims are more benevolent. There's also a lot of similarity between indictrination and teaching (a potential new skill involving imparting skill to other characters).

I include instruction in indoctrination. I agree...it does have a negative portrayal in the PG.

My players have been using the series characters in the NG as guides for creating their characters and skills like Engineering, with three different skills and Armed/Ranged/Unarmed Combat which has even more.

The sample character are written with examples like Armed Combat (Klingon Weapons) and Ranged Combat (Energy Weapons) this is confussing my players they think that in these situations that the Klingon Weapons and Energy Weapons are specialties other than the real skills. Also they think that Propulsion, Structural and Systems are specialties of the "one" Engineering.

How do I convince my players this is how it is when the examples in the books show it differently? Shouldn't these seperate skills be given a slot of their own on the character sheets and character write-ups (like Engineering: Propulsion and Ranged Combat: Energy instead of Engineering (Propulsion) and Ranged Combat (Energy), I don't have my NG infront of me at the moment so I think this how they are written there, let me know if I am wrong)?

Also when a character has something like Knowledge Culture (Human, Starfleet) 4, is the second item considered a specialty or do you have to spend the full 4 points for it?

that's all for now,

da Guru

Whoa. What do you mean? In looking in the NG, the write-ups are correct. For example, Captain Picard has:

Engineering: Propulsion Engineering (Warp Engines)

With the format of:
Group: Skill (Speciality)

He also has:
Ranged Combat: Energy Weapons (Hand Phaser)

Kira has:
Armed Combat: Simple (Knife)

Worf has:
Armed Combat: Klingon Traditional Weapons (Bat'leth)

These are all correct. I'm not seeing the problems that you're speaking to in your message, Champions Guru. (You said you didn't have your book with you.) Examples, please.

An additional specialty costs 1 pick, regardless of the skill level. (PG, pg. 153) Specialties can only be selected during character generation when a package indicates as such.

I just checked it myself, and the skills are correct in the NG sample characters:

Armed Combat: Klingon Traditional Weapons (Bat'leth)

Group: skill (specialty)

And why are your players using the NG when the PG has archetypes that also show it the right way.

The only reason we reference the skill group in published character stats is so that you'll know where they came from.

Energy Weapon, Projectile Weapon, and Archaic Weapon are all skills of the Ranged Combat group. Ranged Combat is just an organization tool. So when you select a skill, you're not selecting Ranged Combat, you're selecting Energy Weapon or Projectile Weapon.

Same with the Engineering skills. There is Propulsion Engineering, Structural Engineering, and Systems Engineering. We just grouped them under one heading we called "Engineering."

I must have been reading those wrong, thanks for clearing it up.

da Guru