My understanding of Character Creation Packages is that they are merely suggestions on how points might be spent, and skills/advantages/disadvantages aquired, to reflect a characters history and experiences.
There seems to be nothing, other than a narrator, to say that a given character must spend his poinsts in a certain way... the only certain rule is that a character gets a certain NUMBER of points at each phase of his development.
My question then is this: At certain points in a character's development, if the given tables are followed, points may be spent in efficiently... particularly when a character is re-given a skill he has already aquired. Is there any reason that a player couldn't take those points and spend them as points, rather than as the specific skill?
I've seen cases where, when given a 1/2 skill added to a 1/2 skill to get either a 1/3 skill or a 2/2 skill, the player could take the 3 points represented by that skill spend one to raise the possesed skill to 1/3 and still have 2 left over.
It seems that characters created with the templates could be at a disadvantage over characters created from scratch.
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"I'd rather die standing than live on my knees..."
Shania Twain