Species Skills and Trill Sybionts.

[Lezta]

I have two questions. One of these things has been irking me ever since I made my first character for my players. Now we're out of the playtesting phase and they're going to be making their own and I really am worrying about a certain aspect of character creation.

Species Skills.

According to my reading of the rules your character starts with a huge bunch of cultural skills with specialties for who you are. That's nice; it makes sense.

What doesn't make sense is that the character therefore becomes a encyclopedia of ALL cultural/historical/political knowledge. It means most starting characters have at least four in one of these skills - often alot more when you consider that almost all characters in Trek have a high intelligence.

Is this right? Am I missing something? It just feels wrong somehow.



And onto my next point - Trills. Or, more specifically, Trills made using the advanced symbiont rules in 'Aliens'.
I recently went through character gen with a player who wanted to play a Trill .

The only things I need clarifying is how the symbionts edges affect the player and how exactly skills are used. Because it's doing my head in trying to understand the print.

As for edges, I'll give an example; the symbiont posses the Arrogant flaw. The host however, posses the Confident flaw. I ruled that due to personality merging this would cancel out both abilities (Arrogant makes social test courage point spending illegal, confident gives a +2 bonus to spending courage in a social test). Is this how it all works?

And skills is a simpler question; in the case that the symbiont and the host both posses a skill, whose do we take? The higer? The host?


Thanks in advance.

[KillerWhale]

I don't see how characters end up with 4 ranks in species skills... IIRC they get INT x2 picks, and those skills are not professional, so one rank costs two picks. Even with INT 12, that makes only 6 ranks.

[Tobian]

Ahh right, to be honest I read it as you just paid cost for them, because it doesn't say you shouldn't.. I would have just counted them as part of your life development skills you have gained because you were trained in your culture. I assumed that because it was at character creation you just paid point for point for stuff.. is there anyone who can give a clarification on that?

To me this always made sense.. a person with high inteligence would, as you say have 12 points.. Ok so you would spend maybe 4-5 in your home language, 2-3 in an additional language (Such as federation standard if they are an alien or maybe a language from their home planet / country etc) and the remaining points on a couple of knowledge skills pertaining ONLY about their home locale. There are ALLOT of skill groups to buy skills in.. they could become a walking encyclopaedia on the history of Paris (because they come from there) but as a citizen it is possible.. but then they might well know nothing about the local geography. They are best to buy a handful of low ranking skills to represent their knowledge of local culture in a broad sense. Perhaps suggest they put an emphasis on buying skills with specialities, so they make it more regional specific, but with a broad base knowledge.. I.e. you know the geography of Earth, but know Paris like th eback of your hand etc.

With regards to the flaw and the advantage.. Remind me, ( I don't have the books here) where are these edges and flaws coming from? The species template or the background of the character. If they are from the species template then it is clearly wrong and you can either rule that they cancel each other out (they posses both but having both count against each other) or offer the player a similar edge of YOUR chosing (no cherry picking! ) If one of them is from the background packages (early life etc) there are usually multiple edges you can pick and they would be disalowed from possesing edges and flaws which can cancel each other out.

In a pure game mechanics sense edges and flaws are there in the species template to offset or add to a race depending on it's point cost. You can argue that by recieving an edge that 'pays' for the point cost of the flaw then the one cancels out the other, though by the book you should simply not be allowed to do that, but that's when picking them.. if they are given then that's really the only logical choice !

[RaconteurX]

Originally posted by KillerWhale
I don't see how characters end up with 4 ranks in species skills... those skills are not professional, so one rank costs two picks.

I do not think this is correct. The rules certainly do not read that way, and characters from the various series seem to possess a fairly expansive familiarity with skills in the Knowledge group. It stands to reason that player characters be able to display a similar degree.

[Doug Burke]

Originally posted by KillerWhale
I don't see how characters end up with 4 ranks in species skills... IIRC they get INT x2 picks, and those skills are not professional, so one rank costs two picks. Even with INT 12, that makes only 6 ranks.

Actually, KW, Species Skills have the same cost as Professional Skills. So one pick per level. But don't forget the "No skill over 6 levels prior to advancements" rule...

[Doug Burke]

Originally posted by Lezta
Species Skills.

According to my reading of the rules your character starts with a huge bunch of cultural skills with specialties for who you are. That's nice; it makes sense.

What doesn't make sense is that the character therefore becomes a encyclopedia of ALL cultural/historical/political knowledge. It means most starting characters have at least four in one of these skills - often alot more when you consider that almost all characters in Trek have a high intelligence.

Is this right? Am I missing something? It just feels wrong somehow.

It's a nod to the characters on Trek knowing so much about various cultures. Look on it as a cinematic way of handling it rather than a more realistic method. If a Narrator wished to be more realistic about it, one of the things you could do is that, unless you have a Specialty in the species/world/whatever being discussed, what you know is colored by the stereotypes associated with it (All Vulcans are honest yet emotionless, all TOS Klingons are murdering barbarians, etc.).

[/b]And onto my next point - Trills. Or, more specifically, Trills made using the advanced symbiont rules in 'Aliens'.
I recently went through character gen with a player who wanted to play a Trill .

The only things I need clarifying is how the symbionts edges affect the player and how exactly skills are used. Because it's doing my head in trying to understand the print.

As for edges, I'll give an example; the symbiont posses the Arrogant flaw. The host however, posses the Confident flaw. I ruled that due to personality merging this would cancel out both abilities (Arrogant makes social test courage point spending illegal, confident gives a +2 bonus to spending courage in a social test). Is this how it all works? [/b

That's how I would handle it. And if, for some reason the symbiont is lost of disabled, the Confident edge might come into play.

And skills is a simpler question; in the case that the symbiont and the host both posses a skill, whose do we take? The higer? The host?

Honestly, I would use whichever seemed more appropriate to the situation. You could even play up "being of two minds" on a solution by rolling both and deciding which result you wanted to take (Just an idea, mind, not to be done without Narrator say-so, of course...).