skill requirements for Elite packages

[Space_Cadet]

If a player has, say for example System Operation(Cloaking Device) for a skill and the elite package he or she chooses requires System Operation, with no mention of a speciality, does the player have to have plain old System Operation or will System Operation with a speciality suffice?

[P'l]

As far as I understand, specialities are "add-ons", or bunuses, pure and simple.

System Ops with a speciality will not just suffice, it's actually even better. Ofcoruse, I might be wrong.

[KillerWhale]

I believe you only count the "level" (or "ranks") the player has: that is, without specialties, attribute bonuses and misc. bonuses.

[Tobian]

For the skills it applies too (Systems Operations being one) Skills gain one free speciality when first purchased. That speciality gives the player a +2 bonus to that chosen speciality

So for example say a player had "System Operations - Flight Controll 3 +2 (int)"

Then on tests involving flight controll the player would get a +7 total - and on everything else (unless it was something more exotic) it would be a +5

If a skill doesn't have any specialities listed, then your player chooses one - unless it is one of a few skills which don't have specialities - I.e. Languages.

Additional specialities can be bought at the cost of 1 skill point (I think?)

So for example that player could elect to have "System Operations - Flight Controll, Tactical 2 (+2)"

that way he could have a +6 modifier on two skills and +4 on everything else.

Buying specialities as part of the advancement stage also costs the same ammount. - and some professional abilities - like the one in Engineering, automatically give you all specialities in a given skill group (Which is handy!)

[Tobian]

NB: Just to clarify, you only get one free speciality with the first point of a skill you buy, not for each point.

And yes some background packages specify a speciality and some don't. - depends on the package.

[Doug Burke]

Originally posted by Space_Cadet
If a player has, say for example System Operation(Cloaking Device) for a skill and the elite package he or she chooses requires System Operation, with no mention of a speciality, does the player have to have plain old System Operation or will System Operation with a speciality suffice?

As long as you have the skill, specialty or not, at the requiresd level, it qualifies.

[Doug Burke]

Originally posted by Tobian
For the skills it applies too (Systems Operations being one) Skills gain one free speciality when first purchased. That speciality gives the player a +2 bonus to that chosen speciality

Actually, no, they don't in the Trek RPG. When you buy a level in the skill, you get a level in that skill. You must spend an additional pick to get a specialty.

[Tobian]

Hmm I read that wrong then, not all of the skills get 'free' specialities, but then the backgrounds do often give you a skill speciality as part of the construction process.

In the example most of the security officers gain Systems Operations (Tactical) as part of their background picks anyway.

[Doug Burke]

Originally posted by Tobian
Hmm I read that wrong then, not all of the skills get 'free' specialities, but then the backgrounds do often give you a skill speciality as part of the construction process.

In the example most of the security officers gain Systems Operations (Tactical) as part of their background picks anyway.

Right. And the picks for those specialties are included in the cosat of the package. You'll note that each professional package has 20 skill picks of assigned skills plus 5 unassigned picks.

[ImperialOne]

I read that closely and caught it when I first got the CODA rules bacause the no free specialization is a bit different from ICON, making it less cumbersome in my opinion.