Skill Specialties

[Tar-Palantir]

I generated the skills for my character recently, and everything went smoothly until I started thinking about skill groups.

Most skills are straightforward and once one buys a rank, one can buy a specialty, but can use the skill for anything even outside the specialty.

EG: Athletics (Swim) - you get a +2 bonus to swimming but you can still use the skill to climb, for instance.

What happens to skill groups? Do they get specialties and a Specialty bonus?

For example, my character is a human from Earth - so she got Knowledge - specific world (Earth). From how skill groups work, she'd do fine about anything about earth - Where Paris is, for instance, but would not have the ability to use this skill about another world, say Vulcan. So does she still get to have a +2 for having a specialty in Know.Spec.World (Earth)?

[Balok]

Skill groups are best viewed as lists of skills. They're related in some way, so it's convenient to collect them. But each skill on the list is purchased separately, advances separately, and can have its own specialties.

If I'm interpreting the rules correctly, the Knowledge skills work like this. For you specific example, your character would in fact know things about other worlds, and would know a little bit more about Earth. See the sentence on PG p. 119: <em>With this skill, you know a great deal about planets, their geography, weather patterns, flora and fauna, places of note, and so on...</em>.

Religion and Trivia seem to be exceptions, or at least, unclear: The text suggests that the skill applies to a specific religion/trivia, but there are specialties listed.

For some skills, it's a bit unrealistic, to me, and a bit counterintuitive. But, then, I'm somewhat used to GURPS, where every facet of every skill is distinct and must be purchased separately.

The principal problem I have is that these skills, as written, conceivably encompass knowledge the character could not possibly have: for example, knowledge of the points of interest of a world that he has just begun to explore. This sort of situation is probably best handled by GM fiat: stating that for each new world the character encounters, he must spend some time collecting/integrating the date; until he does, use of the skill would be at some situational negative modifier.

[Doug Burke]

Basically, Fesarius got it exactly right. Skill Groups a re just a convenient way of organizing similar skills. Otherwise they follow the same rules for skills and specialties.

In the case of Knowledge skills, which would seem to allow a character to know information he couldn't possibly know, you could assume that their knowledge of other places and things allows them to make an educated guess as to how things are in a new place. To use you example, Tar, someone with Knowledge: Specific World (Earth) would get a +2 bonus when remembering facts about Earth and just their normal level when remembering things about other worlds. If the character is on a newly encountered world, he could make a Specific World check to try to figure out the similarities between this wolrd and those he knows.

Hope that helps.

[Tar-Palantir]

This seems a bit counter-intuitive, as Fesarius says. If I follow you both correctly, the fact that my character has a fascination with Jim Kirk (She's in the TNG era and Jim is quite the historic figure!) means I can buy Knowledge - Trivia (JT Kirk) and it will also automatically let me have effective skill in ANY trivia field - say Knowledge - Trivia (Baseball). She hates baseball!

Odd, no?

[Balok]

You're certainly free to decide that Trivia *doesn't* work this way, if you like. But one possible explanation for Trivia is that the character is a "fact hound"; they accumulate knowledge of all sorts.

If you want a character that knows a lot about Kirk, and *nothing* about other kinds of Trivia, you could omit the skill and simply assign this ability to the character as a sort of quirk, for no cost -- but absent a roll, you and your GM would have to decide how much you know. Also, the value of this depends on how important knowledge of Kirk is to your campaign. If the campaign presents challenges "brought forward" from TOS often, then the knowledge of how Kirk solved those problems might be quite valuable. If it doesn't, that knowledge is less valuable.

I've also considered an edge similar to "Skill Focus" that works like this: you pick a specialty, and that specialty is worth +4 (instead of the usual +2), but, all other uses of the skill are at -1. The idea being that this particular character has focused on a single specialty to the exclusion of other areas. However, I've not yet convinced myself that this would add much to the game. And as an edge, it's relatively weak, since it costs more than a specialty and doesn't offer as much (it's redeeming feature being that it offers an extra bonus that you might not be able to get any other way). On top of which, I'm sure the designers maxed the skills at 12 to prevent characters from focusing on a single skill to the point that they can defeat any challenge within that realm easily -- there are already other edges and abilities that can boost the total skill modifier well beyond 12. I thought of this in terms of a scientist who is a genius within his field, but fairly incompetent outside of it, and there may be other ways to model this.