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2d6? Why oh why?

I was with you until here.



...apply to the quote above ;)

I didn't say it was common. Just more common than in MgT by way of contrast.

I've rarely seen skill 3+ in an area (outside of a cascade like gun, blade, or vehicle) even with books 4-7 in CT.

Yes, usually vehicle or gun skills is where I saw it. Pilot was pretty common, despite NOT being a common cascade skill, simply by the fact it was easy to school a few ranks into it with flight school.
 
I still contend, however, that in an *adventure* game, most people (myself included) want characters who are a cut above the rest of the world, and shine particularly in one or two fields.
It probably also depends somewhat on the type of setting and campaign one
prefers to play.

In our current campaign the characters are the leaders of a new colony on a
remote and hostile planet: The trader who finances the colony project with
his trade profits, the leader of the terraforming team who turns a hostile pla-
net into a habitable one, the chief medic of the colony's only hospital, and so
on.

Such characters have to be experts who are very competent in their profes-
sions, because otherwise no one would have chosen them for their positions.
They would work in a mine or tend the hydroponics instead of making decisi-
ons that can affect and change the entire setting.

For a setting and campaign like ours, at least one skill at level 3 is more of a
prerequisite than of a problem for the player characters.
 
I've rarely seen skill 3+ in an area (outside of a cascade like gun, blade, or vehicle) even with books 4-7 in CT.

In one campaign the ref wanted to prevent us from importing a thousand mercenaries to the country we'd wound up supporting on Algine, a TL4 world that had just (in his TU) been opened to limited interstellar contact by the Imperium. So he told us that he wanted a description of each mercenary we imported. So one of the other players wrote a character generation program for his Sinclair and printed out 900 characters generated according to Book 2. We got one ex-sergeant-major with Tactics-7, and quite a few characters with various skills-6. Skill-3 was not rare. I still have the listing somewhere.


Hans
 
...So one of the other players wrote a character generation program for his Sinclair...

...and pray tell, what survival rule was used? ;)

No offense but I've yet to see a generator program that didn't have an error or user bias that bent results.
 
Using LBB 4-7, I have seen and rolled characters with a 4 or 5 single skill before....

To be clear, I didn't say it couldn't be done, simply that in my experience it is rare, or at the very least uncommon. Unless you use house rules and tweaks of course. And I'm not saying you are Dave, that was a general statement. In fact your post seems to be saying you didn't find it common or easy, just that it had happened, perhaps rarely? ;)
 
...and pray tell, what survival rule was used? ;)

No offense but I've yet to see a generator program that didn't have an error or user bias that bent results.

No offense taken. I didn't write it, so I can't answer your question. However, what difference does it make? Since we were able to hire the man, obviously he'd survived. If you just keep on grinding out characters until one of them survives, the survival rule is irrelevant. The one you wind up with did make them all.

Now, the reinlistment roll, that would be important. If you wish to disprove my information, I suggest you write your own program, grind out 900 characters, and show that the number of characters with any skill-3+ is fairly low. Until then, I'm going to assume that the data I have is valid.


Hans
 
I've always interpreted skill-1 as amateur/'apprentice', skill-2 as 'journeyman', and skill-3 as 'master'.

That's a good rule-of-thumb, and I think it's a popular outlook on Traveller skills post CT (when the one-size-fits-all line of thinking entered the game using the UTP task system and blanket stat modifiers).

In CT, though, this is just not the case.

A Medic-1, being a nurse or paramedic, is a professional, and not an amateur or apprentice if you're trying to be a paramedic. If you're trying to be a doctor, though, then, yes, Medic-1 is more of an apprentice (as a nurse is to a doctor).

But then, take Vacc Suit-2. That's really all you need in Vacc Suit to do most jobs. The modifier for Vacc Suit ops is +4 per level of skill, trying to throw 10+ for most Vacc Suit related tasks. Vacc Suit-2 means automatic success.

I think CT, rightly, shows how different skills need to be regarded in their own light. The real world is not one-size-fits-all.

MGT, of course, follows its predecessors in one-size-fits-all stat bonuses and skill weight.



And Vacc Suit could mean...?

Or Zero-G?

Or how about Astrogation?

All of these are from the Drifter careers. So, even the scum of Travellers can have these skills. Unless you want to tell me Julius Caesar's veterans were masters of the Vacc Suit...

Of course there are some high tech skills (Pilot, Engineering, Navigation come to mind), but the vast majority do not require a high tech level to master.

For every Pilot skill, there's more of the Admin, Broker, Trader, Streetwise type skills that can belong in many different TL cultures.



You keep on asserting this but produce no evidence or argument to justify it.

Then you haven't been reading my posts.

As for you comment about me not wanting a player to play the type of character he wants to play. I would ask you in return, "Then why have a random element in chargen at all? Why not just give your players the stats and careers they want."?

You can't accuse me of not wanting my players to play character that they want to play and then make your players random roll anything.
 
No offense but I've yet to see a generator program that didn't have an error or user bias that bent results.

Dan is correct. I've looked at just about every CT character creator out on the net (everyone I could find) and none of them...NONE OF THEM...use the CT rules right out of the book. They all take liberties somewhere. Often times, it's the survival throw that gets nerfed.
 
I would say about 30% of the characters I personally generated (LBB 4-7) had at least 1 skill above 3.

That matches my own anecdotal experience.

S4, the thing is that, due to this skill level creep, CT is split down the middle, if CT means: books 1-7.

Skill-1 in books 1-3 isn't the same as skill-1 in books 4-7. In 1-3 it indicates professional level, in 4-7 it tends to indicate passable competence. That's why 4-7 PCs don't mesh well with CotI PCs.
 
In 1-3 it indicates professional level, in 4-7 it tends to indicate passable competence. That's why 4-7 PCs don't mesh well with CotI PCs.

I don't think I agree with that. There is no place in the CT rules where the value of a skill level is actually defined. Thus, we have to look for implied definitions.

Medical is defined in 1-3 as you have described above. Skill-3 is a doctor.

But, Vacc Suit is also described in 1-3, and it's an entirely different scale where Vacc Suit-0, Vacc Suit-1, and Vacc Suit-2 are the only skills really needed. Vacc Suit-2 is a competent professional (as he aces zero G throws without having to roll).

And, I think that Sup4 and Book 1-3 characters mesh just fine. Heck, I've shown where Book 4+ Advanced characters mesh well with Basic characters if the Survival Rule is used.
 
Then you haven't been reading my posts.

As for you comment about me not wanting a player to play the type of character he wants to play. I would ask you in return, "Then why have a random element in chargen at all? Why not just give your players the stats and careers they want."?

You can't accuse me of not wanting my players to play character that they want to play and then make your players random roll anything.

I've read your posts closely, and there's nothing that is not either just opinion or disputable (as in claiming MGT chargen is broken).

And I use a mixture of random and player choice in chargen. I let players choose which table to take a skill off after they make the roll (giving them a choice of 1-5 skills, dependent on career, Education, rank, etc). They could end up with a character that they did not quite envision when they started rolling, but its totally based on their decisions (and in my view, that is a reasonably realistic analogue to real life).

BTW, this makes skill 3 even more likely than pure random, but it still has only produced a couple of dozen characters with 3's or higher out of 200 or so (before Connections are applied).
 
...
Since we were able to hire the man, obviously he'd survived. If you just keep on grinding out characters until one of them survives, the survival rule is irrelevant. The one you wind up with did make them all.
good point, Your Recuirtment officer(s) must have cleaned out a entire sector to met those numbers :devil:

It didn't happen overnight, but it wasn't that hard. You have to understand that our referee played BY THE BOOK. If the letter of the rules said it, he allowed it, no matter what the spirit of the rules might be. He's the one that let us sell 63 multi-million credit computers at 300% of base value in one go on a world with a population level of 4 (That, in a roundabout way, was what eventually led us to be supporting a whole country. With that kind of nest egg, we beat the trade system like a drum until we'd run up a fortune of 3 billion. The ref suggested we invest a billion in this country and receive prominent positions in its society in return. We put a quarter of a billion for each PC into savings accounts, in order to have a little something to fall back on if we lot the rest of the money. I can't remember what we did with the third billion. Used it for running expenses, I think).

Anyway, I went to Porozlo, which gave me a +5 to the recruitment rolls:

10D+5 raw recruits ~40
9D+5 veterans ~37
8D+5 veteran officers ~33
7D+5 mercenaries ~30

for a total of 130 in the first recruitment period (2 weeks). I rather suspect we made an effort to get someone with recruiting skill to come along, but I can't remember if we succeeded.

For the next period, there was a DM of -1 to all roll, for ~126 recruits of all kinds, then a DM of -2 for ~122 in the next period, ~118 in the next, then ~114, ~110, ~106, 102~, and ~98. At this point (after 18 weeks) we'd have about 1000, but I think we kept on for several more recruiting periods. We cherry-picked from the raw recruit pool (only taking those with useful skills; I remember we were very interested in pilots, TL5 imports allowing us to import Spitfire-type fighter planes (anything available on Earth up to 1939. Rather effective ince our neighboring countries didn't have any aicraft at all). I can't remember if we took a week off at some point to reset the negative DM to 0 (I'm quite sure our ref would have allowed it, since taking a week off would mean that the next recruiting period was not, per definition, 'successive', but I can't remember if we thought of it).

The time wasn't wasted, however. As soon as recruits with Instruction-3 and <Useful skill>-3 started showing up, I began organizing training classes for the men. When someone with Instruction-4 showed up, I had him teach Instruction to six men with useful skills-3. I can't remember if we ever got one with Instruction-5. The plan was to have one 600 man regiment composed entirely of mercenaries and two 150-man cadres that would be fleshed out with local troops. The last 100 was for special units like an air force. We never got that far, though. The Fifth Frontier War broke out about that time, and my character immediately went up to the local Imperial Army general and volunteered all the men. That earned us all Imperial knighthoods down the road.


Hans
 
I don't think I agree with that. There is no place in the CT rules where the value of a skill level is actually defined. Thus, we have to look for implied definitions.

I agree. But that means that when skills routinely reach higher levels, as they do in 4-7 compared to 1-3, the meaning of a given level is redefined. Where Pilot-4 is no longer unheard of Pilot-1 will mean comparatively less than it used to.

And, I think that Sup4 and Book 1-3 characters mesh just fine.
Sure.

Heck, I've shown where Book 4+ Advanced characters mesh well with Basic characters if the Survival Rule is used.
Not so sure...
 
This is the Mongoose Traveller section. I think extended discussions about aspects of CT should be held in the CT section.

My experience with creating numerous characters for Mongoose Traveller so far (about 30 all told) is that getting a skill above 3 does seem to be rather difficult, actually. I do limit total terms to 7, because I feel that PCs don't really need any more, and by choice my players have all chosen to generate their characters completely by the random method. We use the connections rules and the campaign packages, to make sure that someone can actually fly the ship :) (My crew seems to have a fondness for gun bunnies and sometimes they don't get the shipboard skills otherwise).

I do not find the 2d6 system bad at all, and so far in play things being too "easy" has not been an issue. Maybe we're just too busy having fun to notice or care about these issues.

Allen
 
Actually, in MGT, specializations provide their bonus only in specialization; all other specializations are at level 0 unless individually raised. (MGT TCR p6)
 
I think you're right, aramis. They seem to rely on a pretty weird example, there, rather than specifically say "Things outside of specialties are at +0."

It's more clear from the second example (of having two specialties), but still…

Thanks for pointing that out to me.

But that leads me to question multiple specialties in a skill.

If the first time I get the skill, I'm at 0, and the second time I get it am at +1 (specialty), the next time I get it I can pick (new specialty +1)? Then the character would be Specialty A+1 and Specialty B+1…? Is that right?
 
If the first time I get the skill, I'm at 0, and the second time I get it am at +1 (specialty), the next time I get it I can pick (new specialty +1)? Then the character would be Specialty A+1 and Specialty B+1…? Is that right?
Yep, this is how I understand it and our group handles it. :)
 
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