Book 04 Character Generation

[aramis]

Actually, it's not all that greatly, unless one is getting lots of combat.
Note that the needed survival rolls are lower than the core rules for most assignments.

 

[Supplement Four]

Another thing about Book 4 - There's an analysis here that me and TBeard did a few years ago. At least some of the careers (I think we tested the Marines) have the % chance to get skills same every four years. The roll with Advanced Chargen to get skills is higher than the one with Basic Chargen.

I don't know about the results. Most agree that a character gets more skills with Advanced Chargen. But, it's either coincidence, or an attempt was made to equalize Basic and Advanced Chargen.

 

[McPerth]

It just needs to be kept to a minimum, and the PCs are not necessarily the characters with the high skill 5+.

If chargen is played out by the rules, not house ruled in anyway, and the hard survival rule is used, you'll still get the occassional lucky run of dice resulting in a character with skill 5+.

I think that's fine. It's when each character in the PC group has at least one skill 5+ skill that there is a problem.

And off course, it will also depend on what skill is at level 5+.

Pilot or Gunner 5+ when playing with Bk2 ship combat rules may unbalance the game, as will Broker 5 if playing a trader campaign; OTOH Medic 6 will help to keep characters healty, but will not unbalance the campaign as much, and Navigator 8 is really not too unbalancing, as the game difference it will have with a Navigator 2 will not be great.

 

[Shonner]

Navigator 8 is really not too unbalancing, as the game difference it will have with a Navigator 2 will not be great.

Navigator 8? Which CharGen makes that happen?

 

[BlackBat242]

The first solution to "skill bloat" is to enforce the "total skill levels ≤ Int+Edu" rule found in The Traveller Book page 29:

Maximum Skills: As a general rule of thumb, a character may have no more skills (or total of levels of skills) than the sum of his or her intelligence and education. For example, a character with UPP 77894A would be restricted to a total of 13 combined skills and levels of skills. This restriction does not apply to level-0 skills.

If you find this too restrictive, you can do as I do and make the limit "Int+2Edu".



The second is to place a limit on skill level per skill... I use the "TOS rating" system.

Remember that in the TOS episode The Ultimate Computer we learn that Spock has the only "Computer skill rating A7" in Starfleet!

Therefore, if we use the same scale for Traveller, no PC could have a skill level higher than 6 (unless he was the single best in the Imperium)... and even a 5 would be rare.

 

[rancke]

The first solution to "skill bloat" is to enforce the "total skill levels ≤ Int+Edu" rule found in The Traveller Book page 29:


If you find this too restrictive, you can do as I do and make the limit "Int+2Edu".

And if you find it odd that low-Int, low-Edu people can't learn physical skills, you can do as I do and divide skills into physical, mental, and 'in-between' and then limit physical skills to Str+Dex, mental skills to Int+Edu, and total skills to Str+Dex+Int+Edu.


Hans

 

[Shonner]

The first solution to "skill bloat" is to enforce the "total skill levels ≤ Int+Edu" rule found in The Traveller Book page 29:


If you find this too restrictive, you can do as I do and make the limit "Int+2Edu".



The second is to place a limit on skill level per skill... I use the "TOS rating" system.

Remember that in the TOS episode The Ultimate Computer we learn that Spock has the only "Computer skill rating A7" in Starfleet!

Therefore, if we use the same scale for Traveller, no PC could have a skill level higher than 6 (unless he was the single best in the Imperium)... and even a 5 would be rare.

Which referees here are handing out skills and skill levels to players like it's candy?

 

[Thanos]

Mustering Out.

Technically I only served two full terms but I'm a cheating bas**rd and am going to call it 3 as I wasn't injured until the last year of my third term.

So with that in mind I, should, get four rolls total. Three for terms and one for rank.

I end up with Low passage, +2 int, 30,000 CrImp, and a blade.

 

[Sir Brad]

Even in Book 1 with hot dice you can get skill bloat, especially if the players chose not to roll on the Personal Development table, An Educated Army Officer can easily end up with 17 skill levels if they can hold on until forced retirement, same goes for a Marine from a good family. Marines given the prevalence of Gun Combat and Blade Combat on their Service Skills table it's not unknown to see a Book 1 Marine with Cutlass 6 & Revolver 6 getting around.

As I've tried to point out before many of the new skills are excluded from acquisition by Book 1 Characters or included in Book 1 Skills e.g. ATV covers both Wheeled & Tracked vehicles, Book 1 Vacc-Suit includes Battledress & 0-G Combat, Leader includes Recruitment, Tactics includes Ship & Fleet Tactics, Admin covers Legal, Mechanics & Electronics combine to give Gravitics.