CT Only: Jack of all Trades skill, again

[Marchand]

I've occasionally seen threads over the years talking about houserules for JoaT. Apologies if the following idea has already been circulated (especially if it was by me):

JoaT-1 confers skill-0 in each of the service skills in the character's own career.

Further levels of JoaT confer skill 0 in the service skills of 1 other randomly selected career, per level (so JoaT-3 would be 3 careers).

In the unlikely event someone has JoaT>6, you would proceed to the advanced edu rows (own career first, then randomly determined). That (plus the edu 8+ rows) takes care of us up to JoaT-18 which should be enough...

That's it.

Admittedly, this makes JoaT less powerful than in the rules as written (which make JoaT a skill-0 in everything "subject to ref's discretion").

However, this houserule confers an actual benefit for having JoaT>1, which balances the down-shift out to an extent. And anyway, I always felt JoaT in RAW was overpowered.

 

[Spinward Scout]

JoT always seemed to me to be the ability to learn things faster/easier at the lower levels.

 

[CosmicGamer]

Apologies if the following idea has already been circulated:

JoaT-1 confers skill-0 in each of the service skills in the character's own career.

Yes, I have seen this

Further levels of JoaT confer skill 0 in the service skills of 1 other randomly selected career, per level (so JoaT-3 would be 3 careers).

Recall there were several options discussed for further JoaT levels and at least one was similar but maybe allowed the players to pick and was not random if I recall correct.

 

[mike wightman]

Jack of all Trades is a binary skill, you either have it or you don't. To receive more than one level in it is pointless by the rules as written and the designers should have spotted this.

To then compound the error buy having NPCs in 1001 characters with JoT skill levels of 2 or 3 just makes no sense.

By the way I like your solution, I do something very similar myself

 

[salochin999]

Currently I only have JoT as a one-off skill with just one rank and it gives all the ship skills at rank-0 (i give it to scouts as their basic training).

Although now you mention it the idea of using JoT to represent a talent for a set of skills in interesting.

Makes me wonder about using it for something like JoT(repair) or JoT(vehicles) or JoT(animals) maybe.