Skills

[blackblood]

Well my group starts its first game this weekend, i've been busy writing, and one interesting question came up in character generation.

Several players pushed one or two skills up to 13 pilot starship, T/Medical, T/Computer

Now the question was is it pointless to have a skill so high ? I couldnt answer so im hoping someone whos played here can.

TIA

Nick

 

[Morte]

You could find a use for those.

 

[jasper]

no is not. one of my play took astronav 11 and he still misjumped. Boy nearly ended the adventure in the second session.

 

[Psion]

Take a look at the DCs in the T20 lite rules:

0 Walk across the floor
5 Climb a ladder
10 Climb a knotted rope
15 Plot a course to a familiar star system
20 Jump a horse over an obstacle while riding
25 Swim in churning, storm driven water
30 Remove a bullet from a victim.
35 Plot a course to an uncharted star, while under fire and without a computer.
40 Convince the judge that a pardon scrawled on the back of a cocktail napkin really is from the planetary governor
45 Perform brain surgery with a low-tech field surgical kit, under fire, in the rain, while wounded

As you can see, some of these are pretty out there, but even moderately difficult DCs (20-30) are things that could easily come up in a game.

 

[Morte]

Originally posted by jasper:
no is not. one of my play took astronav 11 and he still misjumped. Boy nearly ended the adventure in the second session.

Should've done a "take 10" on the roll...

 

[jasper]

I haven't decided whether they could take 10 yet.
of course with the game shut down due to date changes it does not matter.

 

[clementk]

A general rule of thumb on skill levels in T20 is 4-5 ranks in a skill are equivalent to 1 skill level from CT/MT/T4. IIRC Medical-3 was a doctor in CT which would be equivalent to a T20 T/Medical of 12 or 15. I originally stuck with 5 ranks but think 4 ranks matches up better with T20's Max / levels and CT.

From my T20 experience one cannot have too high a skill level esp. in a characters "signarture skill" and any supporting skills. Granted I like to play characters of around 5th to 15th level maximum. Just means the character will be in tighter sitches.

You may also want to look at this article here which extends the excellent BITS task system to T20 which matches it better to the other published Traveller systems.

Casey