Extra Secondary Skills in Modern Games

[RockJock]

I'm not sure exactly how to word this question, but do you allow characters to take extra secondary skills based on thier lifepath before character creation, for lack of a better word? This can be the child of a chef having higher level cooking skills, all the way to my example below.

I'll use myself as an example.

I went to graduate school in geology/geophyiscs, and using say HU's basic skill program system I can make a decent copy of my basic academic skill set. Later on I went back to school and studied business and computer sciece, again easy enough to replicate with the extra study option in HU2. Where things don't work out so well is my extracurriculars.

Here are a few examples. I lived in Northern Wisconsin for a good piece of my childhood, learning winter based skills like skiing, pilot: snow mobile, and skating, then later in rural Texas where I learned horsemanship: general, pilot: motorcycle, at a minimum. I was a Boy Scout through Eagle, and have basic outdoor skills like Land Navigation, Wilderness Survival, Identify Plants, which I kept up with a lot of hiking and outdoor time as part of my college major, plus I was an avid hunter so WP:Rifle, WP Shotgun, and Hunting at the minimum. In college I had some weird sidejobs. I worked as an EMT, so pilot: light truck, and First Aid, if not Paramedic. Later I was part of a rescue task force, and eventually become a "Texas Peace Officer", which means I passed a basic law enforcement class, and the background checks that let me carry a badge and a gun if needed with the rescue group, so Law, WP: Pistol if nothing else. I spend grad school on the coast, became an avid kayaker, and gained a 2nd mate license for smaller commercial vessels(offered by my university oddly enough), so a couple of boat piloting skills.

None of these skills are going to show up in a normal "academic" build, and I would never let a normal character pick up all of these for free, but I would let a character have some. For example, I've done an ROTC and Boy Scout option that gave a couple of bonus skills each based on the chacacter's background, the same with street skills, or family skills. Usually nothing more then 1-4 skills, mostly secondary, but for "free", not extra study time after character creation.

Has anyone done this sort of thing before? Maybe made a general ruling on how to handle it? I'm not looking for a book answer, which I know would be use the education tables as is. Thanks for the input.

[Kraynic]

In the old fantasy game, your background gave skill bonuses to go along with the type of life you were in before whatever you are now. As far as the rules went, these bonuses were only to apply if you chose those skills as part of whatever OCC you went with. Over the years, I have run it a couple other ways also.

1. I have treated them as skills that you had that didn't really progress since they weren't part of the focus of your life anymore, so they were always at level 1 unless you chose them as part of an OCC. You were never good at them, but you had basic knowledge in that area, and could make an attempt if anything requiring a roll came along.

2. I have also treated them as skills that you had that would progress and would always be equal in level to the highest OCC level you had. In that way, they were a part of you that you held over from your upbringing/earlier life that you never let go of, and kept up on.

While this is in the fantasy game and not one of the more modern settings, those variations haven't caused any problems when used. Nothing from the backgrounds gave any combat improvement, so it was all general world utility type stuff (carpentry, languages, plant/farm lore, demon/devil lore, etc). In the old core fantasy book, it was 3-4 skills. Depending on what they were, I don't think up to 5 would break anything.

[RockJock]

Fantasy would have a pretty similar basis for what I'm talking about. The idea is not to make a power house, but to give a little more variety or depth to a character. Pilot Kayak or Truck are rarely going to be all that useful, so will rarely be taken in most HU games, but I like the flavor they can provide.

[Glistam]

In my last Heroes Unlimited game I used an expanded skill list, which included an expanded secondary skill list. I was mostly satisfied with this. https://www.heroesofthecentury.com/skills/

[Warshield73]

In most of my games I added 2 secondary skills at first level but these had to be what I called "character development" skills. Bonsai, flower arrangement, chess, go, cooking, art, creative writing, bicycle, kayak, etc. The idea was skills that would not be something used in a lot of games but would be interesting. I did late a few players change this to one other skill so they could be professional level at cooking or chess.

But in most of my games I add 1 extra secondary per level anyway for characters to take languages, literacy, lore's, and histories.

In my last Heroes Unlimited game I used an expanded skill list, which included an expanded secondary skill list. I was mostly satisfied with this. https://www.heroesofthecentury.com/skills/

Looks like my skill list except I add the lore skills from Nightbane nad Streetwise Weird from BTS.

[RockJock]

Thanks everyone, these are the type pf suggestions I was looking for. More flavor over power so to speak.

[Blue_Lion]

I'm not sure exactly how to word this question, but do you allow characters to take extra secondary skills based on thier lifepath before character creation, for lack of a better word? This can be the child of a chef having higher level cooking skills, all the way to my example below.

I'll use myself as an example.

I went to graduate school in geology/geophyiscs, and using say HU's basic skill program system I can make a decent copy of my basic academic skill set. Later on I went back to school and studied business and computer sciece, again easy enough to replicate with the extra study option in HU2. Where things don't work out so well is my extracurriculars.

Here are a few examples. I lived in Northern Wisconsin for a good piece of my childhood, learning winter based skills like skiing, pilot: snow mobile, and skating, then later in rural Texas where I learned horsemanship: general, pilot: motorcycle, at a minimum. I was a Boy Scout through Eagle, and have basic outdoor skills like Land Navigation, Wilderness Survival, Identify Plants, which I kept up with a lot of hiking and outdoor time as part of my college major, plus I was an avid hunter so WP:Rifle, WP Shotgun, and Hunting at the minimum. In college I had some weird sidejobs. I worked as an EMT, so pilot: light truck, and First Aid, if not Paramedic. Later I was part of a rescue task force, and eventually become a "Texas Peace Officer", which means I passed a basic law enforcement class, and the background checks that let me carry a badge and a gun if needed with the rescue group, so Law, WP: Pistol if nothing else. I spend grad school on the coast, became an avid kayaker, and gained a 2nd mate license for smaller commercial vessels(offered by my university oddly enough), so a couple of boat piloting skills.

None of these skills are going to show up in a normal "academic" build, and I would never let a normal character pick up all of these for free, but I would let a character have some. For example, I've done an ROTC and Boy Scout option that gave a couple of bonus skills each based on the chacacter's background, the same with street skills, or family skills. Usually nothing more then 1-4 skills, mostly secondary, but for "free", not extra study time after character creation.

Has anyone done this sort of thing before? Maybe made a general ruling on how to handle it? I'm not looking for a book answer, which I know would be use the education tables as is. Thanks for the input.

HU has rules for acquiring skills from a formal school if I recall right. Also some skills can be taught by a rogue scholar.
I dislike the idea of creating a back story just to get extra skills.
A level 1 occ would be late late teens or early twenties for humans. Not allot of down time to learn new skills. Typically you are not in the middle of your life when you start your first occupation.
Looking at your life story I would say your first OCC from rifts would have been a vagabond or rogue scholar. All your skills would fit the OCC.

Secondary skills you choose are things that you pick up that are not part of your normal build. You can write a background for why you chose the ones you did but you should not write a background to get free skills.

You can also do things but not at the level that is a skill. I ran in high school PE but I would not have considered myself to have running or general athletics when I started my occupation. (remember the O in OCC is occupation.) I rode a bicycle but could not do any tricks just ride it down the street so no skill bicycle.(land vehicles do not require a skill to use for some normal operations.)-Just because you did something growing up does not mean you have a skill in it.

Take a look at lets say ice skating, it is a physical skill if you did it as a kid but have not done it in years do you think that justifies having a currant bonus to stats. Any physical bonus would have faded to lack of use if you did not do it regularly so is the bonus even justified. Many skills are perishable if you do not use them they fade.

I know I learned to shoot as a kid but did not touch a gun after I was 12. I joined the army and I had to learn to shoot all over again because i had lost the basics.

So as a general rule I say a hard no to free skills for writing them in you background.

[Warshield73]

HU has rules for acquiring skills from a formal school if I recall right. Also some skills can be taught by a rogue scholar.
I dislike the idea of creating a back story just to get extra skills.
A level 1 occ would be late late teens or early twenties for humans. Not allot of down time to learn new skills. Typically you are not in the middle of your life when you start your first occupation.
Looking at your life story I would say your first OCC from rifts would have been a vagabond or rogue scholar. All your skills would fit the OCC.

Secondary skills you choose are things that you pick up that are not part of your normal build. You can write a background for why you chose the ones you did but you should not write a background to get free skills.

You can also do things but not at the level that is a skill. I ran in high school PE but I would not have considered myself to have running or general athletics when I started my occupation. (remember the O in OCC is occupation.) I rode a bicycle but could not do any tricks just ride it down the street so no skill bicycle.(land vehicles do not require a skill to use for some normal operations.)-Just because you did something growing up does not mean you have a skill in it.

Take a look at lets say ice skating, it is a physical skill if you did it as a kid but have not done it in years do you think that justifies having a currant bonus to stats. Any physical bonus would have faded to lack of use if you did not do it regularly so is the bonus even justified. Many skills are perishable if you do not use them they fade.

I know I learned to shoot as a kid but did not touch a gun after I was 12. I joined the army and I had to learn to shoot all over again because i had lost the basics.

So as a general rule I say a hard no to free skills for writing them in you background.

I fully understand this but my rule is less about just getting more skills as it is about creating three dimensional characters. people have hobbies that aren't particularly useful and I want people to have those skills but it's not really fair for me to force them to use standard choices for it.

Gaming skill systems are tough to create because they represent something that is really difficult to quantify, what do you know and what can you do. This is really tough as some skills advance and others atrophy naturally. It is also made tough by the fact that some skills return easily and others don't. A system where skills only go up if you use them and they go down if you don't would be more realistic but I don't want to GM it.

[torjones]

I do agree, no free skills just for writing it into your background.
That being said, I know what you mean about having picked up a bunch of what would otherwise normally be useless skills. I can cook rather well, there aren't all that many land vehicles I can't drive, and while I'm not great at sailing an actual sail boat, I do know how to do so, so most surface craft are good too. I understand the principles of avation, but the largest thing I've ever flown is a drone, never something with an actual person in it, except briefly with an actual pilot. I don't know everything that there is to know about woodworking, but send me out into a forest with some hand tools, and I'll be able to build a cabin and furniture. I have built two canoes, and know how to build them in an emergency, I can fish, and I can hunt, but I'm not so great at hunting. None of these are really normal adventuring skills. If I was a character, I'd likely never use these skills while adventuring.

I think if my players wanted something like this, I'd be open to discussing "Tertiary Skills" of some kind, less restricted by class as to what you could take, but wouldn't allow highly technical skills. Maybe allow a skill with half the base to start and thereafter allow a normal progression? I'm not sure about this, and would love to see some more ideas how to work the original ideas.

[RockJock]

I think something like active/rusty/retired would work, but I'm not sure I would want to do the book keeping on it as a GM.

One of the things I've tended to limit when doing this in the past is what the skills are, and the logic of the person knowing or learning them. The wife who has lived on an army base for half her life knowing Military Etiquette makes perfect sense, even if it is a military only skill, and not on the secondary skill list, and not taught in an academic setting per the learning new skills section of HU. The same army wife learning WP: Laser Rifle I would not even consider.

What I don't like is the skill set of a character like Durandal in HU2. He is a PhD curating at history museum who has no skills in Archaeology, Anthropology, which are available skills, much less History, Appraisal and similar which make sense, but are not in HU(at least the main book). He doesn't have a chemistry skill,which is fine, but would be useful for his job Basically he has Art, Writing, and Research to make up his entire academic training, yet has a full program devoted to Wilderness skills. I would be much happier with him having a few more not so useful academic/job skills with the Wilderness or even languages being "extras". Just my feel of it

I would most definitely be a Rogue Scientist/Rogue Scholar.

[Warshield73]

I think something like active/rusty/retired would work, but I'm not sure I would want to do the book keeping on it as a GM.

This is what I was saying earlier. I can think of a lot of ways to make the skill system more realistic but I can't think of one that doesn't involve a book keeping nightmare. One of my players years ago pitched an idea of only having skills that had been used during that level advance when they go to the next level but that would only encourage players to game the system using skills when they don't need them.

One of the things I've tended to limit when doing this in the past is what the skills are, and the logic of the person knowing or learning them. The wife who has lived on an army base for half her life knowing Military Etiquette makes perfect sense, even if it is a military only skill, and not on the secondary skill list, and not taught in an academic setting per the learning new skills section of HU. The same army wife learning WP: Laser Rifle I would not even consider.

What I don't like is the skill set of a character like Durandal in HU2. He is a PhD curating at history museum who has no skills in Archaeology, Anthropology, which are available skills, much less History, Appraisal and similar which make sense, but are not in HU(at least the main book). He doesn't have a chemistry skill,which is fine, but would be useful for his job Basically he has Art, Writing, and Research to make up his entire academic training, yet has a full program devoted to Wilderness skills. I would be much happier with him having a few more not so useful academic/job skills with the Wilderness or even languages being "extras". Just my feel of it

I would most definitely be a Rogue Scientist/Rogue Scholar.

I was talking about this in another topic on Heroes Unlimited . The HU system just doesn't allow for the kind of flexibility to really create a hero with both an occupation and, for lack of a better word, hero skills.

Example: I had a player several years ago, we only played for a few months but he was a vet, I believe he served in Afghanistan, and he was finishing a masters degree in some sort of engineering. Well when he rolled Masters degree he asked to create an engineer with one program for basic military. I told him that wasn't possible and all he said was "hello, right here". Well of course I let him do it.

It would be great if someone could create a skill system for HU that was a little more flexible and could create specific occupations as well as hero types.

[RockJock]

How old was your Vet/engineer? For something like that I would just have him build the engineering education as he wants, and basically tack on Military Basic as an earlier, learned skill set. As long as the character is going to be say mid 20s I don't see an issue with it. In game he basically was a soldier, who then took extra dedicated educational classes, or the reverse if it fits the fluff better.

Thanks for the conversation all. I really like to see how other players, GMs, and tables handle things like this. I know I'm not the only one who has had a version of this skill issue pop up, so it is nice to see other solutions and options.

[Warshield73]

How old was your Vet/engineer? For something like that I would just have him build the engineering education as he wants, and basically tack on Military Basic as an earlier, learned skill set. As long as the character is going to be say mid 20s I don't see an issue with it. In game he basically was a soldier, who then took extra dedicated educational classes, or the reverse if it fits the fluff better.

Well this was '06 or maybe '05 and he was a year or two younger than me so he was 30. What I allowed was 3 skill programs going towards engineering and then he was allowed Basic Military as the fourth. Now the problem was this was contrary to the rules which said military was limited to specific education levels. I am generally not too worried about changing rules like that but this one is about balance and made his character kind of tough. I made it even for everybody by allowing everyone to make some sort of change to the skill programs to fit there character goal but it made it a little more work than normal.

[RockJock]

It would be interesting to look into a skill/education revamp,but honestly it is over my head. The rule bends here and there have always been less damaging to the flow of the game then a strict view that did not fit characterization.

[Warshield73]

It would be interesting to look into a skill/education revamp,but honestly it is over my head. The rule bends here and there have always been less damaging to the flow of the game then a strict view that did not fit characterization.

In HU I think it could be done by creating what amounts to two skill packages.

- The first is an occupation, similar to what BTS does but would include military and police occupations. This would be the largest make up the bulk of the skills.

- The second would be an add on of just 4 to 6 skills. For characters that have a civilian occupation this would be there hero skills. A few WPs, maybe hand to hand or few physical skills, streetwise etc. For characters that have a more combat oriented occupation they can add something more technical or just more combat.

This skill system would be a lot more equal then the current rolled system where some have tons of skills and others don't which effectively makes skill roll another attribute.

[Ice Dragon]

I understand your problem.

As a GM ne flexible and keep in mind, that it is a game and the rules should keep it simple. Add a still, if a player needs it or give your players the extra skills, if the write a good character background story at the start of your game.

[RockJock]

I tend to agree Ice Dragon. I generally run and play flexible games. I go with the "rules are a general guideline" viewpoint. I am not going to have a 19 year old character being a spec force trooper because they went to military school, but they might have a base level of military etiquette.

[SpiritInterface]

We came up with a list of skills that everyone know, such as read and write English, drive automobile, basic math, basic computers, cooking, ect. and said everyone gets these skills for free.

[Warshield73]

We came up with a list of skills that everyone know, such as read and write English, drive automobile, basic math, basic computers, cooking, ect. and said everyone gets these skills for free.

I've done some of this too in the Modern Games, just adding to the "Common Skill Package" and it works pretty well. I did something similar in 2e Robotech as well.

[RockJock]

Thanks all. Always nice to get input.