Custom Skill Groups, Would you allow it? Options

[Ryu]

@Ryu: I guess you're right that generally a powerful character won't bother with more than two kinds of weapons. What I don't like about modifying the group is the incentive it creates. It creates an incentive for more people to take the same skill group, increasing homogeneity. It might not actually lead to homogeneity, but I think it's bad to even nudge players in that direction. It's not a big deal anyway, since the most powerful people will always start with a 6[8] in a primary skill rather than a 4 in a skill group. It just creates that undesirable incentive which I have a knee-jerk reaction against (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

In effect it creates an incentive to buy Firearms 1 or 2, before you separate the skills of the group, and buy your primary flavour of deadliness. True combat chars might even bother with Firearms 4. So you obtain some basic competency in Firearms, specialise, then start to get even better. I like. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[Arashi]

re: the Extreme Sports Group

We did this for the current game I am in... My adept started Parachuting and Diving, and I wanted a third skill to reflect on things I would think were a bit beyond just "Gymnastics"

We settled on "Body-Controlled Vehicles". Things that could not possibly EVER be based on VR, that needed active (conscious) body control/movement as the main element of mobility: skateboards, hoverboards (skimmer discs exist-how about for people w/o cyberfeet), surfing, sailboarding, waterskiing, etc.

I thought that it would be the compliment to Parachuting that Cybertech is to Medicine: You can be a doctor without learning too much Cybertech, but it helps in the 6th world to know both. If you are a great skydiver, you may know about moving about in formations, but a person with Body-Controlled Vehicles would know how to fly accurately in a wingsuit (look it up on Youtube if you haven't), sky-surfing, etc.

Excellent video of controlled Wingsuit Flight

Further Tangent... As for what someone said about skills being overpriced - I wholeheartedly agree. Pure RAW with no "Tweaking": for the DP you get from skills alone, they are way too expensive... UNLESS they give something more for their rank. We had to houserule Tweak for this, and instituting the "Hits are limited to the Skill Rank + 1" was instrumental to doing 2 things. #1: Stopped cheap power-creep from bonus dice galore (gear, magic, etc) with no or little regard to actual skill development. And #2: Curing the issue of Stat-raise being so much more karma-effective than Skill-improvement.

Then, we lowered the cost of skills (BP and karma improvement) to encourage more development. Works for us, YMMV.

[Draco18s]

also, dodge isn't really an absolute must. in fact, it's largely only a good choice for those who are non-combat characters.

Or anyone with multiple initiative passes who thinks that just maybe they might be getting shot at in the next few seconds.

Which should be every combat character ever built.

Why have 4 dice to "Not getting shot" when you could have 8 for only 10 BP? Double your dice, double you life.

[Fortune]

The point Jaid was making is that Gymnastics is an adequete substitute for the Dodge skill if the character also possesses a Melee skill.