A quick question about skills and skill groups.

It gives the example in the book that someone buys the "stealth" skill group at level 4 at creation, then decides a month later that they mostly use infiltration so they split the group and increase their infiltration skill to 5, so they then have the seperate skills, infiltration5, disguise4, palming4, shadowing4.

My question is, can i do this at character creation or only later with karma?

I want to give my char the firearms skill group at level 4, but then increase my pistol skill to 6. Can i buy the firearms skill of 4 then spend to increase just the pistols skill, splitting the rest? (ie pistols6, automatics4, longarms4)
Or do i have to buy the skills seperately (and at a much higher karma cost) if i want to do that?

Cheers in advance for any help

hmm. offhand, im not aware of anything ruling either way. ask your gm, but its probably fine. It will just cost more karma when you decide to raise the rest of the skills in the group.

thanks for the fast replies guys
yep im happy to raise the other skills manually later with karma, i just want my pistols skill at 6 from the get-go

IMHO, I still think that is a cheap tactic to get a discount on build point costs for skills.

possibly, but i justify it as im an allrounder with firearms to a skill of 4, but have mainly concentrated on pistols giving me extra skill with them

I had a player in my group ask me about this as he was building his character. Here is what I think about it.

Buys Firearms Skill Group 4 costing 40 build points.
Bumping Pistols to 6 costs an additional 8 BP.
For a total of 48 BP. And it breaks the Skill Group.

If he had instead purchased Automatics 4, Longarms 4, and Pistol 6 then it would have cost him 56 BP.

So he saves 8 BP's just because of the way the purchased the exact same skills.

This kinda smells of a powergaming loop hole in the rules to me. Though it doesn's say that you can do this in character creation.

That's like saying it's a powergaming loophole for players to buy skill groups at all. Or a powergaming loophole for streetsamurai to not purchase themselves the magician quality and then burn out when they get cyberware. There are lots of ways for you to flush BP down the toilet for no practical benefit.

Yeah, getting the firearms skill group saves you up to 8 BP in exchange for you having every basic gun skill in spite of the fact that you are normally only going to use one or two. I seriously don't see the problem.

The question you should be asking is whether 40 points of Firearms is overpowered. And since it gives you the same number of dice as 40 points of Agility, I think that's a very hard case to make. Skills in SR4 are flat too expensive. By a lot. Asking people to pay even more is absurd.

-Frank

How is this powergaming? If he wants the 3 skills at 4, and 1 at 6, then buy them that way. You can do the exact same thing with karma. I did that with my technomancer. I had several skills I wanted to get to at least 4, but I am willing to break the group since I don't care to raise all of them to 5 or 6. *shrug*, it's just how the skill system works, what's the big deal

hmmm i get the feeling that unless an errata is released, this is going to be one of those issues that is going to be on a per-GM basis whether its allowed or not...

Well if you look at the example under Creating a Shadowrunner on page 75. It says.

the real ? that need to be ask is why are skill put into group in the 1st place.

seem to me that they are alike in what you are doing so are easer to learn how to do them all. if this is why you feal that groups where made. then it is lodical that you could get them as a group then split them up after you have raze it even at char gen.

where as if you have to go over the basic a 2nd time on a new time of skill. you may have of forgotten what you have learned because i in intuitive now. when you trying to mod that at a later date if can make for issues and having to back track... that the way i look at it anyway.

I tried to find an example of breaking a skill group at character generation in the rule book. I could not. The writers go out of their way in several places to imply that it is against the rules.

Characters should be able to do this for a few reasons. First, there is a synergy among similar skills that allows less effort to learn them. For example, it is easier to several languages if all of those languages are of the same language family. Second, starting characters are limited to either one skill at level 6 or two skills at level 5. Therefore, allowing it does not break the game. Third, it makes sense that a person with related skills would be especially good at one of them. It makes less sense that a person would be elite at something and untrained in a closely related skill.

So the character has saved 8 BP for a three-skill group and 24 BP for a four-skill group. Big deal. I actually like it when players spend BP on things other than attributes and gear. Otherwise magicians will tend to get Spellcasting at 7, counterspelling at 4 and ritual sorcery at 0. Let them spend a little more BP to get ritual sorcery too; its not that big a deal. They will be raising the "non-essential" skills, and that is just the opposite of power gaming.

I am of the opinion that if the writers intended this to be illegal they should have said something along the lines of "skill groups cannot be broken during character generation." They didn't, so break away.

I fail to see how it really matters whether or not its in the book. If your GM approves it, then it's okay. If your GM says no, it's not. IMHO, breaking up the group at character creation is munchkin powergaming. But that's just my opinion... YMMV.

That's kind've my point, though. If a GM let's you do something munchkin, you'll probably need it (either that, or he's a poor schmuck).
As to the actual topic, if there's no good reason for it, why does it even matter?

I was just having another look through character creation and found this example:

Blakkie: " OMFG? " Is there a reason you're being rude?

The section on page 264 is regarding karma expenditures after play has started. If you want to apply them to character creation as well, then I assume you allow your players to take 35 BP worth of positive qualities at creation on credit, to be paid back with their first 70 points of karma, as is stated at the bottom of the second column of that page, right?

There may be an implication that discourages breaking a skill group during creation, they may even errata it in later, but there is no prohibition against it in the book now. If the basis of your argument is out of context, it is a false argument. If you disagree with an opinion say so, but if you feel the need to be rude, make sure you have the right of it first, please.

If I misinterpreted your statement as rude when it was not meant to be so, I apologize. Such is the way of the internet and text based discussion...

I'm not gonna quote things, because I can't, this is just my opinion. But look at it this way.

You've got a skill group, at character creation. Ok? Now, you buy it up to 4. It's a skill group.

And you want one of the skills at 6. If you buy that 6, you don't have a skill group anymore, and, therefore, have to pay individual costs. Because Character Creation is not based on time. Does that make any sense? It's not "Well, Sammy the Samurai HAD Firearms at 4, but then wanted to be better with pistols!" because he Did NOT have Firearms at 4, ever.

My thoughts are hard to put down, so if I'm not making sense, tell me.

Yeah i understand how you are putting it rose, but my personal opinion is the view that even though it is "character creation" its not your character being suddenly born out of the ether, that character has a past up to this point.

As such i could see it as feasible that my character learnt to use firearms over the years (either as a job, or he was just an enthusiast) so a firearms 4 would represent a lot of time and effort in learning to use all firearms, but either he preferred pistols, or was just more naturally adept with them, as such he has a higher skill with them.

Either way its a per-GM ruling, but given the example i found in the manual a couple posts back it looks as if it is not possible during character creation.

Specializations don't do anything of the sort. You have a skill group if all of the skills are the same rating. Specializations do not change rating. Specializations cannot be purchased for skill groups, but a specialization on one skill doesn't keep you from having a skill group.

It says you cannot use specializations with skill groups, not that you can't use specializations and skill groups. These are similar, but not identical statements.

-Frank

The only time I would not allow this would be if the character had a
specialization in one of the individual skills -- specializations and skill
groups cannot be used together, so you could not "recombine" the separate
skills into a skill group if one has a specialization. I *might* allow it
if the player was willing to give up the specialization, sacrificing it in
favor of the skill group.

Please STFU Frank? Thanks!

I'd still allow it however
else my player will just buy Automatic Weapons at 6 as it covers 3 sizes of weaponry, covering most of your needs

i dislike the skill group system as it is now anyway, i'll probably invent something...