Can you only break a group by making a purchase of the individual skill with Karma? I could never find that particular notation in the book.

About breaking a SG via karma it's in page 264, and yes, there's no other place on the manual about breaking SG.

Yes.

Since you seem to be using BPs to increase Spellcasting, therefore that is all during character generation, no that is not legal. You cannot purchase and then break up a Skill Group during character creation. This also means you can't purchase Specializations during character creation, not that you normally want to do that much anyway because it is a 2 BP cost that later costs only 2 karma.

It is pork ribs, smothered in creamy butter, and all cooked up by a Gentile. Definately not kosher.

It was actually Rob Boyle from Fanpro in an email posted here a long, long time back. I don't remember who posted it up though. But it is in there along with the inability to break up a Group during character creation by purchasing additional points for a Skill within the Group. He covered a few other things on the subject too.

EDIT Here we go, the email is right at the top.

You buy a result straight up and every points of skill is worth the same in terms of cost in chargen.

During play, each point is worth progressively more as you raise.

Breaking Firearm group at level 1 to get 2 in pistols during play doesn't make that much sense. It costs 4 point of karma for pistols 2 but for only 6 more you get to raise the whole group which I think would be in the better interest of the player.

Breaking firearm group at 4 during play is obviously a good idea. It would cost you 25 karma to raise the group which is quite a few runs. But for 10 karma you get to 5 in pistols. More affordable.

So in play, the pressure to break SG increase with the rating of the SG.

In chargen it'd be 4 BP no matter what. So in chargen it would be optimum to take skill group and break them at will.

And instead of 'breaking the skill group', it would be more in effect like getting a discount on the other skills of the group.

A skill of 6 cost 24. Then for 6 point per level you can get the other skill up to 4.

That's how people would do it in practice. Get any skill they want and then toss 6 to 24 more BP to up the rest of the group. Often just 6 because just having the skill instead of deafaulting is a big deal. Lots of 4/1 in perspective.

Good? Bad? Seems to me the game was balanced against it in a way that equilibrate the specialists and the generalists.

The end result if you disallow breaking SG in chargen is that a PC who favors Skill Groups ends up with more total skill rank than the guy who favored individual skill, but the guy who favored individual skill has a significant edge in a few specific area.

I like it, I must say.

Well, there is a specific rule against taking specialization in a Skill Group.

If I let a PC take Firearm 2 and then spen 8 more BP to get Automatics 4, What's preventing him from taking a specialization in SMGs? He has Automatics at 4, distinctl from the SG, so why not, right?

Implicitly, if the rules forbid specialisation in a SG, they forbid upping one skill over the others. To me it's just common sense.

It's a bit like telling your kid he can't go into wading pool alone but not explicitly forbidding him to go into the larger pool alone. Should he understand that it's allowed? No. It's kind of implicit. Of course, good parenting would be to explicitly tell your kid he can't go into ANY pool alone and good writing would similarly be more explicit. But to me the intent is still very clear. Skill Groups are not supposed to be broken in chargen.

There are no rules for breaking up a skill group during creation. Those are only involved with karma purchase. Therefore there are no rules that allow you to do it in character creation.

This board has been up and down this thoroughly, just go back through the archives. You can try use whatever rationalization you like, it just doesn't fly. Feel free to house rule it though, of course.

No.

So basically, your GM decides. When in doubt, don't break up a skillgroup at chargen.

(I started in the NO! crowd, but allow it for my players now. Sadly, my own GM doesn't )

That's immediately under the heading Improving Skills and Skill Groups. Now, your interpretation falls to one simple logical flaw: You're not between adventures. You're generating a character who has never actually been adventured with before. Anything he's done in his IC past doesn't count since you never personally adventured with him for all of that time.

Now, why is that important? That's the only place where it mentions breaking skill groups as allowed. It doesn't mention it elsewhere.

Really? You should play checkers if you seriously want to avoid discussion like this.

Now, Conan's only problem is the alternative rule he is using is from a section that deals with between existing adventures for a character who has existed long enough for the player to take them on an adventure in an attempt to justify an action for a character that is still being created.

Now, if I can find this just from browsing the book and following the handy references in it, imagine what damage I could do if I actually read all of it.