Was wondering if doing something like this in chargen works:

I take Firearms Skill Group 1 for 10 BP.

I then want to upgrade my Pistols skill specifically to 4, therefore costing me 12 BP (increasing it from Firearms 1 3 points to being a 4 and its own skill)?

This doesn't feel exploitative to me in the slightest, although I have a feeling this is technically against the rules (seems kind of silly if it is).

By RAW thats not legal, as you can'y break skill groups at chargen.

p. 84 SR4A
"Skill groups may not be broken up
into individual skills for further improvement and specializations may
not be taken for skill group skills at character creation—although, as
always, individual gamemasters are free to allow this option."

Well, hot damn. I think in the end I decided not to go with Firearms 1/Pistols 4 anyway... Pistols 5 baby!

I don't know about you, but I've never been impressed with how nigh-impossible it is to conceal an SMG/Assault Rifle/Other longarm and the slight increase in damage they do over heavy pistols (yes, Burst Fire is nice, but is it worth it?).

Assault rifles are not a stealth weapon. They have a much better range than heavy pistols, and a full burst can either do a heck of a lot more damage, or really chew up the dodge-monkey's defensive dice. Not as essential as pistols. I think nearly every character should have a pistols skill, but only front-range combatants need an additional skill in a heavier weapon.

Also, while I prefer heavy pistols to machine pistols myself, there's still the fact that you can get automatics and be able to use a machine pistol for stealthier jobs, and break out the Ares Alpha for heavier combat.

Yes, yes, and a hundred times yes. An Ares Predator IV deals a base 5P damage. An Ares Alpha deals 6P damage. If you install a gas-vent 3, personlized grip, and a foregrip has a recoil compensation of 7, which is enough to two short bursts with no penalty, or a long burst and a short burst with a penalty of -1 on the second attack, equivalent to the recoil of an unmoded pistol. Assuming narrow bursts, your long burst deals 11P before successes, and your short burst deals 8P before successes, significant increases over the predators 5P.

Pistols are cheap, reliable, and concealable, but just like real life the bigger gun in a firefight has the advantage.

Though not as much advantage as it would have in RL. But yes, a 3 ft long rifle is hard to hide. Even with a short barrel and a folding stock it's hard to get below about two feet long. And with a mag installed it's worse. Your best bet is in some sort of luggage.

Yeah, but pistols a quasi-legal (you can get a licence for it) automatic weapons aren´t. I heard a lot about the combination of machine-pistols with stick-and-shock-ammo, but aren´t these autofire-pistols also illegal?

Most assault rifles, machine pistols, and submachineguns have the same legality as most pistols. The few that you can't get a permit for generally are specially designed to evade security measures, include grenade launchers, or are manufactured exclusively for one military force like the FN P93.

I never saw erata that Nerfed the availability on the M22A3, the model with the integral grenade launcher. "Hey, Ma! Look! I gots me a grenade lawnchah! An' it's legal, lahk!" *snicker* Kinda like there are a couple legal weapons with silencers? I guess in the 6^th World, armaments companies can get their toys loopholed just as effectively as today.

Frankly, I don't see any particular reason to DISallow it, as it makes for more organic feeling characters, and once you break it, you can't go back until all the skills match. And even a single specialization permanently breaks it.

But WHY would a single specialization break it? I would just say that you needed to have specializations for all of the relevant skills in the Group...
Just a thought... is all...

Our interpretation has been that you could not buy a single specialization for the "group," i.e. Urban for the Stealth Group... as "Urban" does not make sense for Palming or Disguise... though you could take "Urban" for Shadowing and Infiltration, something for Disguise, and something else for Palming... as long as the base skill levels were equivalent in the group (they were all at 3 for example) then the group was not "broken"

Anyway, I know it may not be RAI/RAW, but it has worked fairly well for us... and it does indeed allow for more organic characters in the end...

Well, I'd like that too, and for the same reasons, but there's the listed "exemption" on the skills themselves, not the specializations. I just buy them, then break them and live with it.

When i asked my GM about that, i got a " Why the hell not"? So we ignore the rule.

The rule itself is just a replacement for the "related skills" i think. If you are very good with a Hunting rifle you sure will be good enough with an sniper-rifle and such. Normaly i would allow merging, and breaking groups. Let people raise them with less Karma, if they have at least one skill belonging in that group higher... and such.

Why wouldn't it be allowed at char generation anyway? You are playing a complete educated and experienced man (or monster) why couldn't you have trained normaly and split them up years ago?

Me too for the most part... and only when I need ALL the skills in the Group...

Mostly becouse that would mean that the cost of excatly same skill in same level would have a diffenting total cost, depending on you backstory

Yeah, that would get confusing real fast...

The reason for the rule is quite simply... The skill group is a group discount.

But buying skills in chargen is already a linear cost (as opposed to an increasing cost in karma). So buying skills to high levels in chargen saves you a LOT of karma.

All, disregarding this rule does is allows you to abuse the WORST aspects of BP in chargen even more. (buying the one skill you want out of the group to high level while still getting the rest trained on the cheap). It's getting the best of both worlds and double dipping on your skill/karma discounts instead of actually having a few tradeoffs in chargen.


The rule prevents heavy double dipping. And quite frankly... it's childs play to break the group after the first run w/ 2 karma for a specialization. It's not a huge impediment not having the spec coming out of chargen.

So count me as someone who says to keep the rule intact.

Do you maintain the rule under Karma gen?

Under karmagen, I don't think the rule is needed.

It's just under BP... where it can be used for some of the worst examples of min/maxing and the costs don't scale correctly. Where it's a bit abusive.


NB: poster loves concept of karmagen, absolutely hates the published implementation as it completely eradicated the biggest benefit (getting rid of chargen Karma/BP ratio maximizing shenanigans; and instead replaced it w/ completely throwing out race balancing costs).