First I will open with a quick quote from Page 118 of SR4A.



Lets say I have a Hacking Skill of 6(8 Exploit). I then inject myself with Rating 3 Neocortical Nanites (Page 110 Aug). These provide a +1/Rating Point to all Logic Based Skill rolls (Note to the actual Roll, not the skill). Do I have an effective Hacking Skill when using Exploit of 9 (+2 from Specialization, + 1 Neocortical) or 11 (+2 Specialization, +3 Neocortical). What if I then Trance, that provides a +2 to all Logic Based Skills. Do I get any benefit from it in conjunction with the other two? Do I still have a Rating of 9, or is it now 13?

It is my opinion that due to the language used I should have an effective dicepool of 13. 6 to start with, plus 2 because of the Spec. + 2 from the Trance. That means I now have a modified Skill Rating of 10. Then I add the Neocortical and that adds more to the dicepool itself, not to the skill.

Thoughts? (Sorry if that is difficult to follow, I am having difficulty putting my thoughts into words tonight. Damn dyspraxia! If I was on a VOIP connection I could explain it much better)

Neocortical neural amplifiers increase the dice pool when using those skills, they do not increase the effective rating of the skill itself, so you get the full +3 bonus from them. Reflex recorders, for example, add to the actual skill rating.

Mmkay, thats mostly what I was wondering about. It is also what I thought it would be, but was not sure. Thanks again AH.

Well, then, to resurect an older thread a bit, Ancient History, would you say that the rule cited would apply to "Linguist" in particular, because otherwise it's particularly useless as a quality. To get the full benefit, you'd have to spend at least four points in a language in the first place. And since it caps at 6, it's not really the kind of "enhancement" from Adept Powers or 'Ware either, so game balance is largely taken care of. The other big one I guess would be "Muse", as that one caps at 6 as well IIRC.

My say would be that since they cap at 6 they apply their full value all the time. Things like "Catlike" make a point of mentioning "must take at least two levels to apply" because they aren't capped at 6.

Your thoughts?

Uh...not quite sure what your question is there, K. For a whopping 5 BP you learn languages in half the time and get a +2 to your effective skill rating in any languages you know. That means for the cost of rank 1 you're operating at rank 2 (rounding-up!); or effective rank 4 if you take a specialization. Combined with the Linguistics adept power, and your character can become basically conversant in nearly any language by spending half the day on the couch watching foreign-language trideo.

Granted, I've never seen a character take French 7 (10, Discours magique +2), but I'm sure that somewhere in the vast world of SR, someone's done it.

At this point I should probably remind that specialization in a skill does not add to the base rating, it simply provides 2 more dice to tests that apply. So you could totally have, say:

w/Reflex Recorder (Clubs)
Clubs 6 (8, +2 Pistol Whipping)

w/Aptitude (Athletics), Improved Ability (3)
Athletics 7 (10, +2 Parkour)

And of course you can mix-and-match reflex recorders, Aptitude, Inspired, Linguist, Improved Ability, etc.

another question to Skill Ratings:

Skill Improvement: Do I pay the (unmodified rating+1)*2 or (modified rating+1)*2 karma?

cya
Tycho

I'm pretty sure that skill augmented maximums actually round down, otherwise i could have a skill of 11 with aptitude.

AH We're asking if the bonus to language skill from that quality is limited by the augmented maximums, as all the other similar skills in RC state that their limited by augmented maximums in thier descriptions
execp Linguist.

It's not explicit, so for anything below 7(10) it's the GM's call.


Probably an oversight; unless the quality specifically gives an exception, I'd assume the regular rules are in effect.


Unmodified.

Sorry: It's actually modifying the skill rating, and skill rating bumps are capped at .5 x Base Rating, so you get NO benefit from the quality until French 2, when you get the first bump... or are Qualities a rule unto themselves (like I've been treating them)?

If your GM lets you round up, you can have 1(2).

Right, that's what I was getting at. Since IIRC the knowledge related qualitied (School of Hard Knocks, Technical School Education, College Education and Linguist) don't allow going above the normal cap of RTG 6, and so I was basically suggesting that in those special cases the ordinary limits might not hold.

To borrow your example of Linguist and Linguistics, it would let you duplicate some of the trully remarkable feats of people skilled in tens of languages, that with just some simple exposure within hours or at most days are effectively fluent in common use (RTG 3). Getting the more difficult idioms and linguidtic diferentiations takes more time and effort, however. And especially in the case of languages, linguasofts are ubiquitous and cheap, so it would only make sense to allow for the quaity to add more than the usual limit. Otherwise, even with rounding up, you get the first point with Linguistics, and the quality pops it effectively up to 2. Then you have to learn 2 and 3 the hard way (but with the time bonus) before the last half of the quality kicks in to boost you to 5.

Seems kind of pointless when a RTG 5 LinguaSoft is so easy to come by and relatively cheap.

That is what I was thinking, but then you need an errata for SR4A, because this two quotes contradict each other:






cya
Tycho