I try to set up a list of examples of knowledge skills giving bonus dice. I used only skills from the sample characters so far.

e.g.:
Border Patrol Tactics + LOG: Bonus to Infiltration roll at border crossing
Lone Star Procedures: Bonus to Initiative when opposing the Star
Fine Cuisine, Goblin Rock, Combat Biking, Conspiracy Theories: Bonus to Etiquette with adequate counterpart
Operating Systems: Bonus to "Crash OS" action
Firearms Design: Bonus to Armorer
Auto Mechanics: Bonus to called shot at weak spot
Data Havens: Bonus to Data Search
Spirits: Bonus to Negotiation when using Calling

I think one should not get all successes but net hits against a treshold determined by the GM.
it's really difficult to set up hard rules, because there are infinte different knowledge skills

Wasn't there a rule in SR3 of adding half of either the successes rolled on an applicable Knowledge Skill roll, or half its rating?

I, too, have "_____ Procedures" for various groups, be it the Star, local law enforcement, security forces for various corps. I also use it for knowing where certain... goods can be acquired. Drug dens, gun runners, gangs, Matrix deadzones. Stuff that a contact could be used for, but I can't wrap my head around a contact "just" knowing what they do.

I also view them as a way of making the character more. It might never come up in a session, but there's just something interesting about a character wanting to know alot about haiku poetry. And of course, if the Client happens to share a similar interest, then hey, possibly some bonuses to Negotiations and what not.

At my table, if the player has a relevant knowledge (and they bring it up), The hits on the knowledge roll add extra dice to the active roll, as if the player is assisting themselves.

I'm leaning towards the "assisted by knowledge" approach too. The problem sometimes can be that knowledges are a bit fuzzy. For example, "Arms Manufacturers" and "Ares Macrotechnology" overlap partially. This is why I'm not going to attempt to write these bonuses in detail.

Definitely do not give any numerical bonuses for Knowledge skills in SR4, ever. It's for answering questions like, 'do I recognize their tactics as Lone Star?', 'can I name the song playing from memory?', etc.

Using Tactical Knowledge

PCs and NSCs may use their tactical knowledge skills to plan actions in advance. You roll Knowledge Skill + Logic vs opposition's professional rating x2. The winning party gains bonus dice equal to the net hits. These dice may be distributed to the following rolls for the whole team: Perception, Attacking, Defending, Infiltration, Initiative with up to two dice per section. The planing player and the GM should make reasonable decisions. Only one plan may be used at a time, should the team not be able to determine whom they follow, the winner of a Leadership roll may decide. You cannot make a plan "on-the-fly". The GM decides how long it will take, net hits times 10 minutes might be a good guideline. Of course, a failed roll resulting in net hits for the NSC group works in your enemy's favor.
This bonus is cumulative with TacNet software, since they are based upon very different sources.

Modifiers:
no idea of the area -2
Floorplan +0
area recently scouted, up-to-date floorplan +2
no idea of the opposition -2
detailed knowledge about opposition (e.g. number, gear, location) +2

Examples:
-Hannibal's team is about to break into a military storage facility and he's the team leader and tactician. His teammate the rigger did scout the area with his drones just minutes ago so he gains a +2 bonus. He rolls his Military Tactics 4 + Log 4 +2 vs 6 (GM decided to give the soldiers on base an average professional raiting of 3) gaining two net hits. He decides the time will enjoy a +1 dice pool modifier for Infiltration and Attacking.
-Vengeance Joe is an Infiltrator and Gunslinger. He is about to enter a Yakuza safehouse and knows he will not be able to avoid a hit team. He has deep knowledge of many martial arts style although he himself is only trained in Firefight. He rolls his Martial Arts 4 (Asian +2) +Log 3 vs 2x4 achieving one net hit. He will use the bonus for all defending actions in melee fights (attacking would also be an appropriate choice).
-Samuel, the team's rigger is on the run. His van is packed with hot goods and his injured team. He's running for the border and wants to circumvent the authorities. He did sent his Nimrod ahead to get some idea about the area (+2), but has no information of who will await him (-2). He rolls Smuggling Tactics 2 (Border Crossing +2) +Logic 5 vs 2x3 gaining one net hit. He of course uses it for the upcoming vehicle infiltration roll.

Where's that from, anyway? Sounds like something replaced by TacNet. As written, it doesn't look *too* abusive, but I'd rather completely avoid numerical bonuses for Knowledge skills.

actually i made it up last night in my bed, before i fell asleep.
now, you reminded me of the tacnet bonus...
since we only use karmagen and there are no free knowledge points, I'd like some numerical bonus for them

Well, that's a different-colored horse. If you're actually paying something for the skills…

I just give knowledge. That's it.

Knowledge is its own reward. Also the 'Knowledge Skill' roll is the 'Save Against Own Stupidity' roll at my table.

I could see giving full net hits bonus if a skill is specifically related.
And half net hits if the skill is only loosely related.

Arms Dealers: Would probably help you in finding black market arms dealers.
Ares Technology: would give you more insight into the actual company, so if you were facing an Ares Security team you might get 1/2 dice
Security Procedures: would also give you half dice facing an Ares Team
Security Procerures(Ares) would give you full dice.

I'm not sure the game is balanced for DPs to get Stat + Skill + KSkill in most places, especially if KnowSkills can be applied to multiple real skills. Do you mean Knowledge hits as bonus dice, so it's more like KSkill/3? That might work *if* Knowledges aren't free.

if you had read my yesterday's post, you wouldn't asked that ^^
even more dangerous: a fail roll results in the opposition getting bonus dice..

Even if they are free.. and yes it's more like KSkill/3 max hits = skill rating.

They're not really 'free' they're part of CharGen.

Knowledge Skills: Blood Sport Gambling might allow you to get Net Hits bonus to your DP on your etiquette or Con roll when trying to infiltrate that kind of group.

Make general knowledge skills only marginally useful, say net hits/2 round down.
Make specific knowledge skills be useful in those specific instances.

I -mostly- agree.

With few exceptions, active skills are for activities. knowledge skills are for telling the players something, however, I do find it fun to allow for a few smallish bonuses for truely exceptional knowledge rolls.



Most certainly not. A good knowledge roll would certainly help the PC's set an ambush, or know when backup is going to arrive for the 'Star. The planning and preparation might give an initiative bonus, (or a surprise-roll bonus), but definitely not a straight-up init bonus.


This I tend to agree with, however, I might implement it as roll the knowledge-skill, if you get any hits, you can add 1 die to your etiquette roll. That's it, after all, how many times have you been pissed-off when someone buts into your conversation trying to act all knowledgeable about what you're talking about?



Nope. However, if you have a good mechanics roll, I'd allow the PC to make a called shot at a vulnerable spot in the engine, otherwise you'd get to shoot at the tires like everyone else. This works particularly well for less-common vehicles, such as when trying to shoot a helicopter or tank in a vulnerable spot.


No on this one too - a particularly good knowledge roll might allow a PC to find a data-haven that might have something otherwise un-attainable.
Your data-search skill is your data-search skill.

Shooting a helicopter in a vulnerable spot..... if there's anything the Battlefield series of games have taught me..... a sniper rifle in the hands of a good marksman knows where the vulnerable spot of the helicopter is located.

There's nothing quite as satisfying as shooting the pilot while the helicopter is in the air and watching it suddenly keel forward and crash taking out a whole squad.

So a Knowledge skill roll to see if you know it? The TN = Rarity of the Vehicle vs the specificity of your skill.

Net hits means you're allowed to take a called shot against armor. Otherwise, you're just not allowed to do it.
Maybe a crit success would give you a bonus -2 AP.
Where as a glitch or crit glitch might give you +AP modifiers.

Something like that. I tend to run fairly fast-and-loose with the rules, so it depends greatly on what the PC wanted to do. E.g. 'I want to take-out the chopper's radar-unit while the thing is still taking off' would need maybe 2 hits to know where to shoot.

Also, military vehicles are designed to minimize any 'weak-spots' so the more 'militarized' anything is, the more hits you'd need to actually know of a weak spot.

A big thing for me would be to try and minimize the number of rolls made, so I'd down-play the utility of rolling knowledge to get an active bonus, otherwise players might powergamer the knowledge skill choices, and you'd end-up with everyone picking Corporate Security Procedures and Military Vehicle Weak-Points. That and having everyone do 2 rolls for every damned active skill test is a pain.

We're currently using the assisted knowledge bit in our game, and using knowledge skills as bonus dice is kinda neat.

However, in terms of balance, you might want to consider limiting bonus dice from an 'assisted test' to the rating of the knowledge skill.
This prevent someone with a high logic, and knowledge-boosting ware from getting a ton of dice from a knowledge skill of 1 and a cheap specialty.

Don't forget that not all Knowledge skills are Logic, right? Or am I just thinking of SR3, where everyone too knowledge skills in 'enemy weak spots' and 'how to kill people better'.

As a quick and dirty repartition, if it's learned in school it's based on logic, if it's the result of hands on street experience it's based on intuition.

More accurately, RAW places academic and professional knowledge under logic, street and interest knowledge under intuition.

Right, thought so. Now, it's obviously easier to boost Logic, but I feel like Joe Runner is more likely to already have a high Intuition to skim cheap bonuses from 'Street Knowledge: Killing People and Avoiding Damage'.

It could well be Professional Knowledge: Killing People and Avoiding Damage. Many of the Knowledge skills in the books are not explicitly Acad/Pro or Str/Int, this is why I often ask my players to decide how their characters came about these knowledge and write down what type of Knowledge skills they are taking.

And I can see the Street Sam, yelling at his Fetch Agent to find him a knowsoft on Barghests and RIGH THE HELL NOW.. this thing is tearing through the squad.

IF someone has a knowledge skill:Killing People and not getting caught
That's awesome.. but why as a gm are you allowing it? Does their background make sense for them to have it? Are they a Mafia Hitman turned independent? CIA trained wetworks guy?

There's also a question of how much of the knowledge was "school" gained or experience gained. Or what about knowledge that completely goes contrary to what is being taught? After all, if the tank commanders in World War II subscribed to the school of thought on tank warfare that was being taught prior to the war (based on experiences from the Great War) tanks would have been moving along at about 3mph with infantry.

The game doesn't adequately model what portion of a knowledge is intuition based and how much is logic based. Also consider that to learn something the teacher must possess an equal or higher skill level in order to teach that level to another character.

Consider the descriptors for each rank of a professional knowledge.
Rank 1: High School Graduate
Rank 2: First year university student (1 year higher education)
Rank 3: Associate's Degree (2 years higher education)
Rank 4: Bachelor's Degree (4 years higher education)
Rank 5: Master's Degree (6 years higher education)
Rank 6: Doctorate (8 years higher education)
Rank 7: Einstein/Hawking

Let's say the character has a small unit tactics professional knowledge at 5. Having dealt with a number of small units as well as organized combat ops for the runners the player wants to improve the character's SUT skill from 5 to 6. Where is he going to find someone with a SUT skill of 6 to teach him? Or would it be appropriate to have the player gain a SUT street knowledge skill of 1? If you do the latter, in order to accurate express where the knowledge is coming from, how do you start dealing with SUT knowledge checks? Do you force the player to use Street Knowledge: SUT and Intuition where that is appropriate and Prof Knowledge: SUT + Logic where that's appropriate? If you do that, suddenly you make the characters experience or learned knowledge useless in one situation or another. Do you combine them and use the appropriate attribute?

I tend to prefer all knowledge skills using either Logic or Intuition based on what attribute is most appropriate to the situation. Not Professional/Academic only use Logic and Street/Interest only using Intuition. For example, using Small Unit Tactics in a building. Use Logic with it to judge the "obvious" entries and avenues of approach. Throw a second Intuition based check to spot "non-obvious" avenues or other considerations that would have come from experience.

Paranormal Critter Knowledge is a fine skill to have, you can roll to identify stuff, know the strengths and weaknesses, etc.

As far as in-character reasons for having certain skillsets, with knowledge skills it's easy. They read-up on it. That's all the knowledge skill is, just raw knowledge. Sorta like reading about guns or sex on the internet, unless you've had actual practice with either, all the reading in the world isn't going to make you good.

I was just using a little hyperbole, sabs. We're discussing the GM allowing Knowskills to add dice, so obviously the GM allowing things is on the table. I didn't really mean you'd get such a skill, hehe. However, the reality isn't *far* from that.

Don't forget that everyone can just buy KnowSofts. Free dice, any subject, ASAP.

Well, I once tried to have a character with a Knowsoft R5 : Mafia

My GM said hell no, if someone knew that knowsoft existed, they'd kill you for it.

It's the internet. Everything exists.

Yeah, but getting a Knowsoft: Mafia 5 should probably be a story on it's own.
Or you know Knowsoft: Ares dirty Secrets