I want to purchase and improve the magic skills in skill groups only - Sorcery, Conjuring, and Enchanting. Don't the skills you get in the higher priority levels for magic ruin that idea?

Just finagle your metatype priority and Magic priority to get you the appropriate levels. Human B and Magic D could get you to the right spot for example.

Well, I would think that if you took Priority A for Magic resulting in 2 Magic skills at 5, you could in theory trade in for the equivalent cost of a skill group to buy. So instead of Spellcasting 5 you might get Sorcery Skill Group X (which will probably be 3 but again I don't know all the chargen costs in skills right off hand).

Or spend five of your skill bumps on the third skill of the group and combine them back into a group post skills step...

Are either of those things legal, or just workarounds if the GM allows it?

For the moment I would call them workarounds until I can get my hands on the final release.

And even if not specifically outlined, your chargen is providing you with a pile of points for a skill, you could make the case for juggling it a bit so long as your effective cost is the same and not trying to exploit it to change Spellcasting 5 to become Sorcery Skill Group 5 without further points from somewhere being added in to pay for it.

The latter more than the former -- if you've got Sorcery at 5 and Counterspelling at 5 (for "free" from the priority chart), I don't recall anything in the skills chapter that would mean you can't buy Ritual Spellcasting up to 5, and then call it the Sorcery Group. The final steps of chargen specifically let you break skill groups apart if you want to (spending your starting karma to buy a specialization for just one skill in the group, for instance), so I can't think of any reason it wouldn't allow for the opposite to also hold true.

In SR4, to my understanding, you could always reuinite skills back into a group so long as they were all at the same level. So if you had Pistols and Longarms at 3, and your Automatics was at 2, but then you increased it to 3, you could then regroup them all and increase the Firearms group to 4 as a whole.

The same should be possible in SR5, no?

~Umi

It is actually even more explicit in SR5 that all the skills of the same group at the same levels can be reunited to become the skill group again.

You could always get assensing and astral combat for the two skills from the Magic priority.

"By your ratings combined, I am CAPTAIN SORCERY!"

I wanted to do that, but I don't think they count as magic skills.

In the Skills chapter, the skill descriptions are broken down by category (e.g. physical, social, technical, etc.). Under what heading do tho two skills fall?

Did that actually make any of the previews? I'm not entirely sure what did and what didn't at the moment.

In SR4, however, those were Magical Active Skills.

There are other magical skills that you can take with those two bonus skills, leaving the three skill groups fine and dandy.

Assensing and Astral Combat, for example, could be taken with your "two magical skills at 5" bonus, letting you buy your groups as you wish.

How are you going to take all 3 as skill gorups, even with A in skills that is only 10 points in skill groups or what 3,3,4, or are you going with something like 1,6,3 or something?

Anyways I wish there was a way to convert standard skill points into groups without having to buy all the skills, as skill groups should be discounted. It is the rare group where each skill continues to add an equal value past the first.

My idea was to improve it with Karma rather than the initial skill group points.

In that case I'd go 1,3,6 or 1,4,5 depending on where you want the groups to pan out. Given how karma advancement is skill group going to x 5? tanking 1 of them is the cheapest bet, heck depending on the cost to buy a group 5/5 might be the best idea and buy one up from 0. On an additional note if you are not going for the flavor of skill at X level if initiation is allowed do the math nd see if initiation+ magic going up gets you more dice than trying to boost the skills.

I don't understand that statement.

Thanks for your help. I'll probably have to have a lower skill priority anyway. I just wanted the three skill groups to be clean, and if the astral stuff counts as magical skills, that's exactly what I'll do.

But you know, remember that astral signature erasure thing... that should be a skill... and then you could have an Astral skill group!

Sorry, by flavor I meant a skill rating 6 means a professional level of skill in 5e apparently. Skill level 3 is probably amateur. So if you want a certain feel based on the level of training you might want your skills at X,(I want to be considered to have a professional level of skill/knowledge) if you just want the most dice possible you might go a different route and boost the magic attribute. If you want to be good at all 3 groups and they all use the magic attribute you can probably go pretty far just increasing the magic attribute after you get the groups to some base level of competency. For example increasing each group of rating 3 to rating 4 would cost a total of 60 karma, ignoring initiation you could go from 11 magic to 12 magic for the same amount, with initiation in the cost its probably from 9 to 10 magic before increasing the group becomes cheaper. Now if you later decide you only care about the sorcery group the numbers change a lot.

Thanks. I need to read the new rules to see that enchanting can do. I'll probably build evenly, but there are a lot of options for karma to be used on.

Hmm... been really busy with work and such to view the forums lately... but just saw this thread.

I have a question on the preview... in the skills column the rules section stops before it gets to the pick skills entry is the number after the slash the number of skill points for group skills?

Shem... do you really need all the skills in group form? Judging by the aspected magic notes in the preview there is most definitely an enchanting, sorcery, and conjuring group. And it would be quite funny if the authors overlooked the enchanting group after making it an aspected tradition of it's own. (I'm guessing there's the arcana, enchanting, and some other skill in there if enchanting wasn't, maybe for collecting reagants who knows).


What about the magical skills that aren't part of any group. Assensing & Astral combat immediately come to mind and both are important. Especially with the changes I'm just now reading about in direct combat spells... attacking a spirit with a weapon focus in astral combat may be quite preferable now to trying to harm it with a direct combat spell before it disembowels you. (astral combat is also used to defend against their attacks... and it remains to be seen how a weapon focus works now).

You could pick those two up with those points as they're magical skills then spend the rest out of the group allotments normally.

Yes.

And to bypass a potential followup question, it is additional points for groups, it does not come out of the base number to the left of the slash.

I normally want Sorcery in group form because I normally get Spellcasting and Counterspelling for sure, and Ritual Sorcery then is half price. The same for Conjuring. The Enchanting skills (according to the preview) are Alchemy, Artificing and Disenchanting. That would leave me with two magical skills to select if I choose Magic at priority A or B. If I want to invest in two from a group of three skills, I would probably get the third at half price instead. I want to read what they do. Using them on Assensing and Astral combat is a splendid idea, until they add something else to make an Astral skill group.

You can also try choosing a higher skill points category , with higher group points, and a lower magic category. Use your special attribute points to bump magic back up to 6. You lose some spells, but can also improve that with karma.

Lots of options.

Shem... you completely missed my point. There are magical skills which are not part of any skill group!

Three of of the biggies in fact. Arcana, Assensing, and Astral combat. Assuming they're still in the system carried over from SR4. (astral combat and assensing most assuredly are).

Lets face it perception is one of the most commonly overlooked skills of newbies in particular coming out of chargen and assensing is it's analogue for all perception purposes on the astral.

And astral combat now looks quite superior to trying to nuke things with direct spells while it's trying to eviscerate you with astral combat which no longer does cha/2 base... but Cha base!). Remember at astral speeds something can go from out of sight to in your face in the blink of an eye, especially in something like a building with a lot of astral shadows which impede LoS but not astral mvoement.

In 4th... Arcana was the skill you'd use to craft new spells. But it also doubled as a massive magical knowledge skill.


Yeah Dire... that Skills 'A' category looks mighty tempting for many characters.... assuming the marginal cost of 4 more attribute points.
Bumping 4 attributes from say 4->5 is an extra 100 karma in SR4 cost terms...
10 extra skill points and 5 extra skill group... assuming they're used to max out new skills is about 22 karma for 4 skill points. 55 for one skill group from 1->4. so that's 99 karma right there... with an extra skill group and 2 extra skill points differential from the B priority step.
Though for anyone with higher attribute caps... the attributes are probably a better deal. The problem being the classic the more points you stuff into attributes... the more they're worth and the more you generally want to pile into them. The more you can get away with high attributes and say 1 point in this skill... another 1 point in that skill... with a few cherry picked skills raised to the max.

Yes, Of course. I thought that since Astral Combat and Assensing are not based on Magic, they would not count as magical skills. Now I know better.