I'm already fairly sure I'm going to bump the free Knowledge Skill ranks in SR5's Prioritygen from 2(Log + Int) to the previous 3(Log + Int). I'm also considering granting free Active Skill ranks equal to 3(Agi + Rea). The in-universe justification is that, just as smart people tend to know more, athletic people tend to do more. The metagame justification is cutting the degree of hyperspecialization normally necessitated by the constraints of chargen.

Maybe consider 1 x Att in skills based on each attribute? Maybe just for some attributes.

It migt not matter in your game but that would make attributes even more ridic good. Though I have similar issues, I don't think I'd go with that fix. Something i liked about SR3 was scaling cost of skills based on skill rank to attribute. It did a decent job of motiviating spreading out skills as once you exceeded the link attribiute it got expensive.

That's potentially 36 extra active skill points. That's almost worth an extra B priority in Skills.

Knowledge skills get chosen when the players think they will be useful.

"Does anyone think they have a Knowledge skill that may apply and be used as part of a Teamwork test for X?"

"Who has skill X or similar at 4 or higher?" , then hand that person the handout or secret note for that player to reveal to team, if they want to reveal it even.

When the players gets more of the spotlight and contribution to what's happening based on what knowledge skills they are having, they make a point of having them.

AS a GM that's one of my key review on Character Sheets, Qualities and Knowledge skills. Obscure knowledge are an chance for me to be creative in presenting information.

Wait, so I could hyper-specialize in my skills while doing skills E?

If you wanted me to hit you over the head with a large, heavy, hardbound book, yes. Yes, you could.

Knowledge Skills are one thing, Active Skills are quite another. The former idea seems fine to me, the latter seems outrageous.

~Umi

This doesn't seem like it would encourage roundedness - rather, it would encourage more specialization where characters who could get the skills they needed from this would be able to spend as little as possible on skills and instead spend their chargen resources to deepen their specialty. A gunslinger adept, for example, could get their main skills from this, put their needed E in Skills, and thus be able to go A Attributes, B Magic, and could likely get away with Elf C and Resources D. Such a character could have Agility 7 and Reaction 5.

If you wanted something to encourage roundedness, you'd need something that gave X to spend on Physical skills, then Y to spend on Social Skills, and so on so that it's actually resulting in characters with a wide array of skills.

Yeah, if the problem is the players tend to hyper-specialize their characters giving them more skill points will probably just allow them to hyper-specialize in more things. Instead of being really good at one thing and okay at a few more, they'll be really good at 2 or 3 things and okay at everything else. Plus, by linking the free skill points to AGL and REA you're giving more Active Skills (something everyone uses) to a particular subset of characters-- the physical combat types.