QUOTE (Tymeaus Jalynsfein @ Mar 12 2015, 09:07 AM)
My issue with Priority in SR3 stemmed from the types of Characters that I always saw coming out of Chargen. They were not real people, but caricatures (AT BEST).
Example: a player has 18 Skill points, but instead of crafting a character that makes sense with a number of skills portraying a concept, I tended to see 3 Skills at 6, all Shadowrunner, never ben anywhere but the Shadows Specific (regardless of the past) and so out of synch with the background that it was tear-inducing. Yes, that was what the player wanted, but the character was not a character. It was a collection of numbers that in no way looked like a person at all. And the character would die a glorious death several session sin, and then you got a new character sheet with the same crap on it. Horrible character design. Now, I know not everyone does that, so I try not to paint everyone with the same brush, but it was a trend that I saw more often than not.
Well, that was why I used the Hobby Skills bit. I encouraged people to use their Knowledge skill points to pick up interesting traits for their character. Not just cool knowledges that might be useful, but skills like Art Restoration, Skateboarding, and Competitive Underwater Ballet. They might technically describe an active skill, but in practice they were a lot more fun.
Beyond that, I never actually saw a real character with only three skills at 6. The worst were the one-trick ponies, and those typically had two 6's at most. What was more common was two very high skills with specialties, and then a few low-ranked skills covering other areas. Sure, it's possible, but it's also not an optimal choice; and the problem with these sort of builds is people who optimize at the expense of character personality. There were a few experimental builds that looked like that, but I don't think any of them actually saw the light of day.