I'm beginning to realize that teams can be very weak in specialized areas without ever realizing they're missing anything -- until the feathers hit the fan, of course. In your games, are there skills, or skill sets, which tend to get neglected by many teams? And those of you who GM -- do you capitalize on this? That is, try to arrange situations in such a manner that uncommon skills become vital?

Thanks muchly,
TS


_____

"Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by stupidity."
--Robert A. Heinlein

Yes, a team can be (intentionally or otherwise) weak in a certain skillset. No, as a GM I rarely, if ever, have conciously exploited that. To do so would be 100 kinds of retarded. However, likewise will I simply never include it to avoid hindering the players. Usually good players/teams make a concious effort to cover all the bases to avoid coming up short.

Point being, if they avoid, say, negotiation because no one had enough skill points and no one bothered to raise it, and Im designing a run that will require negotiation, then it goes into the run and they better have karma pool on hand when it comes up. But simply adding negotiation rolls everywhere to punish them would do nothing but prove a lack of gm-ing skill.

So yea, it happens on occasion. No, its never added in due to metagame reasoning.

Usually deckers and their skills are rare in the games i played, so the runners often have to rely on NPC-deckers.

Other than that, most skills are covered, even the social ones. Medical skills are a bit behind, besides the usual First Aid.

Most of the time I end as part of a balanced group that covers most skills, which is always nice

I don't think I've seen a character with an interrogation skill of more than 2 or 3 though, mainly because it's so easy to ramp up how effective the interrogation is with social modifiers.

One of the common Skills i Find missing is Biotech/ First Aid. Players all seem to think that they will have a mage handy to patch them up, and not bothered as to what happens if it's the mage that needs patching up.

I find B&R skills beyond electronics and cars to be fairly rare.

It's kind of cool that one of the PCs in my game is greatly in demand by the rest of the group for his "B&R Home Improvement" skills.

I tend to have a crew with a lot of skill redundancy. AS a GM I would never target a lack of skill, but I won't avoid it either.

I try to avoid overtargeting a skill lack, but it's hard at times because I frequently take the game logic into account before I take the players into account. I've got one group right now with neither Decking nor magic, and it's reasonably difficult for me to keep things from getting too out of the characters' league. In another game, a medium-difficulty run turned downright hard after I forgot that the mage of the party was a conjurer and thus couldn't astrally project.

~J

I'd have to say that Biotech is the worst one that I see lacking. In the current group, the only character with Biotech is the mage. So when the mage gets taken down, all hell breaks loose.

Of course, it does create some pretty good roleplay situations. Said mage's girlfriend is the team's combat monster and she tends to react quite strongly to the mage being severely wounded. End result is that on several different occassions some poor NPC or street doc was forced to give medical aid. While she never actually "threatened" any of them, the way she went about it sent a clear signal of "Mage dies, you die. No pressure though."

The drawback to this is that Street Docs talk with each other, and it's getting hard for the team to find medical attention in certain parts of the city.

In our group, the Holy Trinity of skills seems to be Etiquette, Athletics, and Stealth (which every Runner created by our players seems to have). If points are skimped, they tend to be in the Vehicle skills (can't remember how many times the PCs were in trouble because the Rigger was off with his drones and none of the team members had any skill in driving) and Interrogation, which I've always felt to be an almost essential skill for intel. We use it to encompass Verbal Interviewing as well, so it's the most direct way to get information in even non-hostile situations. At the moment, the only skills that aren't covered at all are... umm, Laser Weapons and Whips? Underwater Combat?

With my group we usually only have one player that has a charasima of more than one and most of them don't care about the etiquette. They figure if a gun to the throat or a stun batton in the colon doesn't get them answers, then a skinning them alive will.

Oh, it gives them answers. More importantly, it gives them any answer the recipient thinks they want.

~J

Am I the only guy who pictured that one scene from Resevior Dogs when he read the title of this thread?

Uncommon skills are never Vital but they can be used somehow in the game to help. Interpretive dance can be used to gain the benevolence of a Prince, or MafiaDon, or some such. Playing of Instruments can make a few creds on the street each night and can help make new contacts.
As a general rule I have characters start out with the necessary skills. Combat Armed and Unarmed, Firearms, Melee, Stealth, Survival, Ettiquette, a Vehicle skill and the B/R skill for that vehicle, StreetSams get Military Theory and Leadership, Mages get Magical Theory, sorcery, and conjuring, Deckers get Electronics B/R Computer B/R and Computer Theory.
After that they purchase whatever strange and unusual skills they think they are gonna need.

Resevior Dogs a very good representation of this group.

K-billy's super songs of the seventies…

~J

Computer. Charisma based skills were originally lacking but then people started to realize how much they needed to talk to the locals.

Way too many of them take computer illitericy and then pay fixers to dig up basic news data for them. A google fu master would do them wonders.

The one I never ever see that should be very common is Intimidation.

Basically every street combat charachter should have it at some level.

Not that mine do, with skills always ending up at priority C in sr3 for such charachters, charisma usually being somewhat low (2-3) and low skill ratings being so useless I always end up deciding to try to get it later.

I usually design runs without thinking of the character's skills. Often, there are many ways to do things so my players can usually get it done. They also get help from contacts in areas they are lacking in.

To TS and others in this thread;

Since I am TS's GM I ought to reply. Basically when I design a run I try and make the run balanced and include as many of the aspect of the game that make sense. Negotiation and other Social skills are generally important in my game, and I stress this during chargen and throughout the game. If the team is lacking in a certain area then that is a weakness that they need to overcome. I don't target them in these areas personally, but I am not going to put on kiddie gloves for them either. Also, during chargen I expect the players to make characters that make up a fairly balanced team. I don't allow all mages, or all sams, etc. Generally I tell them what is needed for the campaign and then let them decide as a group who will play what. I let them do this on their own, usually by leaving the room and leaving them alone to do this. I also stress the importance of having a backup. If there is only one person in the team that has negotiations and that person is not able to perform his/her duties then that could be a problem. Having someone who can also negotiate as a secondary purpose is a good thing. It is akin to having a plan B for all situations. I think that this is a problem that TS was facing in our game last session. The player of the face has been sick and has missed the last two sessions, and they didn't have anyone to fill the spot really well.

Veracusse

I often create scenarios that both play to and against the characters' and teams' strengths and weaknesses. It encourages roleplaying and is fun to watch them overcome. I don't ever require something they don't possess to succeed, but "boy, it'd be nice if we could just fly in" happened enough that they up and learn how to.

In response to the original question:

Yes, I've exploited my group's weakness before without considering it 'lame' or 'all kinds of retarded'. I find nothing at all wrong with presenting dilemas that make my group have to think outside the box, when they do not possess a certain key skill. They're a witty bunch and come up with some inventive stuff most all of the time. It's pretty fun for me to see them tackle problems like this.

Sometimes its as simple as them defaulting to their Att, but when they really need a clutch hitter, they go to some interesting lengths.

I whole heartedly agree that challenging players where they may have weaknesses can make for a fun and interesting run. I don't ever consider exploiting their weaknesses as a means to keep them down and frustrated as players, but rather as a way to challenge them. Plus this is how they learn where to spend their Karma and grow as pcs. Kinda reminds me of real life .

Veracusse

I just run games. There are always more than one way to deal with every situation, and if the group doesn't have access to the skills to do things in a certain manner then they'll adapt and try to acheive their goal via different means.

The one and only weakness I ever exploit is 'Lack of Common Sense'. Twenty bloody times I give them the description, in Four different ways, and each time Mention the clue, and still they ingore it. As nice and kind as I am comparatively they still wind up slotting the run because they decided to ignore something really important or "Didn't take notes", or "Lost said notes", <sigh> I love my players I really do, but sometimes <inserting magazine, jacking slide, fastening silencer> you just hafta let them be imperfect humans.

LOL, reminds me of a PC who took gremlins lvl2 and computer illiteracy, man I had fun GM'ing those situations

Yes, but you should not restrict the Flaw to those situations that restict the PC, but apply it whenever the Flaw may apply. Therefore if the NPC villain wants the PC to open that maglock to his prison door, the PC might just screw it up and lock the villian in more securely.

That is how I read it as well. It uses the example how a mage would suffer the +1 if trying to read another mages electronic library. Basically if it is not theirs in character generation then they suffer the +1.

I dunno, I'd say as long as they keep it on them, for longer than a couple runs, its 'theirs' and they'd finally figure it out.

That is a good point. basically they would learn how to use it over time. If they find or buy a new PDA for example it would take them so many days of use to learn how to navigate where as a regular person would be able to operate the new PDA almost instantly because they both have a comon core.