The newest designer diary had me wondering a bit about skills. Do we know exactly how advancing skills will work? Will there be the potential for multiple ranks of a skill, for example Folklore 3...which gives me 3 yellow dice to roll along with my stat? Or is it a simple you have it or you don't? Jay explained a bit about specialization and I gathered from that there's ultimately two levels of a skill, trained (you get a yellow dice) and specialized (get a yellow dice and a white fortune dice).

If a skill is ranked as only Trained and Specialized, my initial reaction is that this places a greater emphasis on the parent stat than the skill level of the character. I generally don't like this approach in systems. Its not a game breaker for me, I just tend to prefer greater emphasis on the skill level. But maybe my initial reaction isn't even accurate here since we don't specifically know the weight that one extra yellow dice brings to the roll. We know that it has the potential to open up, which is pretty significant. So who knows. I'd like to hear more about this or other folks thoughts.

After I got to thinking about it it seems like I recall v2 functioning similarly, in that you only got training and then maybe specialization in each skill, and each one giving you a +10 to your check or something? Am I remembering that correctly?

Well, on the character sheet there are 3 boxes beside each skill and in the new designer diary there was mention of adding 'fortune' dice to the skills (if you had access to them or purchased them more than once). So, yes. I'd say skills level in that you roll more dice when you spend advancements to improve them.

NezziR said:

The fortune dice was mentioned not for advancing skills, but as specializations that apply to some uses of skills. Since the fortune dice don't seem to be quite as powerful as the skill dice, that makes specialization a nice bonus, but not overwhelmingly powerful.

Awesome, Jay's latest clarification indicates that Skills can be trained several times to increase their rank and then specialization can be added for specific uses within the skill. My concerns have been alleviated, sounds good to me...

I rather like the skill system from the sounds of it.

It makes a sense that a character (let's say a raconteur) with a high fellowship and the charm skill would be able to handle themselves with a bit of social pinache be it haggling, gossip, commanding others, or knowing which fork to use with which course of a meal. But that same character would be outclassed by a dilletante who specialized in Etiquette or the merchant that is rolling with a higher specialisation in Haggle. Keeps your social characters able to hang in all social situations as opposed to being a one trick pony and then failing with the soldiers when it comes to the one task they are not trained in.

It doesn't seem like a mandatory thing that needed fixing from v2, but it is at least interesting and doesn't seem as though it will get in the way or limit the skill system.