I believe that giving your characters some hobbies or things they like to do during dowtime (anything from regicide or stasis/cryosleep to reading, painting or conversation/debating) is an important part of character design, even if you only buy the skills for it at a later time.

I generally just say that my PCs like to read or chat and tell stories during travel time or time between missions.

Reading doesn't require a skill (although I do take Linguistics sometimes if my character is learned and readscomplicated stuff), and conversational characeters generally already have Charm, and acceptable Fellowship, and often Deceive.

With that in mind, I have been trying to find appropriate interests for my PC - a blind untouchable mutant .

Seeing as nothing involving Fellowship or eyesight is possible, I was thinking that she'd love music.

Listening to music is easy - my GM has agreed to let me have a Good Sound-Recorder (ie, an MP3 player of sorts).

However, I can find nothing for playing music in the rules.

Scholastic Lore could do, but it seems to be knowledge of musical styles and currents (Int based stuff), and I was hoping to actually be able to play the fiddle (violin) or the guitar.

I'd love something Agility-based, so singing seems right out (as I presume it would depend on Fellowship).

If there's no rules for it, is there something like D&D's Skill Focus that I could use?

I think the trade skill has a stupidly named specialisation of performancer that can be used for playing music. For any other hobby skills you want trade might be a good default as well, making up the specialisation you want if it's not already covered. This does mean that they are professionally skilled however, if you just want someone who likes to play music, sing, craft or whatever but doesn't have any particular skill at it you can just say that's what they like to do as it's not something they could use to make money or do anything useful to the adventure so doesn't need a covered skill anyway.

On another note..... a blind, untouchable mutant, that's a pretty cool idea but...... wow, the poor b@st@rd, he/she is not in for a happy life, lol.

Hand-wave it. Using a skill for this is a bad idea.

Adding a skill for PCs' hobbies introduces an XP tax on something that should just be part of the character's background. Any skill you add for this will have 0 mechanical impact and will compete for resources with useful skills like Dodge, Tech-Use, etc. It's a very D&D way to approach RPG character building - if there's not a skill or feat for it, you can't do it. It's dumb.

Your characters are allowed to have personalities and interest without having to spend XP on them.

DH1 had "Perform (Singing)" -- it seems it was cut from DH2 as I imagine very few people found it useful, or because the designers at FFG thought like cps.

Personally, I like to have a mechanical representation for my character being better at something than someone else, if only because it feels more "honest". My suggestion here would be to have the GM re-implement the old Perform skill (using the Fellowship aptitude, rather than Trade's Intelligence), and either give it to you for free or have you pay XP for it, depending on how "optimised" your character is looking right now.

This way, players who care more about a realistic and colourful representation could be rewarded for doing so by gaining "free hobby proficiency", whereas minmaxers will have to decide whether they want to pay the XP or miss out on this stuff.

Huh. So I basically have to just houserule it, or just try to avoid actually having any tests (seeing as I want to be good at it, and it was hoping to use it to aid in a disguise).

Am I the only one here to think that playing music should be based on Agility instead of Fellowship?

I'd just make Ag tests for the fiddle (I took classes for a few years and trust me, you sure need quick fingers ), but I'm not sure if it that can be argued for the guitar.

However, I suppose that singing is Fellowship based

Huh. So I basically have to just houserule it, or ust try to avoid actuamlly having any tests (seeing as I want to be good at it, and it was hoping to use it to aid in a disguise).

Am I the only one here to think that playing music should be based on Agility instead of Fellowship?

I'd just make Ag tests for the fiddle (I took classes for a few years and trust me, you sure need quick fingers ), but I'm not sure if it that can be argued for the guitar.

However, I suppose that singing is Fellowship based

Unless the audience are musicians they are not likely to discover a mistake in your playing if you look like its on purpose. Showmanship. :-)

Fellowship would also make sense if they are using it as a disguise, just how well you can pull off that you are in fact a musician and not an inquisitorial agent.

If I remember correctly untouchables don't have a good time of things as far as fellowship goes but then people aren't likely to flock to listen to the music of someone who just fills them with a sense of wrongness no matter how well he plays.

Yeah .. it's perhaps a bit difficult to find an Aptitude that fits to any and all such activities* -- but when you think about it, if it can only be one, Fellowship makes the most sense. It covers the broadest range of performances, and if you think about it, it's all about performing (for someone else), which requires more than just knowing the craft, and is also dependent on one's aura and interaction with the audience before, during and after your gig.

(*: this is why I like the Focuses from the Dragon Age P&P ruleset - you can effortlessly invent new ones on the spot and just assign a characteristic you think is most appropriate)

Would there be just one skill for playing music ?

Or would different skills apply depending on what you are trying to do with that music ?

Music to charm should be easy to think of.

Music could deceive people by giving them an obvious reason for your presence, thus hiding the real reason.

Music could help with interrogation or inquiry by influencing the targets mood.

Intimidation with music could work if you're creative enough.

So the skill you roll depends on what you are trying to do with that music. Be creative

New Specialisation: Bard

Honestly, though, be careful not to overcomplicate things. If you really want to, you can chop up almost any Skill into a dozen subcategories, but this would lead to a lot of needless bloat. If you've arrived at that stage, you could as well just make up a special Talent for the one character you are writing this for, instead of inventing a dozen new Skills.

That being said, DH2 does use Specialisations for some Skills (like Operate, Ground is further divided into bikes, tracked, wheeled, etc), so if you want to, there is a precedent.

Huh. So I basically have to just houserule it, or ust try to avoid actuamlly having any tests (seeing as I want to be good at it, and it was hoping to use it to aid in a disguise).

Am I the only one here to think that playing music should be based on Agility instead of Fellowship?

I'd just make Ag tests for the fiddle (I took classes for a few years and trust me, you sure need quick fingers ), but I'm not sure if it that can be argued for the guitar.

However, I suppose that singing is Fellowship based

As Ameroth said trade performancer would cover it.

Don't forget that the book strongly encourages GMs to allow alternate characteristics to be used for skills depending on how they are being used. See page 96 for that.

In this case you could say trade performancer would be intelligence for writing music or planning a performance, fellowship for entertaining a crowd, and agility for just trying to demonstrate good basic playing technique or for something like playing to make a good recording.

As an untouchable though even when not using fellowship for something normally fellowship based the alternate characteristic can still be halved, up to GM discretion. This is mentioned in the FAQ. So in my example above no matter what characteristic was being used an untouchable would halve it for the entertaining the crowd use but playing alone in a recording studio would not halve anything since your soulless nature wouldn't be affecting anything.

The other way to go about it would be to use the appropriate social skill to what you are trying to accomplish, either using agility to represent playing or perhaps using fellowship but getting a bonus for the creative way you are doing it and for having trade performancer indicating that you are at least passable at it.

There are some things I like about DH2 's 'stripped down' Skill list (like Concealment, Shadowing and Silent Move being grouped together under Stealth), but the loss of Perform feels too much like pushing players to make 'combat-optimized' rather than 'characterful' builds to me...

Yeah ... I mean, I can sort of understand it (see cps' post), but it's still sad.

Perform is a skill that is very specialised and limited in its application, and as such is unlikely to be useful a lot. A character who takes a lot of ranks in this skill will then obviously miss out on combat potential, and this can get frustrating when it's always the other characters who get to have all the cool moments.

That being said, I still believe it should be possible to find a compromise here. Perhaps "semi-useless" skills such as these could be handed out as freebies during chargen, sort of like the Knowledge Skills in Shadowrun that allow players to embellish their character concept with at times very specific know-how reflecting the runner's hobbies?

For example, I currently happen to be in a 5th edition SR group, and my elven streetsam (former go-ganger) has 5 ranks in "Music (Powernoize)" and "Bars of Seattle". Will it come in handy at some point? I dunno, but IF it ever gets to that, I can rest assured that my character's concept and background/lifestyle will allow her to stand out from the rest. And why shouldn't Dark Heresy not do the same?

I'd just allow players to buy any sort of hobby, that they think they may use, for 100 exp. It doesn't matter if you were a guardsman or a slum lord, singing doesn't come with aptitudes.

There's already precedence, with psychic powers being un-aptituded.

And I'd let players choose what characterstic they want to use, with some justification. You don't actually need to be particularly personable to be able to sing, but if you're trying to read a crowd and win them over, then perhaps that's fellowship. Or maybe you want to encode something in your singing, that only a fellow Kerbal Space Program player would understand. Use intelligence.

etc etc. Be creative, be flexible. Be awesome! And don't let the rules get you down, maaaan.

Yeah I don't like how every Trade skill is governed by Intelligence, as for some it wouldn't make sense and otherwise makes it expensive/difficult to perform. Also, Trade (Shipwright) just needs to die. There is zero reason for that to be in there, and I'm tired of seeing it copy/pasted into every new book.