This may be an old question, and if it is I apologize. I could not find my answer via search.

My merry band of players are a bit confused by the Skills that accompany their Career Paths. There is nothing to indicate that the characters begin trained in these Skills, and in fact I seem to recall an outright statement that they do not (although I cannot find it now so that may be my poor recollection there). However, if you look at some of them, it makes no sense. The Psyker has Literacy as a Starting Skill, and yet there is no option to purchase Literacy in his advancement scheme. He can purchase Literacy +10, though. This implies to me one of two things:

A) Your Starting Skills begin Trained

B) You are understood to have the option to purchase your Starting Skills for 100 xp apiece.

There may be some third permutation I cannot fathom, but those two seem the most logical. Can anyone help me out with this?

Both options are kinda correct, the errata clarifies that all of the starting skills available to a character should be available for purchase in their starting rank. However, a characters starting skills are just that, skills that they start the game with. So in your example the Imperial Psyker does indeed start the game with the Literacy skill (and as per the errata would otherwise have the chance to purchase it from their first rank at 100XP).

So they are available to purchase but you do NOT start with them automatically trained just because they are already on your sheet, right?

shawncarman said:

They are available for purchase but for the most part you will not have to as they are automatically included in the characters starting set of skills. i.e. they are already trained in their use.

You do start with the specified skills trained and ready to use without having to spend a single point of experience. So an Imperial Psyker will start the game with the following skills and talents (taken from the errata):

Starting Skills:
Speak Language (Low Gothic) (Int)
Psyniscience (Per)
Invocation (WP)
Trade (Merchant) (Fel) or Trade (Soothsayer) (Fel)
Literacy (Int)
Starting Talents:
Melee Weapon Training (Primitive)
Pistol Training (SP) or Pistol Training (Las)
Psy Rating 1

Where an 'or' is given you obviously pick one and the other can be purchased from the first rank of the career path using XP should the player so wish (if it is not in the career rank printed in the DH core it will probably be found corrected in the errata).

They are included in the advancement scheme for redundancy. You do start with your "Starting Skills" as trained, but backgrounds (added through supplements) could change certain starting skills, so you don't start with them trained. They are in the advancement scheme in case this applies, so you can purchase them with XP instead.

What about homeworld skills? For example, a Hive Born PC gets Tech Use as a Basic Skill. Is it trained?

Rogue Trader defines that some Advanced Skills (ie. can only be used if you have them) can be converted into Untrained Basic Skills for certain types of characters, so does Tech-Use (as in my example) count as a Trained or Untrained Basic Skill?

H.B.M.C. said:

Tech-use is normally an Advanced Skill (i.e. it cannot be used untrained). Hive Born PCs treat it as a Basic Skill, they don't become trained in its use but unlike most other characters they will be able to use it untrained as if it were any other Basic Skill.