How do we balance skill options when creating a career? Characters will start with one four-value characteristic; we want them to get a few skills that use it and a few that don't ?
There's also the issue of the attributes derived from Brawn and Willpower, and how they affect the value of associated skills.
Edited by Kakita ShijinAfter a quick glance at the existing careers, I'd thumbrule not more than 3 skills from a single Characteristic and not more than 3 Combat.
In Star Wars I had houseruled that later increases in Brawn/Willpower would increase the Thresholds, to mitigate the 3 in both, no matter what, convention. Now, that Characteristics can only be increased once and there's no 3/3/3/3/2/2 build anymore, I'll probably rescind it.
Thanks for your help @Grimmerling ! That's exactly the kind of information I needed. Did you mean to say 'would not ' increase the thresholds, or is there a rule that says they don't? (I'm not reading the rulebook straight through, sorry for asking if it's already stated there.)
Do you (does anyone) have any guidance for spreading career skills over a number of characteristics greater than 2? I would think bundling skills for only 2 characteristics would be overpowered.
RAW: "After you determine [the] initial value,further increases [...] do not increase [the] threshold." (p. 45)
Edited by Grimmerling
What careers do you have in mind for your game?
1 hour ago, Direach said:What careers do you have in mind for your game?
I'll post a screenshot of my character sheet (in progress) as soon as my computer finishes updating ?
Link to a Google Photos album Android: Genesys.
At the moment, it contains only a png of a character sheet I'm working on.
It looks good to me. You might see if you can find room for Perception and Deception in the career; both seem like they would be skills frequently employed by a psionic character. However, that really depends on the nature of the setting.
Well, it's really necessary to balance that? I mean, if your characters always start with one 4, they're very strong in something. And the career should've skills that match with the concept, just it. If there's the case where the main skills of the character are the same which use their main stat, ok, they'll be strong. Learn how to deal with it is so hard?
Just increase the overall dificult... it's not possible? Or the supposed unbalance is too problematic?
3 hours ago, Bellyon said:Well, it's really necessary to balance that?
I think so, yeah. If everyone had custom careers they could all be equally good; I just want to stick to the precedent for careers in the core rules. That way all the existing careers are still viable.
10 hours ago, Grimmerling said:After a quick glance at the existing careers, I'd thumbrule not more than 3 skills from a single Characteristic and not more than 3 Combat.
Here's my first draft at a skill list for Android. I left out Alchemy, Riding, and Survival. I included Psionics which for now is just Divine (will) re-skinned. There are four knowledge skills: Biology, Business, Physics, and Politics—I'm not satisfied with these particular knowledge skills yet.
First pass at career skills for a 'Psionicist' are in bold:
Astrocartography (int)
Athletics (br)
Computers (int)
Cool (pr)
Coordination (ag)
Discipline (will)
Driving (ag)
Mechanics (int)
Medicine (int)
Operating (int)
Perception (cun)
Piloting (ag)
Psionics (will)
Resilience (br)
Skulduggery (cun)
Stealth (ag)
Streetwise (cun)
Vigilance (will)
Brawl (br)
Melee (br)
Ranged (ag)
Charm (pr)
Coercion (will)
Deception (cun)
Leadership (pr)
Negotiation (pr)
Biology (int)
Business (int)
Physics (int)
Politics (int)
As it stands that's four Willpower skills, three Intellect skills, and one Presence skill. If we follow @Direach 's recommendation, we might change Coercion to Deception, and Biology to Perception. That would be three skills for Willpower, two for Cunning and two for Intellect, and one for Presence.
Willpower
: Discipline, Psionics, Vigilance
Cunning
: Perception, Deception
Intellect
: Medicine, Physics
Presence
: Cool
Would these skills be fun to choose from if
you
were making a new Psionicist character?
7 hours ago, Kakita Shijin said:There are four knowledge skills: Biology, Business, Physics, and Politics—I'm not satisfied with these particular knowledge skills yet.
They do look somewhat arbitrary, to be honest. How about:
Education (basic everyday knowledge: Trivia, Etiquette, Dealing with Authorities etc.)
Science (Physics, Chemistry, Biology etc.)
Humanities (Anthropology, Sociology, Philosophy, Psychology etc.)
Matrix/Virtual Reality
?Paranormal? (Psi and other strange stuff)
I'd get rid of Business: Negotiation, Streetwise and Humanities should cover it; same for Politics: Social Skills and Humanities.
Further:
What use is Astrocartography, you suppose?
For what it's worth, you've got far too few combat skills: You should keep to the CRB's suggestion of Brawl, Melee, Ranged [Light], Ranged [Heavy], Gunnery.
How do Psionics work, is it basically reskinned Magic?
From my outside perspective, I see little value in the new skills of Biology, Business, Physics, and Politics. Medicine and Knowledge cover all of the above already. I'm not familiar with the Android setting, but would any of those skills come into play in an average session? Every two sessions? Every four? For that matter, do career Psionicists only function in a scientific or educational/social capacity? Seems like espionage would be just as likely a career path as science (a la B5's Psi Corps).
My suggestion would be to offer two careers instead of one: Communicator and Investigator. A Communicator Psionicist focuses on using their powers primarily to faciliate communication, understanding, and compromise; an Investigator uses their powers primarily to solve problems, identify threats, and neutralize them.
Communicator: Charm, Discipline, Knowledge, Medicine, Negotiation, Perception, Psionics, Vigilance.
Investigator: Cool, Coercion, Deception, Discipline, Knowledge, Leadership, Perception, Psionics.
I intentionally split up Cool and Vigilance here: the Communicator assumes the role of "passive" initiative, observant but prepared for difficulties. The Investigator takes on the role of "active" initiative, planning ahead and preparing to act before a threat does. The Communicator has Medicine, which is most often used in response to injury or illness, while the Investigator has Leadership, which is used to take charge and direct assets to deal with problems. The other social skills likewise reflect each career's strength and focus. Both careers can act as "face", or as the team's resident smart gal, but they go about it quite differently.
4 hours ago, Grimmerling said:How do Psionics work, is it basically reskinned Magic?
Yes. At the moment, Psionics is just Divine magic. It will no doubt be adjusted later, but that's the starting point. I'm only just learning about the Android setting, but it seems magical effects need to be super-rare and as sciency as possible. I'm only aware of one psychic character in the setting, Caprice Nisei .
Psionics is really just an excuse to allow the magic rules because I like them.
4 hours ago, Grimmerling said:What use is Astrocartography, you suppose?
Good call! It needs to go.
4 hours ago, Grimmerling said:For what it's worth, you've got far too few combat skills
Yeah, my first goal was simplicity. Now that you point it out, two kinds of Ranged makes sense whereas two kinds of Melee does not. (I hadn't read that part of the rulebook yet ... the organization of info in the book will take some getting used to. Thinking it through with friends is more fun for me anyway #highfive)
I do like distinguishing Brawn based melee attacks from Agility based melee attacks. Would it break the game to leave out Melee entirely, relying instead on Athletics and Coordination? Or should we make a talent for switching the characteristic used for Melee from Brawn to Agility (like the Ataru Striker in Force and Destiny).
As for Gunnery, I took it out because it didn't seem necessary in a mostly covert setting without starships (Astrocartography cough cough). It can go back in if we need it for balance, or to make players happy.
5 hours ago, Grimmerling said:[Those knowledge skills] do look somewhat arbitrary, to be honest.
My thoughts at the time went like this:
I don't like having just one skill called Knowledge in the "Knowledge Skills" sub-set—I'm sure as crap not gonna put Psionics in a sub-set called "Paranormal Skills" if it's the only paranormal skill. Psionics needs a good knowledge skill, it should be helpful in attacking, so Science, but this is Sci-Fi after all—'science' is too broad. Biology, Physics, Chemistry, Genetics, Nano-something or other ... this could get out of hand.
I'll include Biology and Physics because they are two distinct sciences that could help a Psionicist attack.
But knowledge isn't only for psionic attacks. What other things would someone benefit from knowing about in Android? Well, class politics, the Network, mega-corporations—the Network will be covered by Computers (note to self, consider splitting Computers into sub-skills later). So I could add Knowledge: Politics, Corporate. Wait, 'corporate' isn't a noun ... better make that 'Business'.
[Clearly, I should have just called that one "Corporations"—I was probably tired.]
So that gives me Biology, Business, Physics, Politics. That list is not cool at all. I gave it a shot, time to ask the internet for help.
5 hours ago, Grimmerling said:Education (basic everyday knowledge: Trivia, Etiquette, Dealing with Authorities etc.)
Science (Physics, Chemistry, Biology etc.)
Humanities (Anthropology, Sociology, Philosophy, Psychology etc.)
Matrix/Virtual Reality
?Paranormal? (Psi and other strange stuff)
My thoughts now:
Since Android is a setting of vast knowledge, let's make the Knowledge sub-set as epic and useful as possible. How many is too many?
Knowledge Skills
Education (What are the options for formal education in Android? I have no idea.)
Science (This one really wants to be split into several natural sciences.)
Humanities (Huzzah! Love it.)
Matrix/Virtual Reality (This one ... is appropriate but I'm still not sure.)
?Paranormal? (Paranormal phenomena may be too rare to require a knowledge skill ...)
13 minutes ago, Direach said:My suggestion would be to offer two careers instead of one: Communicator and Investigator.
To be honest, "Psionicist" has been a place-holder in my mind; it's kind of a lame word. In the setting, psychic abilities are genetically engineered into clones by the Jinteki Corporation. Unless the character is a clone, the only way to get them would be gene-modification procedures from Jinteki or the black market. Doing away with "Psionicist" as a career is a great idea.
49 minutes ago, Direach said:A Communicator Psionicist focuses on using their powers primarily to faciliate communication, understanding, and compromise; an Investigator uses their powers primarily to solve problems, identify threats, and neutralize them.
Communicator: Charm, Discipline, Knowledge, Medicine, Negotiation, Perception, Psionics, Vigilance.
Investigator: Cool, Coercion, Deception, Discipline, Knowledge, Leadership, Perception, Psionics.
I intentionally split up Cool and Vigilance here: the Communicator assumes the role of "passive" initiative, observant but prepared for difficulties. The Investigator takes on the role of "active" initiative, planning ahead and preparing to act before a threat does. The Communicator has Medicine, which is most often used in response to injury or illness, while the Investigator has Leadership, which is used to take charge and direct assets to deal with problems. The other social skills likewise reflect each career's strength and focus. Both careers can act as "face", or as the team's resident smart gal, but they go about it quite differently.
I like all of this. I hadn't considered the role of psionics outside of combat yet. In fact, I hadn't considered the role a Psionicist would fill at all. Perhaps it's time to make more psionics actions. Wikipedia/Psionics is interesting ... I didn't know the term was associated with technology, but evidently someone thinks it is. I'll also pore over Wikipedia/List of Psychic Abilities .
Then there's this. It was posted by someone else [I'll credit them in an edit to this post]:
M
ANIPULATE
Concentration
: No
Skill
: Psionics
The character can manipulate physical objects with her mind.
The character selects one Silhouette 1 or smaller target within short range, and makes an Easy (♦) Psionics check. If the check is successful, the character may move the target anywhere within short range. Before making a Manipulate check, choose any number of additional effects listed on the table below.
(There's also a table.)
15 minutes ago, Direach said:[Regarding the four Knowledge skills, old] Would any of those skills come into play in an average session?
I'm thinking of skulljacks ...
S KULLJACK (Encumbrance –, Price 2,500, Rarity 5)
A skulljack is a cerebral point that allows your character to access a computer with her mind. As long as the skulljack is linked to a computer (either wired or wirelessly), it increases your character's Intellect rating by one. If your character has a skulljack, she decreases her strain threshold by one (Core Rulebook, p. 177) .
I really like this piece of gear. It highlights an issue formal education today has to deal with: Teachers are no longer a fount of knowledge for their students, that would be Google. In Android, anyone can access any non-proprietary information at any time, so we need to be careful about treating knowledge like a limited thing.
Knowledge skills should come up regularly (and they should enable additional effects for psionics actions). My question is, how can we encourage players to use them? And for psionics, would an additional effect use only ranks in one knowledge skill?
4 hours ago, Kakita Shijin said:Education (What are the options for formal education in Android? I have no idea.)
This one I copied from Star Wars, using it for anything knowledge-related, not covered by any other skill.
4 hours ago, Kakita Shijin said:Science (This one really wants to be split into several natural sciences.)
I don't think it does, not at all, not in this game. Keep in Mind how broad Mechanics is, for example, Knowledge shouldn't be more specialised.
4 hours ago, Kakita Shijin said:Matrix/Virtual Reality (This one ... is appropriate but I'm still not sure.)
I really don't like it that much as well, one could argue its being part of Computers.
How about this?
Knowledge Skills
Corporations
Humanities (Social Sciences?)
Natural Sciences (or just Sciences?)
Corporations guard their secrets, whereas other information is readily available on the Network. Of course, if what you need is scientific expertise, a quick Google search won't be enough. As for general 'knowledge', the right skill list should make it unnecessary ...
For me, the more important side to balance is to ensure that of the 8 career skills, you have at least 1 combat skill, 1 initiative skill (vigilance or cool), 1 social skill (coercion, charm, deception, negotiation, leadership), and then either 1 notice or knowledge skill (knowledge or perception or vigilance), and one skill challenge/utility type skill, be it a piloting, mechanics, athletics, coordination, medicine, whatever. The other three you can delegate however appropriate within the focus of the class.
This sort of spread is going to keep your players away from min-maxing too hard, and have some cheap ranks available in most skills to the entire party. As your campaign moves along, and players don't feel like saving up ALL their XP for one big talent or big rank, they'll start picking up a few cheap ranks in some of the class skills in many cases. Also, at least this way the career doesn't hamstring a build into a situation where they just don't have a class build way to approach a given situation.
On 10.12.2017 at 8:46 PM, Kakita Shijin said:How about this?
Knowledge Skills
Corporations
Humanities (Social Sciences?)
Natural Sciences (or just Sciences?)Corporations guard their secrets, whereas other information is readily available on the Network. Of course, if what you need is scientific expertise, a quick Google search won't be enough. As for general 'knowledge', the right skill list should make it unnecessary ...
Best array, so far. Wich of those do you suppose to be relevant for Psionics?
22 minutes ago, Grimmerling said:Which of those do you suppose to be relevant for Psionics?
When I built an Investigator using @Direach 's career set, I gave him Sciences. As it stands, Psionics is the same as Divine (and my Investigator has no combat skills), so I thought (Natural) Sciences would be best for psionic attacks. I like the idea of pairing Psionics and Humanities, but it doesn't look like that would have the same application for attacking. Psychology arguably falls under Humanities ... so that might work for attacking. Would you say Humanities includes all the social sciences? I want to say it does.
If it doesn't, Humanities would be useful for these:
Anthropology
Archaeology
Classics
History
Linguistics and languages
Law and politics
Literature
Performing arts
Philosophy
Religion
Visual arts
Here's what Wikipedia has to say, (in short, 'social sciences' are not 'humanities'):
In the twentieth century, academic disciplines have often been institutionally divided into three broad domains. The natural sciences seek to derive general laws through reproducible and verifiable experiments. The humanities generally study local traditions, through their history, literature, music, and arts, with an emphasis on understanding particular individuals, events, or eras. The social sciences have generally attempted to develop scientific methods to understand social phenomena in a generalizable way, though usually with methods distinct from those of the natural sciences.
As you've got only one "magic" Skill covering the whole issue, it might even be a benefit for balance to use Science for physical alterations and Humanities (better Social Studies), if you're going to use that) for mind-meddling.
To a scientist, anybody, not attending higher mathematics, is not a scientist; and no, statistics don't count.
16 minutes ago, Grimmerling said:To a scientist, anybody, not attending higher mathematics, is not a scientist; and no, statistics don't count.
? "If a the name of a discipline includes the word 'science', that means it definitely isn't one."
1 hour ago, Grimmerling said:As you've got only one "magic" Skill covering the whole issue, it might even be a benefit for balance to use Science for physical alterations and Humanities (better Social Studies), if you're going to use that) for mind-meddling.
Absolutely. Hence the quandry of psychology. (In real life I'm a linguist ... so to my mind, words mean what we think they mean despite Wikipedia and the ruling from the mouth of natural science. That, of course, is why I need exactly the help you provide #highfive)
I love the word 'humanities' and I think it will be helpful to specify Natural Sciences. Do you mean to say we should use Social Studies in lieu of Social Sciences, or in lieu of Humanities?
4 hours ago, Kakita Shijin said:I love the word 'humanities' and I think it will be helpful to specify Natural Sciences. Do you mean to say we should use Social Studies in lieu of Social Sciences, or in lieu of Humanities?
I was thinking of a trivium of academic Knowledge skills, i.e. Humanities, Science, and Social Studies; now that you've so eloquently pointed out why not to subsume the former and the latter under one skill. I do apologise for the disparaging narrow-mindedness; having a working knowledge of the entire universe and everything it contains can do that to a person.
Together with Corporations, having four distinct Knowledge skills isn't too bad for a modern setting; Star Wars is using six to seven, after all. Fields to expand into, eh?