I've started coming up with a pile of new archetypes for a Pirates/Age of Sail campaign I'll probably be running in Genesys shortly. The book and the rules are pretty straightforward for all of that, but I was looking at a small tweak to the free skill rank that is the standard. I was thinking of also including a second skill that the archetype is actually less proficient at. I was thinking of something along the lines of:

"Additionally, your ranks in [SKILL NAME] are considered 1 higher when purchasing new ranks"

Any other ideas on how to model skill deficiency?

Edit:

I believe there are merits to both the idea of using Setback or upgrading the difficulty. There is something special about when the d12 comes out with that Despair facing that has caused my players to pause every single time, but Setback not only still adds to the difficulty but allows the players to seek out some Talent choices to possibly mitigate or counterbalance the penalty in a way that is often very satisfying to players.

As per the discussion, here's what I'm looking at:

Starting Skills (+5xp): An advocate starts with one rank in Persuasion during character creation. They obtain this rank...above rank 2 during character creation. Additionally, all Stealth checks gain 2 Setback dice.

OR if you really want to make them sweat:

Starting Skills (+10xp): An advocate starts with one rank in Persuasion during character creation. They obtain this rank...above rank 2 during character creation. Additionally, all Stealth checks have their difficulty upgraded by 1.

Just make it a non-career skill. An archetype's free skill is not necessarily a career skill, unless they choose a career containing that skill.

You may want to rename Operating to Seafaring for your upcoming campaign, to give it that nautical flair.

17 minutes ago, Direach said:

Just make it a non-career skill. An archetype's free skill is not necessarily a career skill, unless they choose a career containing that skill.

I had thought about that originally, but I wanted the penalty to be removed from the career skill mechanic. Maybe it would be more thematic to mirror the bonus and auto-upgrade difficulty of checks? That would mean that you'd have a skill that always threw the possibility of a Despair at you

21 minutes ago, Direach said:

You may want to rename Operating to Seafaring for your upcoming campaign, to give it that nautical flair.

Oh yeah, we're switching from Savage Worlds so I had planned on just swiping Boating, but I like Seafaring much better.

Maybe I misunderstood... can you give me a more detailed example of what you want to do with skills for archetypes? I don't understand what you mean by a penalty to career skills.

The human archetypes all have a "Gain 1 free rank in [SKILL], this may not increase skill above...blah blah".

I was looking to add a sentence to that that would have a second skill that the archetype is thematically bad at.

Example:

An advocate starts with one rank in Persuasion during character creation. They obtain this rank before spending experience points, and may not increase Persuasion above rank 2 during character creation. Additionally, all checks made with the Stealth skill increase by 1.

This makes the advocate good at convincing people of things, but they have a tendency to naturally bring attention to themselves and make it harder to sneak around or blend into crowds.

I would go with Setback Dice instead of Difficulty, it’s more in line with the system and has roughly the same impact on difficulty. The benefits though is that a tenacious player can overcome it using talents, spells or even gear.

Yeah, I agree that a Setback die would represent this better, although I'm not sure I see the point in making an archetype bad at something without giving them something back for it. Perhaps you could offer it as an option to your players: if you take a skill Setback, you get a tier 1 talent, or extra starting money, something like that.

I was going to put a little xp (5 or 10) back into the archetype for it. Sorry that the full plan wasn't very well put out there, I'm still a little scattered in my brainpan and should've got my thoughts more organized before putting it down.

I originally thought about a Setback die or two, so maybe I'll go back to that, but I kind of don't want the penalty to get bought out. I think at this point we're straying over into style preferences. Thanks everyone for the thoughts, I'll put a quick synopsis back up into the top post.

2 hours ago, Foghorn said:

I believe there are merits to both the idea of using Setback or upgrading the difficulty.

Just MHO, but I think you'll find this more trouble than it's worth. It's not like the player is going to want to remind you about their disability, there's probably at least one person at every table that will conveniently "forget" about it. Which puts the onus on the GM to remember, and I'm not sure too many GMs would have an interest in adding that to their already substantial list of things to think about.

18 minutes ago, whafrog said:

Just MHO, but I think you'll find this more trouble than it's worth. It's not like the player is going to want to remind you about their disability, there's probably at least one person at every table that will conveniently "forget" about it. Which puts the onus on the GM to remember, and I'm not sure too many GMs would have an interest in adding that to their already substantial list of things to think about.

And really it’s the different motivations that are intended to introduce character flaws

1 hour ago, whafrog said:

Just MHO, but I think you'll find this more trouble than it's worth. It's not like the player is going to want to remind you about their disability, there's probably at least one person at every table that will conveniently "forget" about it. Which puts the onus on the GM to remember, and I'm not sure too many GMs would have an interest in adding that to their already substantial list of things to think about.

My group got accustomed to making notes about dice pool directly on the sheet (example below) to help everyone keep track of things like that, so I'm not too worried about that, but it is a valid point. I do naturally love the crunch and tend to go heavy on the bookkeeping side because it's just how my brain naturally leans for these, but I know that it's not what everyone's looking for in their game.

1 hour ago, Richardbuxton said:

And really it’s the different motivations that are intended to introduce character flaws

I'm a big fan of giving characters plenty of flaws. I tend to have the most fun with bringing out the challenges that those flaws bring, or playing through them when I'm on the player side of the screen.

I'm not sure the assignment of dice for these drawbacks work correctly for the given XP. Using the AnyDice calculator, I get the following which to me looks like getting 1 Difficulty die is actually slightly better if not about the same odds as 2 Setback dice.

• 2 Setback (5 XP) = Average Number of Failures = 0.67 / Average Number of Threats = 0.67
  • Failure = None (44.44%) / 1 (44.44%) / 2 (11.11%)
  • Threat = None (44.44%) / 1 (44.44%) / 2 (11.11%)
• 1 Difficulty (10 XP):
  • Failure = None (62.5%) / 1 (25%) / 2 (12.5%)
  • Threat = None (37.5%) / 1 (50%) / 2 (12.5%)

Oddly, I'll be starting a naval game soon (well continuing) as well. Are you going to tweak Astrocartogrphy to fit the theme? I was considering making it into "Navigating" while Operating/Sailing remains. One is for plotting longer voyages while the other is the "in the moment" skill.

4 hours ago, Khaalis said:

I'm not sure the assignment of dice for these drawbacks work correctly for the given XP. Using the AnyDice calculator, I get the following which to me looks like getting 1 Difficulty die is actually slightly better if not about the same odds as 2 Setback dice.

• 2 Setback (5 XP) = Average Number of Failures = 0.67 / Average Number of Threats = 0.67
  • Failure = None (44.44%) / 1 (44.44%) / 2 (11.11%)
  • Threat = None (44.44%) / 1 (44.44%) / 2 (11.11%)
• 1 Difficulty (10 XP):
  • Failure = None (62.5%) / 1 (25%) / 2 (12.5%)
  • Threat = None (37.5%) / 1 (50%) / 2 (12.5%)

The 10 xp option upgrades difficulty of the roll by 1, turning a difficulty die (d8) into a challenge die (d12) which skews those numbers a little bit, but also feels like it should get the xp bump mainly because it opens up the possibility of a Despair on the check. With my experience with the Star Wars RPG, the biggest cause for my players to pause is any time I hand them that d12 to add to their dice pool and ultimately, I'm looking to use the mechanics to give them The Fear because it makes my happy in my cold, dead GM heart to watch them squirm.

1 hour ago, Cyvaris said:

Oddly, I'll be starting a Naval game soon (well continuing) as well. Are you going to tweak Astrocartogrphy to fit the theme? I was considering making it into "Navigating" while Operating/Sailing remains. One is for plotting longer voyages while the other is the "in the moment" skill.

That's a great idea, too. I was working my way forward through the book, so I'm still on archetypes and careers, but that's definitely going into my quick notes for when I get to skills.