The first sentence of a skill should be the matchbook description. By that first sentence, Discipline and Cool are functionally indistinguishable.

• Cool: "Staying calm and maintaining composure, outwaiting an opponent, generally being cool: these exemplify things your character does with the Cool skill."
• Discipline: "Discipline is your character's ability to focus their mind and quiet their thoughts."

Both heal strain.

I'm curious if any house-rulers out there (and I think for Genesys that's pretty much everyone) have simply combined these skills. They're so freakin' close I'm not sure which one I'll call for on checks unless there's actual fear involved (Discipline).

EDIT: I mentioned initiative in my original post, getting discipline and vigilance confused for purposes of surprise. Sigh...

Coming from Star Wars, I find those two skill pretty different.

Cool is used when situation can become dangerous, keep your self-control while being careful on what to do next.

Discipline is more related to mental awareness and focus.

I always imagine cool as a skill that allowed you to appear calm, and Discipline allows you to remain calm. In my mind, Cool is completely external while Discipline is completely internal.

Now as for combining them? I've considered it, but will career skills being far more codified in Star Wars, I never felt like it was worth the trouble. For Genesys however, it might not be a bad idea.

From a pure mechanics perspective Cool is a way for Charm/Leadership/Negotiation social characters to have a good initiative score, and for Initiative to be linked to a non combat skill. It’s how a leader plans an Attack and executes it flawlessly. You don’t have to be Disciplined to be Cool, Han Solo is a great example.

All that being said you can easily combine them, but then you have to make a choice:

Do you keep the tie to Willpower? If you do then you have two different Initiative skills using the same characteristic.

Do you keep the tie to Presence? Then all your ability to resist fear and panic has nothing to do with your strength of will?

Like @kaosoe said it’s a difference of external vs internal.

I don't offer this to shut down this conversation, as it's always good to discuss these thing afresh, but here's an older discussion about this very topic from Star Wars. Here's another one .

Yeah it’s a regular that’s for sure. I think the changed social skill interactions table on Genesys page 55 gives less superiority to Discipline in social encounters which helps the balance. The examples there also do a good job of highlighting the differences.

I'll have a look at the other threads. Sorry I didn't think to check the Star Wars boards. I have in the past, but now there is only Genesys...

What's tough for me to wrap my head around is the idea that while Cool doesn't imply actual discipline, Discipline implies cool. Functionally, inward calm while--what?--outwardly losing your **** doesn't make much sense. However, a poker face while you're sweating bullets makes perfect sense. Yet if Cool is all about appearance of calm, rather than actually possessing a calm undistracted mind, why is Cool the default initiative skill? That seems even more to be a job for Discipline. One guy looks impressive while standing frozen. The other guy figures out the next step and takes it. That second guy looks even cooler, by the way.

I get the desire to promote a typically non-combat characteristic into the realm of combat so non-combatants can act fast (and even ostensibly talk down an escalation before the shooting starts). So Cool becomes the primary initiative skill if there's no surprise factor. At that point the only thing Discipline has going for it is it makes sense that morale and fear checks should fall under the umbrella of Willpower. But perhaps if Presence as a characteristic is inclusive of strength of personality, confidence, and ability to keep cool, combining the two skills should really leave Cool as the survivor. Suddenly fear checks against Presence don't seem illogical. Willpower already drives your strain threshold, so it contributes to your overall ability to handle stress even if it loses a skill for that job.

My skill list has 36 skills, so I was looking to trim just a bit further to a tidy 35. Of the core Genesys skills, I have already combined Negotiation and Charm into Diplomacy (not looking to start another debate about that one, it made sense to me).

If you look at the dueling rules from Fly Casual, it used Cool and Discipline. Cool is used to resist your opponent's attempts to size you up (either Perception or Streetwise), whereas Discipline is used to resist being intimidated (either Coercion or Deception). One is staying composed and not letting any weaknesses slip, and the other is more like actively combating the threat of fear.

Also, in Star Wars, Discipline was the default skill when using the Force, so I kind of use it when it comes to spiritual things, like meditating and such.

I also don't think Discipline implies keeping cool. The difference to me is Cool implies "hard to read, hard to get a reaction out of", while Discipline implies "an exceptional sense of self-control". Or, if you still allow Cool to combat fear, you can say Cool is "that was scary, but I can keep it together," whereas Discipline is "that did not scare me."

Yeah, I think that's a major factor: Cool is about appearances, while Discipline is about actual self-control. You'd roll Cool to avoid giving any tells to your enemy, but you'd roll Discipline to avoid falling asleep during your nighttime watch. I think Cool is used for initiative because it's about avoiding giving away your plan to the enemy before they give away theirs.

If there was a skill called, say, “Composure” and neither Cool nor Discipline existed, I wonder if we’d note their absence as a deficiency.