I've got a couple of skills for a fantasy setting that I'm adding and/or adjusting and want some critiquing and ideas for implementation.

The first is in the book already: Operating . It covers large ships, so sailing. I wonder if there would be much concern for covering siege engines and weapons?

Next, I want to break Mechanics up, Crafting and Engineering . Crafting covers small scale, personal crafting (weapons, armor, gear, etc.), while Engineering covers bigger stuff, like structures, ships, and siege engines. Crafting is simple enough to implement, but I feel like Engineering could be somewhat niche.

The last is a totally new skill: Cryptography . Covers making and breaking codes and ciphers, and I was thinking speaking in code between individuals.

For siege weapons the system has Gunnery, which I think is better. The ship commander could use their leadership to provide booster for who control and fire the cannons and this kind of thing, but in my opinion, you should keep these things separeted. Piloting (Operating) and Gunnery (Siege Weapons?).

Crafting and Engineering looks good. Just check the average time to construct some big things and suggest an average price for these things.

Cryptography... well, Deception could work to speak in code between individuals while Computers or Skullduggery could do something like this Maybe even Knowledge for some puzzles.

My 50 cents

6 hours ago, Bellyon said:

For siege weapons the system has Gunnery, which I think is better.

The specific reason I didn't include Gunnery was the kind of siege weapons were talking about: trebuchets and siege towers, among others. Not really equipment to be used in a personal scale combat, so I felt the need to introduce a new combat skill was unnecessary. More mathematics and trajectories and coordinating multiple moving parts than Agility. Although now that I think about it, as I'm including Knowledge (Warfare), that might be better in the long run.

6 hours ago, Bellyon said:

Cryptography... well, Deception could work to speak in code between individuals while Computers or Skullduggery could do something like this Maybe even Knowledge for some puzzles.

Well, you know, a fantasy setting doesn't typically have Computers lying around, so that might be someone difficult, and the description for Skullduggery doesn't cover the complexity of ciphers and codes I'm thinking of. In my setting, the use of such codes is important enough that I feel it can use its own skill, but I want to expand what it can do a bit.

57 minutes ago, Swordbreaker said:

The specific reason I didn't include Gunnery was the kind of siege weapons were talking about: trebuchets and siege towers, among others. Not really equipment to be used in a personal scale combat, so I felt the need to introduce a new combat skill was unnecessary. More mathematics and trajectories and coordinating multiple moving parts than Agility. Although now that I think about it, as I'm including Knowledge (Warfare), that might be better in the long run.

Well, you know, a fantasy setting doesn't typically have Computers lying around, so that might be someone difficult, and the description for Skullduggery doesn't cover the complexity of ciphers and codes I'm thinking of. In my setting, the use of such codes is important enough that I feel it can use its own skill, but I want to expand what it can do a bit.

Well, weapons in ships also need Gunnery as far as I remember from Star Wars. Just remember what the core says: "any other weapon large enough that you need a tripod or team of people to use it. Your charactar also uses it to fire weapons mounted on vehicles ." p. 67.

Knowledge (Warfare) sounds ok, but think that a lot of people who are in a ship firing the cannons don't know things like Knowledge (Warfare), at least is what I can see from movies about ships and this kind of stuff. A lot of them are very ignorant by the way '-'

And I've used Computers but my thought was to create a similar skill. And you can change de skills if you want, you can add some specific use to it. But if you think it's really necessary to create a new one, and would be players interested to level it, go on.

I agree that Gunnery (or Siege Weapons if you want to rename it) should be a different skill from Operating. That's straight out of the CRB, as Bellyon has pointed out, since Gunnery is used for vehicle-to-vehicle combat, not just personal-scale combat. I also like the fact that these are skills a GM can introduce later in a campaign if things warrant them. By that I mean, none of the Careers in Realms of Terrinoth has Gunnery or Operating. But if the campaign evolves toward a pirates-and-sea monsters theme, it's easy enough to introduce the skills later, let PCs take them out of career, and create a Talent—"Seafarer" say—that grants those skills as Career skills.

For my swords and sorcery setting, I considered all of the above:

I renamed Operating to Seafaring, since waterborne vessels are the only type of vessels in the setting that would fit the bill. In addition, Seafaring covers pretty much every aspect of water travel that is not specifically covered by another skill, and can potentially mitigate Setback caused by the environment while on a vessel (waves, storms, etc).

I renamed Mechanics to Engineering, and decided that Engineering would cover the operation of emplaced/siege weapons, from ballistae to catapults/trebuchets. As none of my players seemed inclined towards crafting, I didn't give that aspect of it much more thought... if needed, I'd probably use a separate skill like Craftsman or Crafting to cover item creation.

Personally I would use Skulduggery to cover cryptography, creating and using ciphers, and speaking coded/sign language. I think it's too niche to require its own skill.

On 21/04/2018 at 12:09 PM, Swordbreaker said:

The first is in the book already: Operating . It covers large ships, so sailing. I wonder if there would be much concern for covering siege engines and weapons?

Next, I want to break Mechanics up, Crafting and Engineering . Crafting covers small scale, personal crafting (weapons, armor, gear, etc.), while Engineering covers bigger stuff, like structures, ships, and siege engines. Crafting is simple enough to implement, but I feel like Engineering could be somewhat niche.

The last is a totally new skill: Cryptography . Covers making and breaking codes and ciphers, and I was thinking speaking in code between individuals.

Operating: definitely keep it, but why would a ships helmsman be any good at a trebuchet? I would also include Siege Weapon (Intellect) combat skill. The other options would be Cunning, since you need to be creative and unpredictable sometimes in a Siege, or Brawn, because moving them is hard work.

Crafting and Engineering: I really like this split, it’s what I’m planning for my setting too. My only concern is in how to ensure Engineering is enticing, how to ensure it’s used often, it could certainly be the explosives skill but also good for planning fortifications and battlefield constructions like ditches and palisades.

Cryptography is definitely an area with no obvious skill, if it’s going to be an important part of the game then definitely include it.

I see this is an old topic, but I'm coming around to one of the questions for a campaign idea I'm working on involving magical flying ships (the standard fantasy trope of what looks like a fancy seafaring vessel that sail through the air via magical something-or-others). But my question would hold for actual age of sails adventures as well.

Long preamble out of the way: firing a bank of cannons (even magical ones) shouldn't be agility-based. It seems like gunnery is more about Cunning or Intellect, more likely the former. Has anyone else decided to retool Gunnery to a different base?

In the age of sails firing a canon was a team job. And it needed more knowledge about ships movement on the sea, both the target ship and the firing ship, than agility. That's something that always overlooked by landlubber but the sea, even calm ones, is always in movement and that movement makes a ship unstable as a firing firing. So, yes Cunning is a lot more appropriate than Agility.

The same could be true for flying sailing ship. In the sky there is wind that could make the ship as unstable as if she was sailing on a sea.