I'm confused by what this means. Under the listing for Tac Marine it says they get Command as a Trained Advanced Skill. Command is listed as a Basic skill. What does it mean? Thanks.

There are two types of skills: Basic, and Advanced.

Basic skills can be used by anyone, even if said person has not been trained with that skill. If you are not trained though, you only use half of that skills characteristic when performing a test. Dodge is a basic skill that uses the Agility characteristic for tests. Everyone can dodge without training, but if not trained when you do an agility test to dodge you only use half of your agility. I.e. untrained PC with 40 agi tries to dodge, he has to roll under 20, which is half of 40. If he later becomes trained in dodge he uses his full characteristic to test. I.e. same PC with dodge trained (agi 40) tries to dodge, he now needs to roll under 40.

Advanced skills are skills that can be used ONLY if you have training in them. A PC or other character without training can not use or make any tests with an advanced skill and would fail automatically if he ever needed to. If trained, the PC or character tests with their normal characteristics. The PC above comes up to a land speeder, but since he is not trained to pilot land speeders (Pilot: Skimmers) he can not operate it and would automatically fail any tests to do so if he tried. The same character comes up to some tracks, the PC has Tracking as a trained advanced skill and therefor can test (on his normal characteristic, Intelligence in this case) to see if he can follow the tracks to their source.

As for why the tactical marine entry says command is a trained advanced skill? I can only think of one reason. Typo.

The FAQ doesn't say either way. What is the relevance of saying it's trained? What does that mean, it's going to have to be learned in order to use it if it's advanced so what is the relevance of that word?

The phrase "Trained Advanced Skill" indicates that the Advanced Skill (i.e. not a Basic Skill) has been bought with experience and the player character has gone through the training needed to use the Advanced Skill in question.

Example: Forbidden Lore: Warp, which is an Advanced Skill" has not been trained so therefore he cannot use that skill at all. However, if the player spends the xp to train in that skill he can thereafter use that skill as a Trained Advanced Skill.

I still don't really understand. It seems like the word is being used superfluously just to mean 'advanced'. Why on the character sheet does the basic skill 'awareness' have both basic and trained boxes filled in for instance?

Awareness is a basic skill, so every human can roll it at half stat. Astartes have been further trained and may roll it at full stat for free. This training is assumed to be part of their basic training.

Basic box ticked: You can roll it at half stat

Advance skills may NOT be rolled at half stat, because they are by their nature simply not things that everyone has a chance of knowing.

Trained simply means that you are skilled in the area, either because it's part of basic training, or because you spent the XP.

I think it's because for a normal person Awareness is a skill that they would be capable of (i.e. if you have most of your prime senses then you are aware of your surroundings). However, Space Marines are further trained to be more aware of things going on.

It's the same with any other skill filled out like that. Most human's are capable of climbing a hill or mountain even if they aren't very good at it, however a Space Marine has been trained to do it better. Think about an average person today, they would know the basics of climbing (don't fall, use your limbs, etc) however a mountaineer has learned more advanced techniques (use of rope and pinions, how to find the best hand holds, better physical training for climbing, etc). The first person would have Climb as a Basic skill and the mountaineer would have Climb as both a Basic (because he is a human after all) and Trained (because he went ahead and learned more advanced skills).

The use of "advanced" in the phrase "trained advanced skill" is largely meaningless, and is probably a typo. Once a skill is trained, it does not matter if the skill is basic or advanced. You test either type of skill at the same value. It was probably an oversight given that most of the other skills that the other classes train in are actually advanced (e.g. tech use, psyniscience).

Even if command became an advanced skill, it still changes nothing. The only time basic/advanced matters is when it is untrained, and usually, the wording is to allow an advanced skill to become a basic.

ok thansk for the help.