Okay, I thought I had this down, but I re-read the rules and managed to confuse myself.

Skills

I have a Wild Elf Mystic character named Garron who has spent 3 creation points on skills.

That translates to 4 skills and 2 specializations.

The mystic has the following career skills: (Either Charm or Guile), Folklore, Intuition, Magical Sight, and Observation.

Being a wild elf, Garron gains the Orion's Favoured ability: which says he may train Ballistics Skill, Nature Lore, Observation, or Stealth. So, collectively Garron has the potential to have 5 skills and 2 specializations.

Here are my questions:

1. What is the cost of training a basic skill that is career skill for the Mystic career? I'm assuming this is one skill.
2. What is the cost of acquiring the advanced skill, Magical Sight? I'd assumed this was one skill.
3. What is the cost of being trained (so he gets an expertise die when using) the advanced skill, Magical Sight? I'd assumed this was a total of two skills, one to acquire, and one to be trained in it.
4. Is it possible to acquire or train skills outside of your career class at character creation?
5. If so, what is the cost of training a basic skill that is not a career skill for the Mystic?
6. If so, what is the cost of acquiring an advanced skill that is not a career skill for the mystic?

Based on my understanding of things, I'd ended up with Garron having the following skills:

• Trained in Stealth (thanks to his Orion's Favored ability)
• Trained in Guile
• Trained in Intuition
• Trained in Observation
• Acquired Magical Sight (but not trained)

With specializations in Intuition-Detect Lies, and Guile-Deception.

I was considering training in Coordination as an option, but while there are rules for non-career skills as part of character advancement, I couldn't find rules that detailed non-career skill costs at character creation.

Talents:

When I created Garron the mystic, I just bought talents that matched up with his talent slots (Focus x2). I saw rules for character advancement (Player's Guide, p 45) that said " 2 Advances: Acquire a talent outside the character's career."

I haven't seen any listing of what talents are and aren't part of a career (other than being in the right category, Focus/Reputation/Tactic... etc)

7.Is this rule simply telling my mystic that if they want a Talent that is not a Focus (the only type of Talent slot a Mystic has) they will pay 2 advances for it?

I guess a truly collaborative player could buy a Talent just to slot it on the party sheet, but-

8. is there any other use for a Talent that can't be slotted on your character sheet?

And for that matter...Say my Mystic buys three Focus Talents at character creation, then later changes careers to a career that has different Talent slots (say Reputation and Tactic).

9. Other than slotting his Focus Talents on the party sheet, does the character have any means to access them?

Thanks.

murph said:

I am pretty sure, you are correct.

At Creation you can only buy skills that are listed and you are allowed to train them to 1 x trained, so buy an advanced skill listed for 2 skills if you want it also trained.

It does not really go along the point-system as with advances, but according to the table, which states "skills" without making a difference between advanecd and basic skills.

Also the extra-Woody-skill is outside of this.

murph said:

As far as I know, you "buy" Talents outside of your current career (yes, in your case Reputation and Tactics) just for future use in following careers or for using it in the party sheet (which you then can use also, I guess).

I am not that experienced in 3rd Edition, yet, but having roamed the Forums and FAQs myself, I think I am correct.

1. One "skill" to train a basic
2. Since it is a career skill, it costs one "skill" to acquire it. One more to train it, if the player wanted to train it.
3. See #2. You are correct: one to acquire and one to train, if it is a career skill.
4. I would need to double-check, but I believe that you can. However, non-career skills are awfully expensive.
5. Two, I think. There's a page in the PG that shows the cost of acquiring and training non-career skills.
6. Four, I vaguely recall. There's a page in the PG that shows the cost of acquiring and training non-career skills.

I believe non-career skills regardless use the rules as listed in the PG. I would need to re-read closely the character creation rules to see if they specifically said you only buy skills listed on your career sheet, or not. I haven't had a player want to buy a non-career skill at creation yet, hence why I am so fuzzy on this. I don't have my books here with me to tell you for sure.

Talents:

7. A talent is "in" a career if there is a slot for that type of talent. If your career has 2x Focus slots, then all Tactics and Reputation talents are both out of career for you. If your career has a Focus and a Reputation, then Tactics talents are "out of career".

8. Nope. You slot it on the Party sheet, or have it available if you change into another career. Otherwise, it's worthless to have a talent without a slot. As long as you have at least 1x slot of that type, at least having multiple of that type would allow you to rotate or change those talents to fit the situation. A talent without a slot of its type at all (neither on PC nor party sheet) is completely useless.

9. No.

dvang said:

I read "Skill Training" on page 30 of the rulebook as you are only allowed to take career skills at creation:

"<...> Each career card lists a number of skills associated with that career. These are the skills the character is allowed to train or assign a specialisation for based on the number of creation points invested. <...>"

socratim said:

Exactly, that's the bit that threw me.

I recall reading the costs of non-career skill advances and had the same feeling of "dang, expensive" that dvang describes, so perhaps he was thinking of that same section. The (far too) brief text in the Player's Guide skill selection at character creation just mentions selecting career skills.

I was sure there was a non-career skill option during character creation, but looking for a rulebook reference I came up empty.

Late edit: The Reckless Dice folks are saying that there's a non-career skill option, but I don't have the reference. I'd love to take their word for it, but I really would like to see where in the rules it says this.

Anybody with a page reference that aces this question?

Clarifying:

Listening to the Reckless Dice podcast - Episode 5, they're talking about picking skills at around minute 24. On their character creation eppy, they don't get into non career skills at creation.

But what they're saying is at odds with the Core Rulebook p30.

Makes career choice a bit more dramatic, but initially - I think that's thematically better because classic adventuring skills become more precious.

But then again, characteristic-increases are easier on creation, as there is no +1 for non-career-characteristics. (right?)

It makes sense to me. Characteristics are the inherent stats in a character. Something you are mostly born with.

And the career-skills and talents are what you already learned in your "job". But now the adventure starts and you are able to learn different skills along your journeys of adventure.

Of course house-ruling non-career-skills is perfectly okay. But I as a GM would want an explanation to this. One could use this even as a roleplaying hook.

murph said:

Orion's Favoured states that you MAY train during character creation Ballistics Skill, Nature Lore, Observation, or Stealth. But this not happens for free, you must still spend character creation points. Notice that this is the same for Dwarfs but different in the case of the High Elves where it states precisely that you acquire eductaion for free.

Yepesnopes said:

Both of those points are wrong.

Orion’s Favoured happens before you spend any creation points . So that's before you spend any character points on stats, talents, money or (crucially here) Skills . So you get 1 skill training for free for each race (except Humans).

High Elves have Ishas' Chosen which has virtually the same text, except it lists different skills. They also have Erudite which is an additional racial ability, one that specifically allows them to acquire Education for free.

Now I have a question on training skills at character creation and rather than start a new topic...

"If they have access to an advanced skill, a starting character may acquire an advanced skill as one of his skill training options, then train the advanced skill if he still has any skill training options remaining."

Does this mean the High Elves have "access" to education and can train it at character generation? (I'm quoting from memory, so it may be off)

Matchstickman said:

You are totally right, I was wrong, checked on the Player's Guide where there is an example of Troll Slayer creation, he gets the training skill trained for free. Sorry for the mess.