Well this is just odd. First when I join up, there's a message saying that they want rules questions to be asked through customer service, not on the forums. Then after I've sent the question away, I find that there's an entire forum dedicated to nothing but rules questions. Anyway, I have a general question that I might as well repost here.

I'm creating a character for Rogue Trader and I've run into a bit of a brain fart. I'd like some clarification if someone is able.

Just for reference, the origin build is:
Homeworld: Nobleborn.
Birthright: Savant.
Lure of the Void: Duty-Bound
Trials & Travails: Product of Upbringing (New Blood)
Motivation: Renown
Career: Seneschal
Lineage: A Long and Glorious History (My Grand-Grandfather built this Colony).

Anyway, Nobleborn begins play with Literacy , Speak Language (High Gothic) and Speak Language (Low Gothic) as untrained Basic Skills .
Seneschal then gets Literacy and Speak Language (Low Gothic) as trained skills (amongst others).

Do these stack in some way, being granted twice, thus earning Skill Mastery (as per "Skills and Talents: The Sequel" on Pg.15)? I can see arguments being made both ways here, but I cannot actually find any clarification in the book(s).

Anyone care to chime in?

Fgdsfg said:

Actually, I got it straight from the support section and FFG:s Sam Stewart:

" Hello Fgdsfg,

Unfortunately, being able to treat the Skill as a Basic Skill does not stack . Although you could ask your GM for a discount on training the Skill to compensate (although that would entirely be up to your GM).

Hope that helps!"

So I guess that settles it. Getting an Advanced-Skill-as-Basic modifier does not count as actually getting the skill. It is a bit odd in my opinion, since it immediately means that those Homeworlds that do get full trained skills ( all homeworlds in Into the Storm / no homeworlds in Core Rulebook ) have a considerable edge, skill-wise (compare Nobleborn to Child of Dynasty for example; Child of Dynasty doesn't get Low Gothic as a trained or basic skill (as the Nobleborn does), but on the other hand it gets both of the other skills the Nobleborn gets - High Gothic and Literacy - as fully trained skills. That's a straight +10 to two skills for more than one career (at least two, at a quick glance) at the cost of a skill you would only be able to use at 50% anyway; depending on the Homeworlds you compare, it applies to different careers, naturally.

But at least it's set straight now, for what it's worth. I've been getting a lot of mixed replies for quite a lot of people on other places, so at least I wasn't alone in my confusion.

Edit: I would put it in a fancy quote-box, but the forum software this place is running on is horrible. Can't even copy-paste without popup-windows or use regular BBCode.

Edit 2: Also ruined all my nice formatting and had to redo it. Why does it feel like I have to fight this forum tooth-and-nail to do anything?

Again though the difference between getting it basic and trained or getting it just directly changed makes absolutely no difference mechanically so myself, as a gm, state to my players that it counts as them getting it basic since otherwise the stacking is litterally useless (I did state in my original post though that the RAW disagreed with this, basically exactly what that offical reply said but with my added house change).

After all, it really doesn't make sense to say "no, you just got a useless benefit from the thing that gave you basic". The house rule change I suggested just make sure no player feels cheated or has to munchkin around and change their background choices because they're not optimal. I'd rather have my players choosing their backgrounds that fit the character they want to play and thus apply this so such occurances don't discourage them from doing so.

Dark Bunny Lord said:

Yeah, I sorta agree with you. If I were the GM, though, I think I'd homerule that skills that are both Advanced and Basic to be purchased as half cost . It would be easy to keep track of, viable, and functionally different from gaining Advanced skills as Trained straight away.

Unfortunately , I'm not my own GM.