I understand the mechanic behind treating Advanced Skills as Untrained Basic Skills.

It allows an untrained person to attempt the skill, at half-stat.

But once that skill is Trained, it no longer provides any bonus.

Once example:

I was looking to play an Explorator, and thought it might be nice to be from a Forge World, where he will get a head-start with the knowledge of both Tech and the Machine Cult.

Forge-Born characters gain Common Lore (Tech, Machine Cult) as Untrained Basic Skills.

Explorators starting skills include Common Lore (Tech, Machine Cult)

Despite growing up on a Forge World, and a game mechanic being in place to supposedly give a bonus for this, my Explorator knows no more about Tech or Machine Cult than any Hive-Born or Void-Born Explorator!

How do other people see this? Is it such a cheap bonus as to not worry about? Does it seem wrong? Has anyone House-Ruled a new way of playing it?

I view it as a non-issue.

You are looking to squeeze out a bonus for being a specialist in a field from a planet where that specialization isn't special. The real bonuses are from the other aspects of being from a forge world, not that almost everyone on a forge world knows how to operate a lot of tech devices.

As a GM, I don't have problems with the rules for Advanced Skills as Untrained Basic as written. I think thwey are fine as they are for the reasons ItsUncertainWho said.

If you don't like it, you can transform any Advanced Skill with the Untrained Basic quality from origin path into a +5 to the Skill as soon as the character gets the Skill Trained. That won't break the game and gives you some kind of Home World specialization for these skills.

In your example, your Explorator would have +5 to both Common Lore (Tech) and Common Lore (Adeptus Mechanicus).

Thanks for the replies.

It's not just me trying to squeeze out a bonus. My GM isn't happy with the rule.
It's not just about Forge-Born, that was just one example. Its the general mechanic, it doesn't seem to do much.

Apparantly to give someone a bonus, it allows them to make a very poor roll, and as soon as they learn how to do it properly, they lose that bonus.

Just looking for some other input

In my opinion, the advantages gained from the origin of a character are mostly there to flesh them out and add interesting little differences. They are fun to have but add more personality and quirks then major advantages. As such it seems no problem for me that they might become outdated if a player dedicates himself further to such pursuits. RT characters are powerful enough as it is.

Of course, this is just my two cents. And the peer (nobility) and peer (Adeptus Mechanicus) from my background come in handy about every game session.

Friedrich van Riebeeck, Navigator Primus, Heart of the Void

Maese Mateo said:

I'd do this too.

Ditto to the +5, but I do with a mind to the future. What that means is if they get an "advanced as basic" and then pick up training during their Origin, they get a +5. When they level the skill up further with a +10 advance, it over-writes the origin bonus, in the same way that a +20 over-writes a +10.

My reasoning? It represents a skill that the character has been exposed to for a decent length of time in their background. They pick up odd bits and tricks that augment and compliment their formal training (or equivalent thereof). It gives them an edge, but once they get to the +10 level it's not enough to really count for much anymore.

Having an advanced skill treated as a basic skill I see it as someone who already knows a lot about a subject, but not as much as someone fully trained. Rather then give someone a bonus that is overwritten I think that the amount of experience/time needed to reached full trained aptitude should be less. In the example provided at the beginning, a Hiver would need less time and instruction to reach the aptitude in tech use as a death worlder. I prefer to reflect this buy discounting the trained skill by 50 xp - less effort needed to get to the same level. The player can then save that xp and reach the +10 lvl sooner then the death worlder. As for character creation, if you get a skill twice then you get the "Talented" talent for that skill. Since you don't have the full skill I won't give the talented talent, but I will give the player 50 xp more to spend during creation if he gets both the trained skill and the basic advanced skill. The 50 xp usually only shows up 2-3 times and really only lets a player start off with one additional skill, which seems fair for essentially overwriting the a starting benefit.

I hate this rule. I actually created a thread on this issue a long time ago, because it does raise some issues.

For example, it means that someone with the Forge World Homeworld that becomes an Explorator will be functionally worse than someone from a Homeworld that gets a Advanced-as-Basic-Skill that is not covered by the Explorator career.

It also means that all the new Homeworlds in Into the Storm are functionally better choices than the Core Rulebook examples, because they all get Trained Skills , not only Advanced-as-Basic-Skills ; Since Trained skills gained on creation stacks for the purposes of Skill Mastery (+10 and/or +20), this can give a significant advantage early in the game depending on your build and what you're going for.

My proposed homebrew to alleviate some of these issues is quite simple:
Any skill that count as both an Advanced and a Basic Skill at the same time, can be bought at half it's regular XP cost at it's Career-appropriate level.

This is in my mind balanced by the fact that Trained Skills either results in an immediate gain of anything between 100 to 500 xp, depending on starting build, whereas most Advanced-as-Basic-Skills cannot be improved until later levels and must be bought for experience points.

This in effect means that a Forge World Explorator will be able to buy his +10 Common Lore ( Machine Cult, Tech ) at Rank 2 and his +20 Common Lore ( Machine Cult, Tech ) at Rank 3 for 100xp each, instead of 200xp , saving him a grand total of 200xp.

I think it's an elegant and fitting fix; easily applicable and easy to keep track of, with minimum homebrew and fuss.

Edit: I managed to find my old thread .

You could also turn "Untrained Basic Skills" into just "Trained Skills". That way, for example, Explorators from Forge Worlds always start with Tech-Use +10.

I doubt this will break anything.

Maese Mateo said:

But no, it wouldn't break anything in particular. It might end up making gaining the +20 Skill Mastery on creation a bit easy, though, once you take the Origin Path into account.

On a side note, by the way, Forge World doesn't actually start with Tech-Use as Advanced-Skill-as-Basic . It's odd, but they don't. Hive World get that, though.

I actually had to check to make sure. All Forge World gets is Common Lore ( Machine Cult, Tech ) as Advanced-Skill-as-Basic .

Fgdsfg said:

None of my players uses the ItS Homeworlds, so that wouldn't be a problem for me. =)

It's weird you don't get Tech-Use from being born in a Forge World.

Thanks for all the ideas.

Our GM has decided to give a +5 to "Advanced counting as Untrained Basic" skills when they become Trained.

I think its a fair balance, and makes the bonus mean something.