Our group has been playing EotE nearly weekly since release and on the whole I think everybody has really liked it. I have had a few elements that have bothered me, and a lot of them have to do with skill breakdown.

For the most part I appreciate the simplification of skills. In WeG you had to have a huge list of repair skills to cover everything. It was a big pain. i tend to think FFG has overcompensated a bit going the other way, and that the all encompassing "Mechanics" just seems to broad to me. This one skill covers fixing everything from a toaster to a hyperdrive. I realize our characters our heroes are greater then the average Joe, but for one person to learn all of the things encompassed by "mechanics" would be literally impossible. As written, it is the ability to build, modify, and/or fix literally anything.

While I don't want to break it down to far, it seems logical to me to have a mechanical skill for Ships, Speeders, Weapons, Droids, and perhaps a generic "Mechanics" to cover the rest. I'm just thinking out loud, so my list could certainly be tweaked.

--While I'm at it I also tend to think there should be a thrown weapon skill.

It's up to you, but as another WEG player, I really don't see any serious value added by including another mechanical skill. It' sort of like how R2 is a mechanics master and can repair ships, speeders, and droids, but can still "mechanics" his way out of a primitive ewok net trap....

You have to remember that it is supposed to be akin to a movie or television, and in tv and movies the mechanic can fix anything from a skyscraper to mo-ped. Just like a "Hacker" can basically do anything with a Surface RT and thumbdrive.It's ridiculous realistically, but at the end of the day the character is really just filling the same slot as a "Wizard" would. They take out their tool kit, use a grinder on a pipe (ooooh sparks, so you know he's doing some real impressive mechanical stuff) and like magic, a rusty mini-van is now a light tank, complete with cannon.

I don't think there should be a thrown weapons skill, but I would like it if they officially covered how a thrown knife is intended to work...

I like that most of the skills are somewhat broad. Means your grizzled old outlaw tech can still afford to buy some ranks in shootyness or fightyness or Coersion. (Actually baffled that Astrogation is a skill by itself (seems way more specific than other skills (I'd have just made it part of Computers)) and Vigilance isn't part of Perception.)

You could always ask your players for their "specialty" at character creation (i.e. a speeder expert, droid enthusiast, etc.) and then add a setback dice or two for mechanics checks outside their realm of expertise.

As their character got more experience (both literal and figurative), you could start removing those setback. Or if they scored a triumph, they could "uncover" something about the item they were working on, removing the penalty forever.

The narrative/gamist approach respecting the appropriate breadth of a skill is relative to the narrative (table) time spent on it -- this stands in contrast with simulationist/reductionist “old school” design philosophy. So long as a skill has linguistic (thematic) coherence and does not by itself monopolize a disproportionate amount of “roll time”, the breadth of the skill is prima facie appropriate.

In other words, how much fixin' on yer truck you be doin'? Get er dun! Get er dun!

I was going to suggest something like this. The Warhammer RPG allows this, and gives the player the equivalent of a boost die when applying the specialty. You could give a boost die, or allow an upgrade, depending on how capable you want them to be.

I'd also make it cost XP, and it would be something the player would have to spend to keep their character "specialized". Eg: if they have Rank 1 in Mechanics, maybe they can spend 1 or 2 XP (times current rank) to get a specialty in speeder repair. If you use the "upgrade" idea, then they'd have 2 ranks when doing repairs to speeders. Later if they bump Mechanics up to rank 2, they lose that specialty unless they spent 2 to 4 XP to keep it.

Not sure if that would work, just brainstorming...

It' sort of like how R2 is a mechanics master and can repair ships, speeders, and droids, but can still "mechanics" his way out of a primitive ewok net trap....

Orr how chewy is welding away on the Falcon but also knows which parts to collect to put 3PO back together (and does somewhat do it.)

i tend to think FFG has overcompensated a bit going the other way, and that the all encompassing "Mechanics" just seems to broad to me. This one skill covers fixing everything from a toaster to a hyperdrive.

I'm going to disagree.

A mechanic who specializes in hyperdrives may not be the best droid repairman in the verse, but he's definitely going to still be pretty good at fixing up a droid. Because a lot of the base knowledge is overlapping. Maybe the droid has a bad motivator, well the hyperdrive has a motivator too and our mechanic can keep that one in top shape. Maybe he can cobble together a fix for the droid too.

Something to consider if you need a justification for the polyglot nature of the Mechanics skill is that a lot of this technology has been around for millennia and probably has a great deal of overlap. The power source etc. in a Speeder or Droid is probably the same as it would be in a Starship, just simplified and miniaturized. I'm saying there wouldn't be some variation but the basics would be the same.

Considering much if the technology is largely unchanged for 15000 years or so, I figure most of it is pretty durable/understood enough or down right simplified over thousands of years you don't have to have different fields of study. Also, just buy a droid to fix the stuff.

Eh. It just depends on how you want to play your game. Some will like it to be more abstract, so won't more detail. I like the idea of adding a boost dice to a specialized area (or a set back to non-specialized areas) and that probably won't unbalance anything too much.

I suppose it's not a huge deal. I've played to many games that must quantify everything. It seems funny that htey have so many skills for character interaction, but group many other skills up. I suppose that's just because it's a role=play heavy system where interaction plays a heavy part.

Broad skills makes competence more cinematic. Hence one reason why skills are the way they are rather than the grittier Shadowrun or Dark Heresy methods.