Message no. 1

From:	shadowrn@*********.com (Ice Heart)
Subject:	Programming and Maximum Skill levels [OT]
Date:	Fri Jul 19 15:40:01 2002

>From: Rand

>Those skill descriptions are merde. Pardon my French.
>But think about it - characters can start out with
>skill levels of 6 (7 with specialisation) at creation,
>whether their backstory has them as a punk ganger, or
>what. A character with the lowest priority in skills
>(E - 27 points) can know 4 skill at this level at
>creation. A character with the highest priority can
>know 8 skills at this level!
>
>Those descriptions just don't fly, man.

Do what I do. I do not let characters have higher than a 4 in more than one
general skill at generation. I once had someone hand me a physad street
ganger with the following skillset:
(this was under SR2)
Firearms 6
Unarmed Combat 6
Athletics 6
Stealth 6

I tore the sheet up. Now this may sound extreme, but this guy had been
playing under me for almost three years. He knew better. A street gamer
with NO Street Etiquette?!?!? Bulldrek!! No negotions skill? No knowledge
of ~anything~ at all? His stated intention was to spend "all my karma on
social skills". Sounds like cheating to me. He wanted to be a combat god,
and then spend his karma earned in combat on etiquette. Not in my game.
This is ~after~ his last combat god troll physad died. In ten sessions,
they had one fight that lasted long enough for him to reach hand to hand
combat. He died in that one. His replacement character was the more
obscene human physad above.

He won't play in my games anymore, which strikes me as a good thing. He and
I had argued a few too many times about munchkins, powergamers, cheaters,
and my right to ban all three styles of play from my table. The argument
that one games for fun, and he had to do these things to have
fun...well...it never washed with me.

This is a complete tangent, but the point it simple. Noone gets to be 18
years old on the streets of any sprawl knowing ~nothing~ but combat. Such
an individual dies very very early. So make your players get more skills by
limiting the number of them that can start above 4. This keeps the
specializations at 6, and gives everyone something to grow towards.
Personally, once I had a character that was "the best in the world" at more
than one thing, I'd retire them. They would be boring. They could come out
and play when Harlequinn came calling with one of those ridiculous world
shattering runs. My NPCs tend to have a plethora of skills, with one or two
as high as a 6. Almost never do they have an 8. Maybe 5% of all my NPCs
have that 8 skill (with specializations). They have to rely on someone else
to help them if they need a master in a field outside their own. Seems
realistic, doesn't it?

Korishinzo
--Munchkin-hater: 8
(once I get my Cheater-breaker up to an 8, I plan to retire) ;p

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