Back to the main page

Mailing List Logs for ShadowRN

Message no. 1
From: Sven De Herdt Sven.DeHerdt@******.com
Subject: Question: Improving skills
Date: Mon, 31 Jul 2000 13:47:53 +0200
When improving skills, can you only improve them 1 level at a time, thus
paying karma for each intermediate skill? Or can you improve skills with
more than 1 level at the time and paying only the karma required for this
new level?

fi. Bone, the streetdoc, has Intelligence 6 and Biotech 2. He now had some
time to follow the proper courses, attend to hospital duties, get some
field-experience through providing free services,... and he wants to improve
his Biotech skill to rating 6.
Does this mean that the improvement will cost him 27 karma, ie. he pays
karma for each skill level until he reaches the one he wants (3x1.5 + 4x1.5
+ 5x1.5 + 6x1.5)?
Or it only costs him 9 karma, ie. he only pays karma for his new skill level
(6x1.5)?

I always presumed the first ruling applied, until one of my players asked
some clarifications about improving skill. After reading the rules in SR3
again, I found that it is clearly stated for improving attributes, but what
about skills? Or am I just mis-interpreting the complete ruling?

Suggestions and clarifications would be welcomed,

-sven :)
--
Message no. 2
From: Nightwinder nightwinder@*******.com.au
Subject: Question: Improving skills
Date: Mon, 31 Jul 2000 22:12:21 +1000
Sven De Herdt wrote:

> When improving skills, can you only improve them 1 level at a time, thus
> paying karma for each intermediate skill? Or can you improve skills with
> more than 1 level at the time and paying only the karma required for this
> new level?

I'd say that skills have to be increased level by level, otherwise people would
save up for that Pistols/Stealth/Whatever of 10, burn the 20 GK and just munch.
out.

> fi. Bone, the streetdoc, has Intelligence 6 and Biotech 2. He now had some
> time to follow the proper courses, attend to hospital duties, get some
> field-experience through providing free services,... and he wants to improve
> his Biotech skill to rating 6.
> Does this mean that the improvement will cost him 27 karma, ie. he pays
> karma for each skill level until he reaches the one he wants (3x1.5 + 4x1.5
> + 5x1.5 + 6x1.5)?
> Or it only costs him 9 karma, ie. he only pays karma for his new skill level
> (6x1.5)?

See above, in my EFHO (Extremely Fragging to the confused)

> I always presumed the first ruling applied, until one of my players asked
> some clarifications about improving skill. After reading the rules in SR3
> again, I found that it is clearly stated for improving attributes, but what
> about skills? Or am I just mis-interpreting the complete ruling?

It's kinda fuzzy, since it doesn't put any limitations on how much you can
increase skills by, but see above for my opinion

Nightwinder;
Spawn of the Wyrm; Master of the Triat
Message no. 3
From: Strago strago@***.com
Subject: Question: Improving skills
Date: Mon, 31 Jul 2000 10:04:33 -0400
Nightwinder wrote:

> Sven De Herdt wrote:
>
> > When improving skills, can you only improve them 1 level at a time, thus
> > paying karma for each intermediate skill? Or can you improve skills with
> > more than 1 level at the time and paying only the karma required for this
> > new level?
>
> I'd say that skills have to be increased level by level, otherwise people would
> save up for that Pistols/Stealth/Whatever of 10, burn the 20 GK and just munch.
> out.
>

We play that you can only increase a skill each time you get karma.

> > fi. Bone, the streetdoc, has Intelligence 6 and Biotech 2. He now had some
> > time to follow the proper courses, attend to hospital duties, get some
> > field-experience through providing free services,... and he wants to improve
> > his Biotech skill to rating 6.
>

In this example, after he gets 4 karma he can increase it to Biotech 3, then the
next week (if your runs only take one week) he can increase it to Biotech 4
(assuming he got the 6 karma needed) and so on and so forth until two weeks later
his Biotech is a 6.

> ><SNIP>



--
--Strago

All Hail Apathy! Or don't. Whatever. -abortion_engine

SRGC v0.2 !SR1 SR2+ SR3++ h b++ B- UB- IE+ RN+ SRFF W+ sa++ ma++ ad+ m+ (o++ d+)
gm+ M P
Message no. 4
From: Augustus shadowrun@********.net
Subject: Question: Improving skills
Date: Mon, 31 Jul 2000 08:34:01 -0700
----- Original Message -----
From: Sven De Herdt <Sven.DeHerdt@******.com>
To: <shadowrn@*********.com>
Sent: Monday, July 31, 2000 4:47 AM
Subject: Question: Improving skills


> When improving skills, can you only improve them 1 level at a time, thus
> paying karma for each intermediate skill? Or can you improve skills with
> more than 1 level at the time and paying only the karma required for this
> new level?

I use training times... so I allow PCs to raise their skills by more than
one level at a time if the time is spent.

My thoughts on this:

If the doc in your example went to a medical school he should be able to
increase his skills without going to school

If a skill is expensive later on... say the PC currently has 15 karma...
the current level costs 10 karma... the next level costs 12 karma... would
he be able to use the 'left over' 5 karma and just needs 7 more? Or would
he have to earn a whole new 12 karma? I'd assume most GMs would let him use
the 5 karma he has banked up. So why not let him use it if he has all 12
needed for the next level saved up? Why make him go earn more karma?

And... where could you cut it off... anytime after the 'next' karma
award? What if in the above example... the PC had 22 karma... then spent 10
to raise a skill... he needs 12 to raise the skill to the next level... the
PCs do a cute little roleplay encounter (not a full run) and each PC earns 1
bonus karma (my players and I do alot of these little roleplay things
between runs... where they are primarily interracting with NPCs and
Contacts)
If one PC wants to spend his 1 karma to learn a brand new skill... would
you let him do that? If so... then why not the above character who now has
13 karma and needs only 12 for his current skill needs?

Either way, its pretty much going to be up to the GM and his campaign
needs... you might get PCs that store up a tonne of karma and buy skills as
they need them... example... back in SR1 one of my PCs saved up over 50
karma... he was really big on spending it on things like rerolling failures,
buying successes, etc... eventually one day tho... he had a whack of karma
and wanted to spend it all on learning a panther assault cannon skill to
level 8 or something. In that case I pretty much had to say not at that
time, since it was such a huge and dramatic change to go from unskilled to
veritable master of the weapon overnight.

As for the second half of your query... going from level 2 biotech to level
6 biotech... the total cost would be 27 karma (not the 9 karma). You have
to learn first one skill level before you can learn the next level... so you
have to learn level 3, then 4, then 5 and finally you can learn level 6.

Suprisingly... none of this seems to be really covered in the SR3
rulebook... I guess they just assume you previously played SR2... tsk tsk
tsk.

Augustus
Message no. 5
From: Gurth gurth@******.nl
Subject: Question: Improving skills
Date: Mon, 31 Jul 2000 19:45:20 +0200
According to Sven De Herdt, at 13:47 on 31 Jul 00, the word on the street
was...

> When improving skills, can you only improve them 1 level at a time, thus
> paying karma for each intermediate skill? Or can you improve skills with
> more than 1 level at the time and paying only the karma required for this
> new level?

You improve them one level at a time. I let players take greater steps,
but they must pay the Karma and spend the training time for the levels in-
between as well (so in effect, they're still going one level at a time).

> fi. Bone, the streetdoc, has Intelligence 6 and Biotech 2. He now had some
> time to follow the proper courses, attend to hospital duties, get some
> field-experience through providing free services,... and he wants to improve
> his Biotech skill to rating 6.
> Does this mean that the improvement will cost him 27 karma, ie. he pays
> karma for each skill level until he reaches the one he wants (3x1.5 + 4x1.5
> + 5x1.5 + 6x1.5)?

Yes.

> Or it only costs him 9 karma, ie. he only pays karma for his new skill level
> (6x1.5)?

No. Simple, huh? :)

--
Gurth@******.nl - http://www.xs4all.nl/~gurth/index.html
Sloan Poa!
-> NAGEE Editor * ShadowRN GridSec * Unofficial Shadowrun Guru <-
-> The Plastic Warriors Page: http://plastic.dumpshock.com <-

GC3.1: GAT/! d-(dpu) s:- !a>? C+@ UL P L+ E? W(++) N o? K- w+ O V? PS+
PE Y PGP- t(+) 5++ X+ R+++>$ tv+(++) b++@ DI? D+ G(++) e h! !r(---) y?
Incubated into the First Church of the Sqooshy Ball, 21-05-1998
Message no. 6
From: James Mick sinabian@********.net
Subject: Question: Improving skills
Date: Tue, 1 Aug 2000 12:10:04 -0400
>When improving skills, can you only improve them 1 level at a time, thus
>paying karma for each intermediate skill? Or can you improve skills with
>more than 1 level at the time and paying only the karma required for this
>new level?



The way I was taught, and so consequentially always handled this was to pay
for the increase one level at a time.

i.e. Going from a 4 to a 6 would cost 11 (5 to go to 5, then 6 to go to
6...this may be a little different from the rules...the cost itself is based
on a house rule we've been using...it's hell when one of the GMs is a
munchkinizer...)
Message no. 7
From: James Mick sinabian@********.net
Subject: Question: Improving skills
Date: Tue, 1 Aug 2000 12:15:30 -0400
>save up for that Pistols/Stealth/Whatever of 10, burn the 20 GK and just
munch.
>out.



Okay...it was 2x as much for the increase. That's right. Was it same price
for attributes then though? I'm fairly sure there was something where it
would only cost 5 to go to 5 from 4... Or 25 or 6 to 4... Or maybe that was
6 x 9 = 42...no wait...
Message no. 8
From: Sven De Herdt Sven.DeHerdt@******.com
Subject: Question: Improving skills
Date: Tue, 1 Aug 2000 11:29:43 +0200
James Mick wrote:
>
> Okay...it was 2x as much for the increase. That's right. Was
> it same price
> for attributes then though? I'm fairly sure there was
> something where it
> would only cost 5 to go to 5 from 4... Or 25 or 6 to 4... Or
> maybe that was
> 6 x 9 = 42...no wait...
>
(IIRC) That's the way attributes are improved upto your racial maximum, 4
karma to go to 4, 5 karma to go to 5 and so on...

-Sven :)
--
Message no. 9
From: Sven De Herdt Sven.DeHerdt@******.com
Subject: Question: Improving skills
Date: Tue, 1 Aug 2000 11:44:26 +0200
Thanks to you all for helping me out with this one.

Thx,

-Sven :)
--

Further Reading

If you enjoyed reading about Question: Improving skills, you may also be interested in:

Disclaimer

These messages were posted a long time ago on a mailing list far, far away. The copyright to their contents probably lies with the original authors of the individual messages, but since they were published in an electronic forum that anyone could subscribe to, and the logs were available to subscribers and most likely non-subscribers as well, it's felt that re-publishing them here is a kind of public service.

Thwap!