ED4 Preview #3

[Tanthalas]

I like the idea of broad skills that adepts would be prone to up. Having it tie into the background like you describe could be cool. I think you would need to be careful, though. Earthdawn is a slightly more 'concrete' world and system. So while having player input is great, you already have quite a vibrant canvas to work off of here.

Another question that your system would bring up is 'how would skills work for the everyman that is not an adept?' It could become quite a can of worms.

But maybe if you shortened the skill list it would all work out. Something similar to 'skill groups' in Shadow Run. You have your 'Burglary' skill which functions as a poor man's version of the talents Silent Walk, Pick Pocket, Detect & Disarm Trap, maybe a few others. You balance them out based on how potent you think the group would be. So 'Close Combat' would likely be all on its own. But maybe 'Dodge' becomes a skill that includes 'Avoid Blow' and 'Parry', something like that. That makes it more cost and time effective to upgrade your skills and keeps the players invested in them up until the mid-range levels at least.

Thats just my 2 copper though.

[Darth Quiris]

For my idea that would be easy. Give everybody a single Background Skill that basically defines what they do. Perhaps that teenager over there sitting along the side of the main street has a skill called Street Urchin +2. Maybe that guy running his market stall has Simple Entrepreneur +1.

If combat skills are needed than a simple skill called Learned to Street Fight at +1 could say this person has learned the barebones of fighting from the streets.

If the developers decided to do away with all the skills that are the same name as Talents that would be a very good step in clearing out the clutter that Skills feel like it is. It makes no sense at all to have a Talent and a Skill of the same name. If a Talent is something only an Adept can do than why the hell is it also a skill?

[shiinx]

[Roth]

[Slimcreeper]

I'm actually on with Darth Quiris on this one. The talent-skills make the talents seem a little cheap.

That said, I'm not completely sold on the idea of the super-generic skills. Maybe . . . I just need to see how it would work with Earthdawn specifically.

[kosmit]

I agree with both of you. Second Weapon as a skill if it's like 9+ Circle talent? And others Second... That's weak. Especially when description says "work as talent apart from Strain and action type". Some even has only "work as talent" without any difference! The only real difference in fiction is in Lock Picking talent/skill. Rest is sadly the same.

[Darth Quiris]

In the few games of Earthdawn I had ever run as a GM I always ignored the skills that were also talents. It never changed how the game flowed for me.

[Telarus_KSC]

I played around with a Background Packages concept, much like the previously mentioned "skill" version. It had a value of 8 like "starting skills" rule, but had a limited # of skills listed to spend those points on. This was so I could make a master table of all of the Named Packages, and roll off to generate NPCs (adept, & non-adept). Roll up a Background, pick a Race, assign one of the Attribute Arrays from the Classic Discipline Design hand-out, spend CHA Step skill points on the Background (and maybe add a number of other skill-points in any skill equal to the "Circle Challenge Rating" the NPC was supposed to be if above 0 or 1). It worked pretty well to generate bandits, odd townsmen, random travelers, etc.

I hadn't considered it for player use, but I do like that it would incorporate the player into the world, and gives them ties, benefits and challenges due to those connections. Interesting ideas.

I play with the full skill list, tho I really didn't like 2nd Editions version of a few skills (Melee was split in skill version to Melee-Sword, Melee-Axe, etc). In my last campaign, my girlfriend ran a 1st Circle T'skrang Airsailor (from House Vestrimon, sent on a quest to prove herself to the House as she was such an odd Discipline for them). But she skilled herself out like a Swordsmaster (2nd Weapon, etc) to complement the Airsailor Talents. It worked really well because that was the training she received at home before a Dwarf Airsailor found her obsessively sketching airships at one of the Elemental Towers in the Floating City and initiated her.

So, I like the flexibility of having many of the Talents also have Skill Versions. But I agree that this area could use revision.

[kosmit]

If you didn't use skills duplicating talents how you handled fights without melee weapons and missile weapons? You can't avoid duplicating talents and skills but talents should be more special.

[etherial]