Steven Barker
First Post
I'm enjoying reading through the WOIN NEW rule book and making up a couple of test characters, but I have a few questions, mostly about skills.
I understand that skills are supposed to be pretty free-form (you can make up any skill you want, subject to GM approval), but I'm wondering if that flexibility should also apply to skill categories. There are a bunch of skills that could pretty reasonably be put in more than one category, and I wonder if it would be appropriate to take one in a different category than it's listed in when a skill choice has a [category] option. This would be particularly useful for categories that don't have a lot of canonically endorsed skills!
I was particularly wondering this in light of the Craftsman career exploit "Handyman" which gives one rank in four different [crafting] skills. Since there are only five "official" skills in that category, I'd really like to take a couple skills that already exist in other categories like hobbies or artistic, rather than needing to make up something even more obscure than basket weaving if I don't want all the existing [crafting] skills (and it's not obvious to me, really, what the blacksmithing skill would do for me when I already have engineering). Some plausible "borrowed" skills for [crafting] would be pottery, brewing, gardening, sewing and maybe some borderline ones like hunting or printmaking. These are all skills where you produce something tangible, and a lot of the work is in the production process (rather than in the design).
Some other categories that seem to overlap each other are [medical] (which isn't even listed as a category in the main skills section of the rule book) and [scientific], and [sporting] and [gaming] (especially if you start adding your own physical game/low-intensity sport skills. E.g. is bocce closer to darts or to dodgeball? How about croquet, or golf?). I'm sure there are lots of others that I haven't though about. I think a reasonable position might be "go for it if it seems reasonable, but ask the GM for confirmation".
Another couple of skill/exploit interaction questions:
If you take a career exploit like Handyman that gives you skill ranks at a flat level, can you also use one of your career skill choices on that same skill, to immediately increment it by another level? I'm guessing not, since you can't usually double pick skills, but since exploits can give you multiple skill levels at once (e.g. Bachelors and Doctorate degrees), maybe its not impossible.
Can you take a universal exploit (in place of a career exploit) that has as a prerequisite an attribute score or skill that you only get after the career's bonuses are applied? Some career exploits that require attribute tests explicitly say to use the attribute value from before any attribute increases, but I don't know if the same principle applies to exploit prerequisites too.
I understand that skills are supposed to be pretty free-form (you can make up any skill you want, subject to GM approval), but I'm wondering if that flexibility should also apply to skill categories. There are a bunch of skills that could pretty reasonably be put in more than one category, and I wonder if it would be appropriate to take one in a different category than it's listed in when a skill choice has a [category] option. This would be particularly useful for categories that don't have a lot of canonically endorsed skills!
I was particularly wondering this in light of the Craftsman career exploit "Handyman" which gives one rank in four different [crafting] skills. Since there are only five "official" skills in that category, I'd really like to take a couple skills that already exist in other categories like hobbies or artistic, rather than needing to make up something even more obscure than basket weaving if I don't want all the existing [crafting] skills (and it's not obvious to me, really, what the blacksmithing skill would do for me when I already have engineering). Some plausible "borrowed" skills for [crafting] would be pottery, brewing, gardening, sewing and maybe some borderline ones like hunting or printmaking. These are all skills where you produce something tangible, and a lot of the work is in the production process (rather than in the design).
Some other categories that seem to overlap each other are [medical] (which isn't even listed as a category in the main skills section of the rule book) and [scientific], and [sporting] and [gaming] (especially if you start adding your own physical game/low-intensity sport skills. E.g. is bocce closer to darts or to dodgeball? How about croquet, or golf?). I'm sure there are lots of others that I haven't though about. I think a reasonable position might be "go for it if it seems reasonable, but ask the GM for confirmation".
Another couple of skill/exploit interaction questions:
If you take a career exploit like Handyman that gives you skill ranks at a flat level, can you also use one of your career skill choices on that same skill, to immediately increment it by another level? I'm guessing not, since you can't usually double pick skills, but since exploits can give you multiple skill levels at once (e.g. Bachelors and Doctorate degrees), maybe its not impossible.
Can you take a universal exploit (in place of a career exploit) that has as a prerequisite an attribute score or skill that you only get after the career's bonuses are applied? Some career exploits that require attribute tests explicitly say to use the attribute value from before any attribute increases, but I don't know if the same principle applies to exploit prerequisites too.
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