WOIN Skills that could be in multiple categories, and skill/exploit intereactions in character creation

[Steven Barker]

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.

 

[Morrus]

You’ve pretty much nailed it - as a keyword system, if it makes sense, the it’s valid. But the GM gets a veto, of course.

Re. the second question, you have to do the career steps in order - attributes, skills, then exploit. The doubling up rule only applies to the second step.

 

[Steven Barker]

Thanks for the explanation!

I've come up with a few more questions as I play around with more character ideas.

My first is about the career exploits that ask you to make an ability check when you take them (for extra REP or similar). Since you're doing that during character creation, can you add some or all of your luck dice pool? Without that it seems like the tests will be impossible for many characters, especially since it says to make the test before you increase your attributes. For instance, there's no way to pass the challenging 13+ LOG test for a bachelors degree with honors unless you have at least 6 LOG (requiring at least +3 LOG from your race and origin if college is your first regular career). If you only have a 2d6 LOG pool and can't add luck dice, the roll is impossible.

My second question is about a few traits and career exploits that use the value of an attribute check as a monetary value for producing an item. The high costs of most items seems to make this pretty useless, as there are very few items in the 0-45 range of the usual difficulty benchmarks. Am I missing something that makes them useful?

For instance, the Builder exploit for the Craftsman career lets you build an item with a value up to your LOG check, if materials are available. That means that building a blaster pistol, the cheapest ranged weapon in the game requires an "impossible [40]" difficulty test. The Scientist carreer's Improviser exploit is the same, which means even Einstein couldn't improvise a bunch of lab tools into a science scanner (cost 400, way off the difficulty benchmark chart). Relatively low values might be more reasonable for the Forgetful and Spendthrift traits, which let you retroactively say you acquired some gear from somewhere (though I think a higher value could perhaps be reasonable for spendthrift, since you still have to pay for the item). Anyway, I think some multipliers on the values you can get would be reasonable. For instance, maybe a spendthrift can have bought an item of up to 10x the value of his luck check. For the Builder and Improviser exploits, maybe allow combining the values from several checks, with more checks taking more time (you might also want some multipliers, especially since the craftsman is doing a whole day's work for his exploit, while the scientist is only taking 30 minutes). Or maybe factor in the value of the inputs the exploits consume (so e.g. a builder could create a blaster pistol with an Easy [7] check if he spends 33 cr on his materials).

My last question for today is about exploits and traits that give you discounts on purchases. There are three, two of which have the same name but different discount sizes. One Haggler exploit is for the Smuggler (3d6% off) and the other is for the Trader (2d6% off). The last discount is the Persuasive Trait (2d6% off, but only on purchases under 1Mcr). Do these discounts stack? If I have all three discounts, I'm knocking 7d6% off the cost of my purchases, which doesn't seem too unreasonable (maximum of 42% off, average of 24.5%), and 2d6 of it can't be used on big-budget purchases (like shiploads of trade goods or ship parts). If you dump that many exploits into finding deals, you should probably be pretty good at it!

Anyway, thanks for making this game and hosting a great community. My "Spendthrift Smuggler-turned-legit who is always looking for deals" thanks you too!

 

[Morrus]

Yes, you need a fairly decent LOG score to get honours on a bachelor degree.

Those builder exploits aren't so much designed for creating a science scanner, as being in a locked cell and using parts of the bed and the light fixture tome a crude communicator (30) or maybe a melee weapon like an axe, sword, etc. It would take a very skilled person to make a blaster out of the light fixture, but at 40 it's just about in the range of possibility for a high grade character. Remember you can add LUC dice to those.

And sure, the discounts stack unless they say otherwise.

 

[Steven Barker]

Another question that I've come across, this time regarding Android characters:

Do Androids under the current rules start with 3 LUC like everyone else, or do they start at 0 (but with the potential of gaining some points from careers and advancement)? The table in the book still has a "-" character on the relevant line, just like it had in the 1.1 book when androids could never have a LUC pool. If the attribute is still intended to start at zero but possibly grow later, using -3 might be clearer.

 

[knikpiw]

In a video by Matthew Colville, a method of making travel interesting was that each member of the party had to contribute one 'skill check'.
His video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvQ2JgZIjVI&t=1057s
So in the same way, the craftsman would have to make maybe 3 checks (3 checks for an hour, 6 checks for a day, 9 checks for a week), total them up, and possibly add in checks from other members. This could be something like one PC tries to make/gather better materials and then the next PC picks their area of expertise and so on.
That would be 3x4d6 from the craftsman
And 3d6 from let's say three other PCs
Total of 20d6 value, which could mean a higher quality version of that item
And possibly add luck to that check
So what I’m trying to get at is that the “role for value” could still work

 

[Morrus]

In a video by Matthew Colville, a method of making travel interesting was that each member of the party had to contribute one 'skill check'.

That's how the travel rules in WOIN already work, both wilderness travel (in OLD) and starship travel (in NEW).

I got the inspiration from The One Ring, Cubicle 7's Middle Earth RPG.

 

[Morrus]

Another question that I've come across, this time regarding Android characters:

Do Androids under the current rules start with 3 LUC like everyone else, or do they start at 0 (but with the potential of gaining some points from careers and advancement)? The table in the book still has a "-" character on the relevant line, just like it had in the 1.1 book when androids could never have a LUC pool. If the attribute is still intended to start at zero but possibly grow later, using -3 might be clearer.

Androids start at the same as everybody else.

 

[knikpiw]

That's how the travel rules in WOIN already work, both wilderness travel (in OLD) and starship travel (in NEW).

I got the inspiration from The One Ring, Cubicle 7's Middle Earth RPG.

I mean, using the same system to crafting an item. But the item need a bit more than three checks

 

[Steven Barker]

My group had a few questions about exactly how many Upgrades an Android character should get at the start.

Do you get one modification for free as a species exploit, or does it use your free Universal exploit to do so? Can you swap out any career exploit for the System Upgrade universal exploit?

My personal understanding is that you do get a free exploit from the species, and can also choose to use your free universal exploit for another upgrade if you wish (though you don't have to). You can further replace any career exploit with an upgrade if you want. So a maximally upgraded grade 5 starting Android could have as many as seven upgrades (1 from species, 1 from the free universal exploit, and 5 more in place of career exploits). Did I count that correctly?

The main issue is that some of the android exploits seem better than a lot of the universal ones, and even many career exploits. For instance, getting 5 soak for being armored is pretty good. I suspect it's not as impressive later on when character wealth is high enough that everybody can afford more expensive higher-quality gear (since it an android's built in armor doesn't stack with worn armor, and has no quality). The first armor upgrade is really good (relative to other exploits that give SOAK), but the Improved armor upgrade to improve it later is much less efficient.