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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7244956" data-attributes="member: 42582">I don't agree with this.Special Duty means that characters generated using the basic system have skill numbers comparable to those you get using Mercenary, High Guard or Merchant Prince.The difference between PCs geneated basic-style and PCs genereated using those "advanced" systems was obvious well before Mega-Traveller was published. Andy Slack addressed it in his Expanding Universe article in White Dwarf, and suggested a D6 roll for skills per term: 1 to 4 equals that many skill rolls, 5 = roll on a table you're not normally allowed (similar to the Special Duty results in Mercenary et al), 6 = no skill.The Traveller Book addresses Scout skill shortfalls (due to lack of commission and promotion) by saying "2 skills per term", and MegaTraveller extends that to all services that don't have ranks.We didn't use the "two skills per term" variant. Rather, the tables we used had Special Duty entries of 3+ (7+) for Scouts, up to 7+ (11+) for Barbarians, roughly reflecting the difficulty of getting position or promotion in that service. Meeting the first roll gets an extra skill. Meeting the second roll gets either two extra skills, or choice of one skill.I didn't do anything more rigorous than eyeball the Mercenary skill check numbers to see how this compares, but I think it produces roughly comparable outcomes. It's also comparable, in outcome, to Andy Slack's suggestion, but better grounded (in feel terms) as a 2D throw.Your claim here is false, for two reasons.First, in many cases it is possible to fail survival by more than 1, and hence - under the rule we were using - the PCs is dead. As I reported in my OP, this happened to one of the PCs being generated (a belter, who needed 8+ for first term survival and had a roll below 7).Second, there are plenty of cases in Book 4 where survival can become automatic (eg Bureaucrates, Diplomats, and Doctors), and one of the PCs being generated in our session was a Diplomat with automatic survival. The player still stopped after 3 terms because he didn't want to risk aging rolls.I'm aware of this. I commented on it in a post that was a couple of posts upthread of yours.The +2 per level is found in the Traveller Book. It is not in the original edition of Book 1. Its introduction into the later edition makes the system inconsistent in its treatment of Engineering, because Book 2 - both in the discussion of repair following drive failure, and in the discussion of repairs during combat - says +1 per level of Engineering expertise, and the Traveller Book retains this despite introducing the "+2" rule into (its equivalent of) Book 1.I'm familiar with the Experience rules in Book 2.And I don't really need a lecture on being "used to modern games". The first time I ever generated a Traveller character was around 1980, so I would say I have a reasonable familiarity with the system.But your claim about the meaning of skill-2 is, in my view, exaggerated. For instance:* A character with Medical skill is not a doctor or surgeon until reaching expertise level 3. * The system has rules for the impact on command of Leader-3, and on recruiting of Leader-4. * The trade system allows for up to Broker-4. * The Manoeuvre/Evade software operates in increments of 1/4 Pilot expertise with fractions rounded down - which suggests that some characters, at least, are envisaged as having Pilot-4 or better.A character with expertise of 1 is clearly not a novice, but at least for many skills is hardly an expert. A character with Medical-1 knows enough to help deal with one-stat-at-zero unconsciousness, but not enough to help with the management of, and revival from, cold sleep berths.Some skills are obviously different from this - vacc suit, for instance, where there is generally no penalty for having no expertise and a +4 per expertise level for many tasks - but I think what that tells us this that there really is no such thing as being an "expert" vacc suit user (whereas clearly there is such a thing as being a medical expert).</blockquote>

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