Modern20?

[beverson]

Sat down with a friend of mine last night and made up a couple of characters, to see how things went, and we both agree that you've done a masterful job on Modern20 Chuck! We did run into a couple of questions during the process.

Skills gave us a bit of a pause, so let me see if I've got it straight, after reading one of your posts in this thread - skills from Backgrounds and Hobbies give you a flat 4 ranks. Then your class skill points are intended to give you X number of skills at max ranks at first level. Are you NOT supposed to break up the skill points? For example, I was building an Unarmed fighting Powerhouse, and decided that he wasn't going to be good at Weapons, so I gave him 2 ranks in Weapons so that he had a little, and put a point each in Read/Write and Speak Language, to model his growing up in a bilingual family. Was it not intended to be done this way?

Also, glad to see that you've decided to go ahead with Cyberpunk as one of the settings. So I will reiterate again my desire to see what your take on the whole Netrunning thing is, because if there's a list of designers who could fix it right, you're high up on it.

 

[Vigilance]

Hey beverson, thanks, glad you're liking the rules so far!

You can break up skill points yes. My statement "you get 4 ranks in X skills at 1st level" is there to speed up character creation, not handcuff you, so if you want two ranks in a skill, that's cool.

I almost always pick class skills and max them out, then use the background skills to pick out cross-class skills, since you can still take all 4 ranks in a background skill even if its cross class. In fact, that's the point and why backgrounds don't expand your skill list but rather give you skills. They're there to give you a little knowlede on a broad range of subjects.