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<blockquote data-quote="Staffan" data-source="post: 9001961" data-attributes="member: 907">I strongly disagree with this. It is fairly common to forget expertise with skills in real life when you don't keep them up. Skill atrophy is a real thing. I used to be real good at moderate-level math, but I've forgotten a bunch of it on account of not really using it for twenty years or so. Same thing with a bunch of stuff I learned when doing my mandatory military service. In addition, there's skill ossification, where skills just aren't relevant anymore. You need to keep up with new developments in your field, and if you don't you'll fall behind.One way of handling it would be the method used in Megatraveller, where you had a maximum number of skill ranks equal to Intelligence + Education (or something like that). If you gained skill points to put you over that, you needed to lose skill ranks somewhere else. Megatraveller also had a thing where 0 in a skill was different from not having it at all (I never got into the nitty gritty details of the game, but I think not having a skill at all meant you rolled at a penalty), so that would reflect former expertise that had now atrophied into mere familiarity. The Megatraveller method also allows for actual growth, but only up to a point.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Staffan, post: 9001961, member: 907"] I strongly disagree with this. It is fairly common to forget [B]expertise[/B] with skills in real life when you don't keep them up. Skill atrophy is a real thing. I used to be real good at moderate-level math, but I've forgotten a bunch of it on account of not really using it for twenty years or so. Same thing with a bunch of stuff I learned when doing my mandatory military service. In addition, there's skill ossification, where skills just aren't relevant anymore. You need to keep up with new developments in your field, and if you don't you'll fall behind. One way of handling it would be the method used in Megatraveller, where you had a maximum number of skill ranks equal to Intelligence + Education (or something like that). If you gained skill points to put you over that, you needed to lose skill ranks somewhere else. Megatraveller also had a thing where 0 in a skill was different from not having it at all (I never got into the nitty gritty details of the game, but I think not having a skill at all meant you rolled at a penalty), so that would reflect former expertise that had now atrophied into mere familiarity. The Megatraveller method also allows for actual growth, but only up to a point. [/QUOTE]

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