Character advancement. WTH?

[Ron Strong]

Okay, I am about to embark on creating my first T5 campaign. I was looking over the rules about character advancement and it baffles me. Not HOW it is done, but why. The whole thing with life pursuits seems to mean that you can only bring up skills that you are already really good at. There is no way to bring up anything that is low or to gain a new skill.

I really, really don't like that. Am I missing something. Am I misreading it? Does anybody thing it would be a bad idea to just ditch the "life pursuits" thing and just let each player bring up a skill of his choice at the end of the year?

 

[Ron Strong]

Oh and one more thing. Another problem I see with the life pursuit thing is that due to aging, wounds or just weird luck in terms of the skills you get, it would be very possible to end up with a character that can't get Stat + Skill = 12 in ANY skill. Thus that character can never advance.

Seems a bit harsh to me.

 

[Licheking]

1 skill will automatically go up, the one used the most during the year that's a given. I see the Life Pursuits as a bonus Skill Level for that year so you pick a skill you would like to improve but which may not have played a prevalent part in the year or campaign so far. If you have Athlete, which everyone gets at 0, you may also roll to improve Strength every year.

Now i allow my players to pick 2 Life Pursuits and choose any physical characteristic for the Athlete Check. If they Crit on the first Life Pursuit i will allow them to roll on the second therefore allowing them to improve 3 skills a year and 1 attribute. I based this on the fact that you can get 2 skills a year in some careers, (Rogue springs to mind as does Citizen), but gives the PC's a bit more of a chance for further development because they are adventuring now.

Now my players haven't completed their first year yet but when they do i will see if this works or not.