Driving and Pilot skills question.

[far-trader]

Say I select the Vessel(Ground)-Wheeled feat and put 4 points into the Driving skill as a class skill for a Driving-4 rank (pet peeve and minor erratum, why Driving and not Piloting, as it should be, but Pilot?).

Later I add the Vessel(Ground)-Hovercraft feat to my list. It seems I should have to take a new area of expertise in Driving skill for this but the rules seem to suggest I can just use my previous Driving-4 rank with this quite different vehicle.

In fact the difference between driving a two wheeled vehicle and a four (or more) wheeled vehicle is significant. There are even some big differences in certain vehicles with the same number of wheels. I think each selection of Driving or Pilot skill should apply to a single vehicle type (i.e. car, heavy truck, motorcycle, bicycle, etc.). Though the feat could grant you a blanket general skill-0 for all vehicle/vessel types of the class. Or perhaps I'm missing something, the book seems a little disorganized in places at first read. That's not really a complaint (yet) as it could be the way I'm trying to absorb it all.

Anyway, any thoughts or page references? Thanks.

 

[GypsyComet]

The Driving skill text, brief as it is, refers to "specific type" of vehicle. While "type" isn't a defined word used in the Vessel feat, I take it to mean what the feat refers to as Subgroups. The usage of "type" in the Vessel Specialization feat indicates you could certainly limit a given incidence of Drive to, say motorcycles, if you felt so inclined. I prefer to go with the Subgroup level, more to keep the Drive skill from taking over the skill section of the character sheet than anything else...

The Vessel feat applies to the Group level unless the Group has Subgroups, then it applies to a subgroup. The larger Groups are there primarily to keep it simple in the feat lists. You get just Vessel (Ground) listed in a class bonus feat list instead of all four subgroups...

 

[snrdg082102]

Evening Far-Trader,

Disclaimer: I have not yet worked out how to do character generation, but here is my take on the subject of this thread. Please forgive me for using the dictionary to answer the question, which is much more concise and clear than I would have been able to do.

"Why Driving and not Piloting, as it should be, but Pilot?"

From my old "Webster's Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language" 1989

Drive p436 2nd column 10th word from top: drove or (Archaic) drave; driven; driving - (3) to cause and guide the movement of (a vehicle, an animal, etc.)

Driving p436 3rd column 8th entry from the top - (5) used while operating a vehicle.

Pilot p1093 1st column 13th entry from the top (1) a person duly qualified to steer ships into or out of a harbor or through certain difficult waters, (2) the steersman of a ship, (3) a person duly qualified to operate an airplane, balloon, or other aircraft.

Piloting p1093 1st column 3rd entry from the bottom: the determination of the course or position of a ship or airplane by any of various navigational methods or devices.

Combing data here:

"I select the Vessel(Ground)-Wheeled feat and put 4 points into the Driving skill as a class skill for a Driving-4 rank. Later I add the Vessel(Ground)-Hovercraft feat to my list. It seems I should have to take a new area of expertise in Driving skill for this but the rules seem to suggest I can just use my previous Driving-4 rank with this quite different vehicle."

In the above example I two comments:

First, in the case of going from wheeled/tracked vehicles to hovercraft/air-cushioned driving skills I agree that this should be a new driving skill since they are using very different types of drive trains. Wheeled/tracked are in contact with ground, were the hovercraft's only connection is air. Okay, if the terrain is rough or you have a very bad driver the skirts probably touch the ground

Second, I feel that the hovercraft should probably fall under the Pilot skill. My reason for this is that the hovercraft uses the lift principle similar to a helicopter.

"In fact the difference between driving a two wheeled vehicle and a four (or more) wheeled vehicle is significant. There are even some big differences in certain vehicles with the same number of wheels. I think each selection of Driving or Pilot skill should apply to a single vehicle type (i.e. car, heavy truck, motorcycle, bicycle, etc.). Though the feat could grant you a blanket general skill-0 for all vehicle/vessel types of the class."

Yep, there are differences in driving a two-wheeler, four or more wheels, and tracks. Two-wheelers require the operator/driver to balance the vehicle as well as steer the thing. In the case of a motorcycle and bicycle there is a difference also. In the latter the driver is also providing the energy to move the bicycle. Going from a two-wheeler to 4+ wheels eliminates the need to balance, but the basics of steering, starting, and stopping are very similar. So the main difference here is size/mass not necessarily the basic skill level. There is going to be some adjustment required when switching from 2 to 4+ to tracks and the general increase in size/mass and power of the vehicle in question.

With the above said I will agree that there should be a reduction in level, at least temporarily, when moving between vehicles with similar drive trains.

Originally posted by far-trader:
Anyway, any thoughts or page references? Thanks.

Well, there are my thoughts and be glad your not here the smell from melting brain cells is gawd awful. Uh Oh, the smoke detector just went off, gotta open some windows and shut off the detector

 

[far-trader]

Thanks guys, sorry I melted your wetware Tom

My thoughts were running along many of those lines so I guess I'm not too off base. I think in the interest of simplicity and compatibility I'll be implementing circumstance penalties for new applications of the skill within the feat, or something like that

 

[trancejeremy]

Bear in mind, I think a lot of this was done to keep the feel of original Traveller.

That always divided vehicles into ground, tracked, grav, hover, etc.

But anyway, there is no 100% accurate way to handle stuff like this in an RPG. You can't model every possible skill. And you can't get too far away from the systems base (d20 in this case) without breaking down. I mean, if classes get around 4 skill points per level on average, you can't really have dozens of different types of driving skills. You'd have to then ramp up the number of skill points.

I think they did a pretty good compromise, for the most part.