You could drop Survey if only doing courier duties. But the list looks good.
T5 Errata Discussion Thread
- Thread starter DonM
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You could drop Survey if only doing courier duties. But the list looks good.
I'm not seeing any reason for doing so. Fighter has its own listing on page 142. Is there a rules reason for your asking?
And all the skills on the list are already available in the Scout career. I'm not seeing any errata here?
Also, scout ship isn't a definite thing -- T5 gives Ship Share, which could be applied to any ship choice with other characters, or even saved.
Tell me what I'm missing?
This wasn't completely a conversation about errata; it stemmed from a question about whether the Scout career should assign automatic Skills sufficient to single-hand a Scout Ship. I hadn't noticed we'd stayed in the Errata thread rather than going to Discussion.
No. I was just hoping it was incorrect and was cluster style instead.
I think I brought this up already...
And I think the answer was it is legal, but just in case (since things change) I thought I would post it here.
And I think the answer was it is legal, but just in case (since things change) I thought I would post it here.
Enlisted Soldiers check for Enlisted Promotion *before* they check for Commission. Done right you can get an Enlisted Promotion, a Commission and an Officer Promotion all in one Term. Which is sick Skills that Term, but legal till it gets errata that makes it 1 Promotion or Commission per Term. But for now Timmii can get 3 extra Skills in one Term
Original_Carl
SOC-12
Regarding Majors and Minors
Among the major and minors allowed are, "any science." Page 142 has a grouping called The Sciences. If a character were to acquire 2 ranks of Economics, could all future gains in Economics go to The Sciences? It stands to reason that a college eduction requires many classes and even if you were majoring in Econ and minoring in Philosophy you'd get some physics and chemistry and so forth.
Do The Sciences work like Fighter and Pilot and Driver?
Among the major and minors allowed are, "any science." Page 142 has a grouping called The Sciences. If a character were to acquire 2 ranks of Economics, could all future gains in Economics go to The Sciences? It stands to reason that a college eduction requires many classes and even if you were majoring in Econ and minoring in Philosophy you'd get some physics and chemistry and so forth.
Do The Sciences work like Fighter and Pilot and Driver?
Pretty sure, no. Don pointed out two pages back that Soldier and Starship are like the old "Cluster" skills (levels in one do not get used for others). No amount of History should allow you to have any better ability in Robotics. It still needs clarification.
Good spot though.
Visually, page 142 divides these:
Left two columns: independent skills, some within groups (Starship, Trades, Arts, Soldier).
Middle: Defaults (most are double-listed), Talents, Personals, and Intuitions.
Right two columns: Skill/Knowledge groups and Sciences.
(Just now figured out what the numbers on the left two skill columns are for - the number of skills in each group. Kind of distracting and irrelevant, but definitely inconsistent on that page).
The Sciences, as you can see on p.142, fall under the "Knowledges" category, so they're controlled by p.144, saying that any given Science maxes out at Science-6, but that (p.145) they stack with Skills when appropriate.
p.174 gives a detailed list, and some notes, on various Knowledges mentioned elsewhere, but also note p.175 saying, as does p.142, that the number of Knowledges isn't constrained, unlike the number of Skills, which is fixed at the 64 shown on p.142.
So they're knowledges without a parent? Ok.
If they can stack, can they double stack?
To recalibrate Life Support systems to handle new parameters
Engineering-X / Life Support-Y / Biology-Z / Biologics-A?
Original_Carl
SOC-12
I see that, but then on the same page falling under the "Knowledges" category by association are Animals, Driver, Heavy Weapons, Pilot, etc. which are all Skills.
The issue I want to drive here is that an Art or Science Major and Minor aren't nearly as useful as say, "Engineer" or "Fighter" -- soft skills like Psychohistory and Physics may stack with other skills, but their game utility is limited and depends heavily on the Referee. There are no game-specific systems that would favor a character having Philosophy-6, for example, unlike Slug Thrower (combat) or Small Craft (vehicle operation).
Having The Sciences max out at 6 is kind of rubbing salt into the wound, too. When someone who grabs say Jump Drives-2 can now pile skills into Engineer and realize a significant synergy bonus because for every point you're putting into Engineer, you're gaining points in M-Drive, Life Support and Power Systems in addition to J-Drive. While the character who graduates with an Honors B.S. in Physics and now has Physics-5 will max his Physics knowledge in the first year into his Master's. He realizes no synergy bonuses at all.
You can game this a bit by switching your Honor's B.S. Major to your Minor in Grad School and then get New Major-3 and (old Major) Minor-1, maxing out your old major at 6 and getting a new one (maybe your old minor?) at 3 (bumping your undergrad Minor to 5). You could then carry this over to a PhD and basically do the same thing, moving your post-grad Major to a Minor and gaining that last point, and adding 3 new points to another knowledge.
What I'm seeing (after donning my Min/Max goggles) is that pre-career education, unless it's a Service Academy, is just a way to start one term behind a character who went straight into a Career. Your best strategy would be to Major in anything that wasn't an Art or Science so that you were Majoring in a Skill rather than a Knowledge. Broker, for instance. At least that way, when you finished your Master's (with honors and an honors B.S.) you'd be Broker-8, and Minor-2, Minor-1, or Minor-3 (depending on your choices).
My thinking was The Arts and The Sciences look kind of like skills. As you progress through pre-career education, and into post-graduate studies, you'd pile those points into the parent skills. This gives a benefit to scholarly-types, allows characters to continue to benefit from gains in Major and Minor (all careers have this in the Skills). Consider the Scholar career for a moment while you're processing this. If a character goes through and gets her PhD, we can assume she's a Major-6, why would she ever roll on the Academic column? Why would any one for that matter?
This is something else I'd like to bring up in the Errata Discussion: What happens when you hit Major-6 before you finish your pre-career education term? Take my Honors B.S. Physics student above as an example.
Also, how long can you stay in school? Can I keep going to grad schools for as long as I keep getting accepted to them?
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I think you have a good point here. What if it was broken down a bit (skills not listed in T5 in parentheses):
Hard Sciences: Chemistry, Physics, Planetology, Robotics, (Mathematics),
Social Sciences: History, Archaeology, Psychohistory, Linguistics, Philosophy, (Economics)
Life Sciences: Biology, Psionicology, Psychology, Sophontology, (Medicine/Pharmacology), (Genetics)
(Interdisciplinary Sciences): (Cybernetics), (Biochemistry), (Computational Linguistics), (Neural Engineering), (Artificial Intelligence),
This way, you'd have some variation between Scholar types (Hard, Social, Life, and maybe interdisciplinary, but each type would be useful in a wider variety of situations. And a true polymath would have levels in each type of science.
I vaguely recall an earlier version doing this? (I'm away from my materials).
MMm. Scholar conflict table: 1/3rd Fighter!
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Yeah, the Science thing has bugged me too. I don't know why they are treated so differently than everything else, and I hate trying to make a Ph.D. Scholar character who tops out in his Major at 6 while getting his Masters degree. It makes no sense to me: Can a person really learn that much more about Vacc Suits than they can about Biology, or Physics? So I just house ruled it.
I don't think I like the large category sciences personally. Yes, it would make a character more useful, but it seems very unrealistic to me. Experts in a field typically get more specialized not less. And I don't have a problem with the usefulness of scholars/scientists in a game, because if there is one, then I just make sure that there is something for them to do, just like I would people with any weird skill, like Fluidics. If someone wants to play a scientist character, then some of the game should be science focused, just like if there are fighters in the game, there should be violence (or the corollary: if there are no fighters in your group, there should be little violence, just enough to make them run in fear occasionally). This is of course most easily done by using Patrons hiring people with specific skills they need for whatever task they need done. And a good game doesn't always have to be about using skills either. I had a good deal of fun with a geneticist character just because of his "controversial" views on the origins of humanity (and hence his low SS). :devil:
I don't think I like the large category sciences personally. Yes, it would make a character more useful, but it seems very unrealistic to me. Experts in a field typically get more specialized not less. And I don't have a problem with the usefulness of scholars/scientists in a game, because if there is one, then I just make sure that there is something for them to do, just like I would people with any weird skill, like Fluidics. If someone wants to play a scientist character, then some of the game should be science focused, just like if there are fighters in the game, there should be violence (or the corollary: if there are no fighters in your group, there should be little violence, just enough to make them run in fear occasionally). This is of course most easily done by using Patrons hiring people with specific skills they need for whatever task they need done. And a good game doesn't always have to be about using skills either. I had a good deal of fun with a geneticist character just because of his "controversial" views on the origins of humanity (and hence his low SS). :devil:
Traveller reworked for kids.
Original_Carl
SOC-12
*drum beat*
Beautiful sales gimmick that - I'd have preferred in the day to have had Starter rather than TTB, as it would have been easier for me to use - rules and tables side by side rather than involving page turns.
Can't you switch to your Minor or something like that (or is that just one of Magnus von Thornwood's "houserules")?
As for schooling, I think there's getting a Bachelor's degree (4 years), a Master's degree (2 years) and a Doctorate degree (2 years), isn't there?
When you change schools, you can change your Major and Minor (p.71), so after your Bachelor's and after your Master's degrees you can make a switch. Only the most-recent Major and Minor are used for further Skill awards.
