How do skills work (Primary, Secondary, Core, Main)?

[rmckee78]

I am trying to understand how skill selection works during character creation. My background gives me Primary and Secondary skills, but then my apprenticeship gives me Main and Core skills. Are the main and Core skills additional skills on top of the ones I get from my background? How do they relate to Primary and Secondary? In the description of Secondary skills it says that education bonuses do not apply, are the bonuses from the apprenticeship what they are talking about? For both Main and Core? This is all very confusing.

[The Oh So Amazing Nate]

I am trying to understand how skill selection works during character creation. My background gives me Primary and Secondary skills, but then my apprenticeship gives me Main and Core skills. Are the main and Core skills additional skills on top of the ones I get from my background? How do they relate to Primary and Secondary? In the description of Secondary skills it says that education bonuses do not apply, are the bonuses from the apprenticeship what they are talking about? For both Main and Core? This is all very confusing.

If you wind up with an ATB character with an apprenticeship, be prepared for a whole TON of skills

The apprenticeship skills are specialized areas of education for your character. (yes they are on top of your primary and secondary skills) Consider them like you would a college major.

The primary skills (in this case) could be considered subjects that the character minored in. Plenty of education in the given subject, but not the main focus.

The secondary skills (again in the case) can be considered akin to elective courses. Things that "MAY" relate to the apprenticeship or primary skills or that "MAY" be completely unrelated but are skills you want the character to have just because or because they somehow relate to the characters back story or personality.

I have an ATB char who is a Frog (with the insectivore dietary disadvantage) and a traveling Dr and something of a gambling gunfighter (Imagine if Doc Holiday were a bright orange and purple frog).

His apprenticeship skills all focus on medical related skills and chemistry/brewing (he makes and sells tonics and elixirs).

His Primary skills tend to focus on breeding and caring for insects (easier to grow your own food [bees] (and sell the honey) than to catch and kill it. those mutant bugs are dangerous).

His Secondary skills fill in the "flavor spots" wp's in pistols, gambling, and utility skills like cooking, sewing, general repair and maintenance.. etc.

[glitterboy2098]

basically, palladium breaks the skills a class can get into groups..

OCC skills which represent the main education of a character
MOS skills/Apprenticeships, which some classes get to represent additional main education in a particular field (not all classes and game lines use these)
OCC related skills which are electives learned at the same time as the OCC/apprenticeship, but which aren't always directly related to it.
and secondary skills.. skills that represent stuff picked up in a less dedicated fashion.. like with hobbies or on-the-job training, etc.

in ATB, the specific skills you get for your background are your OCC skills, and that background also tells you what you can pick in addition as part of that background, which are your OCC related skills. some also get apprenticeships, obviously. and the secondary skills are obviously secondary skills. ATB is kinda unique in how it structures the process, but the basic division is the same.

[The Oh So Amazing Nate]

Isn't that basically what I said?

Well put GB, bonus points for using the correct terminology

[rmckee78]

Thanks,

I think I understand a little bit better. So everything other than secondary skills get the education bonuses?

[The Oh So Amazing Nate]

Thanks,

I think I understand a little bit better. So everything other than secondary skills get the education bonuses?

Yes that is correct.

[rmckee78]

Thanks again.

I have rolled up two pre-gens so far tonight. The first one took a very long time, but I have a better grasp on what order to do things in now, and it seems that my first character got a bunch of random rolls that make for a lot of work. First character took about 2.5 hours, 2nd took 30 minutes. This is a relief since I have 8 players to make characters for.

[The Oh So Amazing Nate]

when I was new at it I always figured 2 hours for char gen, and that was with the Old TMNT. Once i figured out which skills were must haves (boxing and swimming) things got a lot quicker. However, the glut of skills that you can get in ATB2 can stretch that time out a bit. Takes even longer if you have a clear concept for your char in mind and want to pick skills that are useful and appropriate for your concept.

You're doing pc's for 8 players? Why aren't they making them themselves? I (personally) would rather make my own char and follow a concept that I conceived rather than have someone hand me a sheet and say here, you're this.

[rmckee78]

I agree, usually my players make their own characters. This game will only run for one or two weeks, and is in our FLGS so I don't want to lose at minimum one whole week to character creation.

[glitterboy2098]

ATB characters can get some of the most skills per character of all the palladium games.. though i suspect that is to make up for the lack of gaining new skills as they level up. but that large list can be tough to fill out sometimes.

like when i made Monetero de H'bana for a defunct ATB game in the chats.. 39 skills, which is quite a lot for palladium. (most char's tend to be more 15-30 in the other game lines).. with him ending up knowledgeable about a ton of topics ranging from blacksmithing to computer science.
i'd originally not intended him to be such a Renaissance Man/polymath, but it just sorta ended up that way due to how narrow the skill options were for the class. thankfully, i was able to mesh those into his background so it all fit.

man, i'd forgotten how cool Montero was.. gotta play him again some time..

[rmckee78]

A nearsighted, academic, T-Rex; I love it.

[The Oh So Amazing Nate]

Hello all. I am new to After the Bomb though many years ago I did actually possess a 1st edition copy of the TMNT book now lost to history...

Related to skills in AtB, I am wondering if there are any avenues by which characters may gain new skills as they increase in level. My apologies in advance if this question has previously been asked on this forum.

the official answer is, "no new skills as you level". the official reason is, "they're not expected to live very long."

that doesn't mean you can't find someone to teach you a skill if the gm allows

[rmckee78]

Alright, looks like I will have 6 players on Tuesday.

I wound up making:

A German Sheppard Medic
A Rabbit Gunfighter
A Sea Otter Pirate
His Psychic Parrot
A Kodiak Bear with a machine gun mounted on his back
A Turtle dual wielding swords

The turtle was the only one where I did not go random all the way. I chose the animal, background, and apprenticeship for him. I wanted a ninja turtle in the game for obvious reasons.

[hollowecho]

how Irun my game is every 3 levels starting at level 3 ...is 3,6,9,12,15, you get 2 secondary skills that start at level one ...also I allow a mentor type to teach any skill but it takes time ...( like 6 months min) and you have to find some one who has the skill and is around long enough to teach it

[rmckee78]

Alright, I am running this tomorrow. First time running a Palladium system, let's see how this goes.

[The Oh So Amazing Nate]

Best of luck! Post a game log as soon as you can. I don't know about anyone else, but I enjoy reading about other peoples games.

[rmckee78]

Great success!

I had 4 players, they chose:

The Rabbit Gunfighter
The Sea Otter Pirate
The Bear Cavalry
The German Sheppard Medic

The House Rules: I used a slightly modified version of the standard combat system. I divided the round into 15 phases and distributed actions throughout the round based on how many attacks each character had (i.e. you attack in phase 1, 8, and 15). I did not use initiative and had all actions in a phase be simultaneous. I also greatly reduced the amount of SDC and HP most monsters had after the first two rounds of the first fight when I realized how long fights were going to take.

The Setting: I used the general ideas from the After the Bomb setting book, but created a post-apocalyptic New Jersey of my own. The game began in Atlantic City and the characters traveled across the state to Camden, mostly on the Atlantic City Expressway.

The Game: The characters, members of the Atlantic City militia, were summoned by the leader of the Free City, "The Boss". The Boss was a bald eagle with a headband and work shirt who informed them that he needed them to take on a special mission. One of the characters seemed reluctant so he offered them hazard pay of 200 Skee-Ball tickets, they could not turn this down. He told them that The Empire of Man had launched a satellite that was capable of bombarding the mutant kingdoms from space with rocks. The mutant kingdoms had discovered an old NASA plan called "Project Orion" that they though could save them. The characters were instructed to move a group of scientists and a cache of nuclear weapons across the state to the Battleship New Jersey, they set out in a horse drawn carriage.

A few hours later they were ambushed by Piney Muskrat bandits. The muskrats dug a pit trap and felled trees behind the wagon. The characters attempted to turn the wagon back the other way when they saw the pit tap and the trees wound up falling on two of the four horses, killing them. The other two horses escaped and the Rabbit Gunslinger took off after them.

The German Shepard Medic opened up on the muskrats to the north with his bow, while the Sea Otter Pirate began firing his pistol at the ones to the south. Bear Cavalry let loose with the .50 machine gun mounted on his back, quickly killing two of the bandits. While the Pirate and the Medic finished off their targets, Bear Cavalry charged into melee with the remaining bandits and squashed them with his crushing blows. The Gunslinger was able to use his extraordinary speed to catch the horses before they could escape. The characters looted several rifles from the bandits and Bear Cavalry ate their corpses.

As the party was making its way past the ruins of the Deptford Mall, the milk they were carrying with them suddenly curdled. Their jury rigged alarm system kept the Jersey Devil from getting the drop on them and the Gunslinger was able to jump onto the roof of the abandoned retail store before the beast burst out of the front doors. While the Rabbit Gunslinger peppered the Devil from above, Bear Cavalry closed to crushing melee range. The horses drawing the carriage failed their horror check and took off across the parking lot, nuclear bombs and all! The Rabbit Gunslinger made a heroic leap from the top of the building onto the wagon and managed to stop it. Bear Cavalry and the Jersey Devil tore each other to bits in melee and the Pirate managed to finish the Devil of with a pistol shot. The Medic worked on Bear Cavalry. The characters cut the head off of the Jersey Devil, and the Gunslinger preserved it and mounted it on the front of their wagon.

Just outside of Cherry Hill the party saw a moving mound of dirt coming their way. LANDSHARK! The characters braced for the coming battle as the landshark burst from the ground, saw the Jersey Devil head, failed its horror check, and ran away.

When the party arrived in Camden they saw workers swarming all over the Battleship New Jersey, working to make it airtight and attaching two huge lead plates separate by a giant coil over shock absorber to the bottom of the ship. The party was informed that the nuclear bombs would be detonated sequentially under the plates and used to lift the battleship into space. A second set of bombs would be used to slow the ship during re-entry. The characters had some reservations, but managed to pull it together for the mission.

The New Jersey was blown into space where the party managed to cut the satellite to ribbons with the ship's nine 16-inch laser cannons. Sadly, the New Jersy broke apart after splashdown in the Chesapeake Bay. As the party swam to the surface, canoes full of spear wielding warthogs circled...

Final Thoughts: Overall I was pleased with how fast the game played once I adjusted the enemy SDC values. If anything, I think I would either adjust those values even lower or up weapon damage in the future. It becomes obvious who is going to win in a few rounds, the rest is just whittling away at a giant bag of SDC. Other than that, everything went great. The players seemed to like the phased combat method as everyone got to roll dice every minute or so.

[rmckee78]

Special thanks to Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle for their unique use of Project Orion in Footfall.

[The Oh So Amazing Nate]

Flipping Awesome!
Favorite Parts.. All of them!

200 skee ball tickets lol? The denizens of NJ haven't gotten any smarter over the years have they.
Love the Jersey Devil early warning system. Very ingenious and nice way to include local folklore into the game
He Ate Their Corpses!!! Did he kill them to eat them or did he eat them because they were already dead?
Land Shark! Don't answer the door!
"We'll use the nuclear bombs to blow the battle ship into space and then use them again to soften reentry." Wow.. Just.. wow.

Can't wait to see what happens next time on The Jersey Shore. (tell me it's the one where snooki gets punched in the face).

[rmckee78]

Sadly, this was also my grande finale at that FLGS, I start a new job in DC on Monday. While I may make it for a game here and there, I will be moving about 60 miles away. The quest for an new FLGS begins!

[rmckee78]

Flipping Awesome!

He Ate Their Corpses!!! Did he kill them to eat them or did he eat them because they were already dead?

This was not entirely clear at the time, and remains a mystery to me. I should mention that he was a partial biped, no human appearance bear with Pilot: Unicycle.