Which skills do you pick.

[burgler81]

Demolitions, you'll be surprised on what you can do with explosives, or the threat of explosives. Become part of the crew on the ship my current party commands, and you will understand. And as Lucky said Intelligence.

[Dustin Fireblade]

Overall depends on the character, but Wilderness Survival and Land Navigation are always high on my list.

After that skills like Prowl, Detect Ambush/Concealment, Tracking and Intelligence.

Language/Literacy, Math and Lore skills are also good picks, and I always try to pick up some kind of a mehcanical skill, even if its just Basic Mechanics.

[burgler81]

Field armorer is another one I like to have.

[Daniel Stoker]

Cooking or Play Musical Instruments. You can only live on MRE's so long in the field, and if you ever need to infiltrate a town and not be noticed, cooks and bar entertainment usually don't nearly get the inspection that a merc with a jeeps worth of equipment on his back does.


Daniel Stoker

[glitterboy2098]

basic math, literacy, and i try to get Wilderness survival and a navigation skill when i can.

i also love to take the Knowledge/Lore skills, they add a great aspect to a character. anyone can play a glitterboy pilot, for example, but a GB pilot with Lore: Pre-rifts is much more beleivable, and if you toss on Lore: Demons, things get very interesting.

of course, you need
a.) a working knowledge of the subject yourself (works better)
b.) a backstory to explain the knowledge.

for example, a GB pilot is likely to have Pre-Rifts knowledge if he decends from a line of GB pilots, and might have obtained a knowledge of demons from the tales told about his ancestors.

[rat_bastard]

my character has a fear of confinement and bondage from being a former slave so she refuses to wear full environmental armor. So I picked up sewing, leather working, field armorer and munitions expert and wardrobe and grooming, she uses it to make her own armor and its been invaluable.

[Mack]

Basic Math is nearly essential. Literacy you can do without, and sometimes it has to be left behind for certain character concepts.

However, not being able to add causes problems, particularly whenever you want to buy something. I am reminded of a player who instead chose to take another physical skill, and when this came to the party's attention, he was scammed mercilessly.

I always thought Basic Math was a little silly. I tend to "adjust" it so it applies to algebra and geometry, but not adding/subtracting/multiplying/dividing.

Even African Pigme should automatically know basic math.

[LDMcFear™]

Vagabond for the win w00t!

[RockJock]

I tend to play a good deal of Operators/Rogue Scientist types. Computer and Demolition skills have many uses, but become even more fun when you start to add things like Surveillance Systems, Basic, or Advanced Engineering, and even Comm skills. A Lore or three is a must. Many times the group sort of splits their areas of interest with lore. The guy from Psyscape knows about psychics, the mage about magic, the CK about demons and so on. Usually we build our characters separately so that we don't mix/max the skill spread too much.

Many, and I would almost say most of my characters are built with a primary and secondary specialties. If I play a Wilderness Scout the primary is obvious, but the secondary could be pretty varied. More often then not the secondary is going to be Lore skills.

[Mithrindir]

usually I take abunch of Physical Skills to help me with my Crappy rolls I made rolling up my guy.

[Vinny]

After having a character die from drowning....I pick swimming.

[The Beast]

Whichever ones I want for the character, duh.

[Library Ogre]

in the process as I type...I wanted something short of Eidetic Memory and something that I could take for characters/races who can't be psionic and have Total Recall, like the Merc Soldier Comm Specialist or a D'norrian Devilman RCC, or don't have super mind powers like the Natural Genius etc.

Memorization Skill, Base of 50% + 3% per level, Allows the character to develop a mnemonic crutch to commit a short-term memory to long term to help them remember phone numbers or PINs or even short passages. It doesn't serve as Eidetic Memory (you can't remember long texts word for word) but it does allow the PC to remember short messages up to their IQ in words length or a string of numbers up to their IQ long. Add +20% to the skill roll if the player is able to concentrate on the information for more than 2 minutes (eg, not in battle). Character will retain the knowledge automatically for up to their level in hours. After that a skill roll is needed. Penalty of -10% for each day thereafter.

Still working out the kinks. Need to look at some other RPGs.

Wouldn't Intelligence cover it?

Intelligence, the skill, has nothing to do with memorization, and has everything to do with Military Intelligence; knowing how enemies work and interpreting patterns of behavior to figure out likely future actions.

[Greyaxe]

Optic Systems, almost no-one I know takes this very important skill. If you ever wanted a +1 for laser targeting you need this underutalized skill.

[Crazy Lou]

Lol, nice. And I used to try to grab all the physical skill too, but then you end up with a guy that can't count, read, cook, hell you can't even clean your guns. and thats freakin someone i wouldn't wanna be around lol. I dont need a Plasma gun blowing up in my face. Which i do watch. If im not told that your cleaning or maintaining your guns, you'll break them.
He'll when I was G.Ming Desert area I had everyone lose a few weapons till they learned to clean them offen. lol I had someone buy a cleaning kit for his gun cleaning kit.

I'm pretty darn sure that somewhere it says that the W.P. also gives knowledge of how to propperly clean a weapon and take care of it, etc, not only how to effectively learn to kill someone with it.

[Library Ogre]

Lol, nice. And I used to try to grab all the physical skill too, but then you end up with a guy that can't count, read, cook, hell you can't even clean your guns. and thats freakin someone i wouldn't wanna be around lol. I dont need a Plasma gun blowing up in my face. Which i do watch. If im not told that your cleaning or maintaining your guns, you'll break them.
He'll when I was G.Ming Desert area I had everyone lose a few weapons till they learned to clean them offen. lol I had someone buy a cleaning kit for his gun cleaning kit.

I'm pretty darn sure that somewhere it says that the W.P. also gives knowledge of how to propperly clean a weapon and take care of it, etc, not only how to effectively learn to kill someone with it.

Read the actual WPs... for modern WPs, it had a skill that let you recognize weapon quality, and mentioned, specifically, taking care of it.

[Greyaxe]

Optic Systems, almost no-one I know takes this very important skill. If you ever wanted a +1 for laser targeting you need this underutalized skill.

Do you get this skill automaticall if you have Combat Power Armor Elite??? I would figure you wuold need to have it in order to use all the Power armor stuff efficiently....

It pretains mostly to Scopes on weapons. The lser targetting on power armor is applied with the weapons systems skill.

[Crazy Lou]

Lol, nice. And I used to try to grab all the physical skill too, but then you end up with a guy that can't count, read, cook, hell you can't even clean your guns. and thats freakin someone i wouldn't wanna be around lol. I dont need a Plasma gun blowing up in my face. Which i do watch. If im not told that your cleaning or maintaining your guns, you'll break them.
He'll when I was G.Ming Desert area I had everyone lose a few weapons till they learned to clean them offen. lol I had someone buy a cleaning kit for his gun cleaning kit.

I'm pretty darn sure that somewhere it says that the W.P. also gives knowledge of how to propperly clean a weapon and take care of it, etc, not only how to effectively learn to kill someone with it.

Read the actual WPs... for modern WPs, it had a skill that let you recognize weapon quality, and mentioned, specifically, taking care of it.

I'm sorry, but I don't quite follow you, are you agreeing w/ me or not?

[Library Ogre]

Lol, nice. And I used to try to grab all the physical skill too, but then you end up with a guy that can't count, read, cook, hell you can't even clean your guns. and thats freakin someone i wouldn't wanna be around lol. I dont need a Plasma gun blowing up in my face. Which i do watch. If im not told that your cleaning or maintaining your guns, you'll break them.
He'll when I was G.Ming Desert area I had everyone lose a few weapons till they learned to clean them offen. lol I had someone buy a cleaning kit for his gun cleaning kit.

I'm pretty darn sure that somewhere it says that the W.P. also gives knowledge of how to propperly clean a weapon and take care of it, etc, not only how to effectively learn to kill someone with it.

Read the actual WPs... for modern WPs, it had a skill that let you recognize weapon quality, and mentioned, specifically, taking care of it.

I'm sorry, but I don't quite follow you, are you agreeing w/ me or not?

Yes, I'm agreeing with you.

[Library Ogre]

I assume someone is cleaning their weapon, going to the bathroom, and eating if they have safe food. I'm not going to turn the game into a drudgery. If they're in a dangerous situation and want to take precautions (i.e. no one goes off by themselves), then they have to tell me that. If I'm going to make a plot point of something mundane (i.e. everyone gets poisoned at dinner, they get attacked while someone's in the bathroom), then I will, but asking them if they're cleaning their weapons? That'd be like saying, after two weeks of traveling, "You arrive in Lazlo, but you promptly die, because none of you told me you were going to the bathroom on the trip, and the intestinal poisoning has killed you."

[Subjugator]

If I'm minmaxing; I take acrobatics, gymnastics, boxing, running, body building, and a few other physicals.

I also tend to take literacy, math (basic and advanced), and strange ones. Right now I have a character with a skill in hand shadows. I once took a character with a skill of popular media history (he knew comic books, television shows, commercials, and the like...nothing useful though). Another character was a botanist, and still another was into astrology.

/Sub

[Greyaxe]

I remember thinking Optical Systems seemed like a make-work skill to me. Weapons Systems, Operate Sensors, and the various WPs have it covered, as far as I can remember, though I don't have the books in front of me.

Regarding scopes, I think anyone could use a scope that's already dialed in and accurate, in a practical sense. I'm comfortable with a rule saying only those with the relevant WP with a WP can get the bonus and can adjust the scope, though. Imo, any type of laser targetting is so intuitive I wouldn't even think you would need the WP, though range issues may apply.

My $.02, anyways.

~Semi

That is precicly the line of thinking that eliminates this usefull skill. My GM doesn't even ask us to use it but I still take it every time.

[Mech-Viper Prime]

i have to say the standard physical skills

with
Military Etiquette, first aid or paramedic along with 2 other language with literacy

[burgler81]

For my current character demolitions, safecracking, seduction, disguise, and impersonation have been life savers.

[Crazy Lou]

For my current character demolitions, safecracking, seduction, disguise, and impersonation have been life savers.

How can safecracking be a life saver? And I'm not being sarcastic or anything, I legitimately would like to know.

[burgler81]

Robbing a bank went really bad, got stuck in the vault. There was more to it but it comes down to having to break myself out of a vault.

[Crazy Lou]

Robbing a bank went really bad, got stuck in the vault. There was more to it but it comes down to having to break myself out of a vault.

Oh Man! That's hilarious!

[burgler81]

Ya it was an interesting session. Thou it turned out well.

[Crazy Lou]

Was it someone important's vault? As in CS something, or George Hornesby in Los Alamos?

[burgler81]

No nothing that big, our group is a bunch of pirates, slavers and other baddies, we decide we needed more money for various things and decided the small town we were in would be a good place to make money.
I made more ransoming the Mayors son then I did on robbing the bank.

[burgler81]

It's just sad that we made more from ransoming the kid then we did the vault.

[burgler81]

I'm trying to forget about that part. Stupid bandits haven't they heard of honor among thieves.