Shadowrun
Shadowrun Play => Character creation and critique => Topic started by: Tecumseh on <05-02-18/1918:22>
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Has anyone used an alternative approach to Knowledge skills during chargen other than the default (Intuition+Logic)*2 points?
Understandably, my players gravitate toward the knowledge skills that are most likely to be useful - Small Unit Tactics, language skills, local area knowledge, etc. - at the expense of Interest skills. I've always enjoyed the extra flavor that Knowledge skills add and would like to promote their wider use.
I could always just give players free points for Interest skills, or other skills unlikely to see game time, but I wanted to ask the community if anyone else had an approach that they had used and/or would recommend.
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A lot of people have griped about the Knowledge skill point allocation being so low in SR5. Two ways, off the top of my head, on how you could house rule it. The simplest way would be to increase the multiplier from (x 2) to (x 4) or even (x 5). If you think your group would still ignore the "flavor" Knowledge skills in favor of more practical ones, you could always give them two sets of free points, with one set being restricted strictly to interest and hobby skills.
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You could also incentivize branching out into "fun" knowledge skills by habits during play. Getting edge back is a GM call, but one of the suggestions is having the right skill at the right time. Sure, Knowledge of Elven Wines won't come up every Shadowrun, but rewarding it with edge when it does come up might encourage such fun skills.
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Once gameplay starts I award karma specifically for advancing knowledge skills. I call it... Knowledge Karma. Players like it so that's a keeper.
This question is more about chargen. I've done *3 and *4 before and they worked out better than *2, but I was wondering if anyone had something more creative.
If we consider ourselves, any of us could reasonably claim dozens of points of knowledge skills points, and it's not because we're all Logic 6 + Intuition 6.
Right now I'm considering free points dedicated to Local Area Knowledge, as PCs should naturally accumulate this just by living or working somewhere, plus more free points for Interest skills.
Still open to ideas though.
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I would also consider free points for specific gear used regularly (Example: Ares Predator V but not Heavy Pistols) and enemies.
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At our table we get x4 knowledge skills, and x1 language skills.
We also get knowledge karma, and at the end of a run the GM allows us to increase knowledge skills relevant to the run at a discount.
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My GM hands out free ranks in knowledge skills for stuff we have encountered. Example we go on a run and end up ass deep in a wasp insect spirit hive. At the end of the run we all got one rank in insect spirits for free because we actually now know shit about them because we have fought them and been inside a hive and lived to tell the tale. Were not experts with only one rank but we now have some idea how they operate and what to expect. After the 1st free rank were generally on our own but if we just keep ending up fighting insect spirits he eventually gave us a second point for free because of extended contact with them. Work with a local crime family long enough and do enough jobs for them and you get things like XCrimeX family politics and XCrimeX family establishments because you start to know whos who and whos got an axe to grind with who and where they like to hang out.
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I was mulling over just this question yesterday, and was thinking next time we are doing character creation I'll make knowledge skill points be 'mental limit * 3'. I think willpower is actually relevant (staying focused on learning something), and this puts a bit more reward to that and logic (everyone wants high intuition anyway).
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Hmm, using Mental limit is an interesting idea. I agree with Beta's reasoning.
By extension, you could make a similar argument for using Social limit when calculating the number of free points for Contacts. I'm going to consider these.
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I was thinking the same about social limit. Penalizes less a low charisma character (because sometimes those are fun to play, but when you have bad social skills and very few contacts it can make them pretty sidelined in certain situations)
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Next to the things already proposed above, you can also make sure hobby skills come up during a run. To give the example of elven wines, if the characters meet a target they need to get information from during a fancy party, their knowledge can put them into the target's good graces and make it easier to gain this information. If you do that a few times, the players will search themselves for ways to use these skills during play. At least in our group we do (we're not only creative with spells, but also with knowledge skills).
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Thanks for everyone's thoughtful feedback, which I appreciate. I might be running some more questions past the forum in the next day or two.
I'm very comfortable with the use and advancement of knowledge skills once gameplay starts. The question at hand is how to promote them during chargen. I can't creatively insert hobby skills into a mission if the player doesn't take any hobby skills to begin with.
I'm currently thinking 6 free points for Local Area Knowledge, and 12 free points for hobby skills. The default skill points (which might be Beta's Mental Limit * 3) could be spent however the player likes. Granting that these are somewhat arbitrary and that any free points are better than no free points, are there any opinions on those defaults?
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You could also just tell players that you don't intend to offer a lot of utility-based knowledge checks. There are some things that you are just going to assume characters know because of who they are (ex. if they are a magician, they probably know about their own magic tradition, or if they are all professional shadowrunners, they know about shadow world/community). Tell them that they can use active skills + Intuition/Logic -3 for knowledge roles for those things if they want to make a check. (ex. Someone can roll a magic related skill for magical knowledge checks).
You can also just say, I will privilege knowledge skills that are more specific/characterizing than those that are broad/utilitarian. Basically, lowering thresholds/giving bonuses when rollling something specific than something utilitarian and broad.
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I think the reason we don't see a lot of knowledge skill is multi-fold. First the value of Knowledge skill isn't very high. Given the vast diversity of knowledge skill, getting use out of them can be very hit or miss. Even broad categorized knowledge skill very rarely get rolled.
My experience Small Unit tactics, various flavors of gang land, various flavors of knowledge local, cooperate security procedures, are the knowledge most likely to come up.
Next Logic, is not stunningly popular stat, in editions past, you had deckers run logic, and you had hermetic run logic. However Hermetics have fallen out favor, you mostly see chaos or other Intuition based traditions and of course various flavors of Cha based traditions. So that means one large constants of logic based character really is no longer seeing a lot of play.
So if we want push knowledge skill i think a couple steps would be useful. One more effective uses for knowledge, by that I mean complementary skill tests for useful knowledge. Pick a couple, small unit tactics, anatomy, knowledge Military battle, things like this give complementary skill rolls on various things in battle. Doesn't need to be shooting necessarily but things that we don't see often like leadership checks. Finding way to increase the value of various little used combat options.
Use of Hobbies, so rolling a hobby skill to "de-stress" after a fight to help recover some stun.
Things like this. Could help encourage players to see value in skills.
In terms of getting more skill on sheets I personally favor just increasing the multiplier, given that logic is currently kinda under performing compared to others, means increasing the multiplier increase the value of the stat, which seems wise to me.
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I sometimes allow Knowledge skills to complement Active skills with something like a teamwork test. A character can make a Knowledge skill test, and any hits become extra dice for the Active skill test (capped by the skill rating).
For example, if a PC has a Knowledge skill in "Yakuza," it's bound to be useful when negotiating with a Seattle oyabun. The hits on a Knowledge Test add dice to the Negotiation Test.
Similarly, a character with a hobby Knowledge skill in "Urban Brawl" is bound to eventually run into a Mr. Johnson who's a big Seattle Screamers fan. Hits on a Knowledge test can add dice to the next social skill test. (Tip your fixer for the heads-up.)
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I call for knowledge skill rolls a lot, but I must admit, there are some skills that, unsurprisingly, get more use: Seattle, Knight Errant, police/security procedures, matrix security and Matrix design.
For a lot of the interest skills, either I as the GM or the players have to work to make use of them. I have to plan for knowledge of VR games to be relevant. Knowledge: Fashion has been used a few times to judge an NPC's social class. Making them useful takes doing. But I think it's worth it. One of my favourite parts of Shadowrun is the time between jobs, when characters are living their lives and being in the sixth world, and that's when their interests come up the most.
I've also allowed them to use knowledge skills related to the topic in question but with a higher threshold, or to contribute to teamwork rolls with knowledge skills. These have been good for increasing their value.
I might try giving them some bonus points for interest skills, just to see what they use them for and what I can get out of them. This is a groovy idea.
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I try to throw in the occasional situation where a shared interest will make an NPC more friendly towards a PC (making other social skill use easier). Some are obviously more apt to show up than others, so I try to make the rarer ones a bit more impactful. i.e. "interest: urban brawl" can probably help break the ice in a lot of situations, and a player can even try using it a bit more assertively in expectation that in certain situations it could help -- but because an interest in urban brawl is expected to be common it only helps a bit. "Interest: high end racing motorcycles" isn't going to show up so often, but because it is rare when you do encounter somone with the interest it is apt to make more of an impression. Adding that to a key NPC that looked like they'd be difficult to get on-side can make an encounter a lot more fun than just "So, trying to bribe, sweet-talk, or con? Roll your dice."
Also don't forget that knowledge skills include profession skills. Those can often be useful in disguise/impersonation types of issues (as well as the 'break the ice with someone' factor of the interest skills). I'm particularly fond of janitor and things like barista or waiter.
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In my home games I like having more knowledge skills but I just have them start with the basic amount of points. I do allow all active skills to be used as knowledge skills and allow knowledge skills to give them a teamwork test with themselves if they apply.
I have been toying with the idea of integrating a "I know a guy" mechanic. In Sprawl they allow players each game to create a contact that they know by connecting them to their backstory some how. I was going to allow the players to spend an edge to "Know a guy" they get a new contact at loyalty 1 and I create his connection rating and such but they must be wove into the characters background with a monologue or something told to the other players. It is the cheesy character development parts of the movie or show that revels new information about a person.
This could also be adapted to a "I once was a..." or "I used to study..."which does the same thing for hobbies and interests. I am not sure if that will work as well though. I would have to give the skill a rating, maybe the edge point allows them the skill at rating one but they can spend 1 karma per level to have it higher to a max that I decide based on the story they tell. This would also fill in their background and slowly they wouldn't have room to write more skills in easily.
Like I said still toying with the idea. the reason that I like these kinda mechanics is that they help flesh out a character in the tables mind. You start with a loose background and then flesh it out as you develop the character.
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In terms of creation I haven't really given it much thought. Generally for my home games I just increase the modifier to either x3 or x4.
During play I use a slightly modified version of the Informed Opinion social manoeuvre where by if you have a related knowledge skill you can roll that and add the hits as both a dice pool and limit modifier for social skill tests. This allows for lower skilled characters to still have input/effect during social encounters and gives incentive to having broad knowledge skills. I always try to give 3 or 4 different hooks that can be exploited this way so it doesn't just become have this knowledge or nothing.
Recently I had an scene where the team were involved in a sit down with the Yakuza and the techno/off face had a knowledge skill of Japanese Culture with a specialism of Tea Ceremony. He rolled well and got significant dice pool bonuses to all of his social rolls throughout the course of the encounter. It also gave him a social modifier as it made the Yakuza more receptive to the team.
For me I always will allow the use of an active skill as a knowledge skill, though perhaps at a minus. For example the pistols active skill used as a knowledge skill to identify what the weapons found would be at -3 dice pool but allow you to roll on a guns knowledge roll as if you had it.
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I was thinking about this the other day and thought it might be good to create an everyman skill list. Everyman skills where used in Hero system they where basically the free skills you got for growing up in a certain culture or environment. for example everyone should have a computers of 1 or 2 just growing up in a modern shadowrun world so that should be an everyman skill.