"General Abilities" and XP Cost

[Howl]

One of the changes being implemented in M20 involves the handling of those very broad, general abilities such as Crafts and Science. Under the new system being presented, players will need to purchase these traits multiple times for each discipline they possess that fits within that ability. As an example, say a character has training in both carpentry and metalwork. Instead of just buying a general "Crafts" trait, they will need to buy "Crafts: Carpentry" and "Crafts: Metalworking." As an optional ruling, players may use the "Well-Skilled Craftsman" discount to purchase new disciplines for 4xp each, treating them as specializations rather than buying up a new set of dots for each. This option is available only after the original specialization reaches 4 dots.

Now, there are things I like and things I don't like about this. I've always found the broad nature of some of the abilities a little silly, and having a way to address that is nice from a realism standpoint. On the other hand, this could potentially cost characters a lot of XP - even if we invoke the Well-Skilled Craftsman option. And given that the traits in question are mostly things that involve a character's personal background and are less likely to be rolled in a contested scenario, I'm not sure that the realism component is necessarily worth the cost.

So my question for you guys is this: Do we want to implement this system as-is, do we want to nix it and just leave these abilities as they are, or do we want to try something that lands somewhere in the middle?

Here is my suggestion for the third option:

Broad traits such as Crafts, etc. will be handled in a manner that's a bit similar to Linguistics. For each dot you buy in the trait, you can select a new discipline that your character has some skill/knowledge in. So using the above example, a character with Crafts 2 could take Carpentry and Metalworking as their associated crafts. This does not cost anything. It's automatic with each new dot purchase. These traits can still be used to attempt untrained disciplines (say, if this same character wanted to try to do some auto repair) since it's often the case that people pick up small bits of knowledge about a number of different things within a broad category. However, the difficulty of said roll will increase by +2. In some cases, such as a a character with zero training in musical instruments attempting to play the violin, an ST may elect to refuse the player this option on the grounds that the character should not realistically be capable of anything resembling a success. (And players will be expected to take that sort of thing into consideration when playing on their own.)

Personally, I can see benefits and drawbacks to all three options, so I'd really like to hear from you guys before I make a decision. This poll (as with the other one) will be open for a week.

[jamie]

Same tack I took in the other thread: If we're going to play M20 I say we do what the M20 book says to do for the time being and save the implementation of house rules until people have had a chance to use them and find out if they work or not.

[mnemosyne]

I think it would be okay to use rules, but I think the categories should be more broad than: Carpentry, or Metalworking.

Perhaps we should have a couple of broad categories for both and then let people choose more specific tacks within those broad categories. Broadly, a 'craft' like auto repair translates to a whole variety of other hands-on sort of repair things. Someone who can diagnose and troubleshoot machinery can do that in a variety of ways. Someone who works construction is similarly skilled in a whole variety of things. And that's also true for most people whose craft is more on the arts and crafts side of the equation. So: if using the rules I think the subgroups should be as broad as possible in both.

[vesta]

Or how about having them as general skills for the first dot or two, and then start adding specialties. Eg, someone goes to shop class and picks up the basics of woodwork, metalwork and whatever else goes on in shop. But there's only so far you can go in a general class before you need training that's more specific. Maybe?

[Howl]

I went ahead and edited the poll slightly so there's room for people to make suggestions of their own.

Liz, that's not a bad idea. Two possible concerns: Doing that would require me to design a house rule similar to the one I did for the Influence background, which, if we're trying to avoid making too many house rules, that's a consideration. Science in particular already has its subcategories laid out in the book, so if we changed them we'd need to make sure players were aware of that. The second issue is that these learned disciplines also function as specializations. When purchasing them the standard way that doesn't kick in until the 4th dot, but it's still something to keep in mind (especially since I will probably use the Well-Skilled Craftsman option.) I don't know that it's really a huge issue? But allowing players to re-roll 10s on super broad categories might get (hah, pun intended) dicey. That's less of a concern with something like Crafts, but Martial Arts is also one of the abilities we're talking about here, and I don't expect anyone really wants to allow that for a combat ability. Unless you meant that we could allow them to classify their learned area of expertise in a broad way, while still keeping the specialization within that category specific? That I think I would be more in favor of.

Vesta, it sounds like what you're suggesting is allowing players the option to roll these traits for any applicable task (as all of the other traits can be used) but with fewer dice if said task doesn't involve their particular specialty? That was another option I was thinking of suggesting. (Either that or a difficulty increase.) And I do think that might be easier to implement than re-writing the whole process. I'd honestly be down with that if other people liked it. (Unless I've misinterpreted your suggestion?)

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I had someone request for me to list the abilities we're actually talking about here. And I was about to go ahead and do that, but while I was reading through them I ended up having a lot of doubts myself as to which abilities we're really meant to split up. Crafts is clearly written that way. Art and Martial Arts seem to strongly imply the same, but don't say so in a clear and unambiguous way. Science I had thought was meant to be handled the same way that Crafts is - because it says so in the description. But then it goes on to give an explanation that is, in fact, not the same as the one given for Crafts. (And does assume that people be allowed to roll Science for general scientific knowledge.) So basically we're for sure talking about Crafts, and maybe like 75% sure talking about Art and Martial Arts, and then there's a bunch of other abilities where my response is pretty much ??? - but given the lack of a clear and unambiguous indicator, I'm inclined to err on the side of not making this game excessively complicated and assume those abilities function the same as they always have and that the writers of this book just explained them in a confusing/misleading way by constantly comparing everything to Crafts.

Vague and misleading descriptions - it's the Mage: The Ascension way.

(Note: I have not looked at the Secondary Abilities recently, but I'm fairly sure that some of them fall into this category as well. Especially things like Lore and Area Knowledge.)

Bearing all that in mind, I think regardless of what we choose I'm going to have to make a clear ruling and write some kind of note about it in the Judgment Calls so that nobody gets confused.

[Howl]

Ok, after re-reading (again) and checking through a few other parts of the book, this is the official list of all the ability traits that need to be purchased separately for each discipline the character learns:

Art
Crafts
Martial Arts
Academics*
Esoterica
Science*
Area Knowledge
Lore

In the cases of Academics and Science, both of these traits state that, in addition to representing a specialized field of study, the dots also indicate general academic/scientific knowledge. Meaning that these traits can be rolled for "general" academic or scientific applications regardless of the chosen specialty. However, if the roll in question involves specialized understanding within a certain field, the character must have the appropriate specialty. For example, say that someone has Science 4: Biology and they run into a problem that requires high-level astrophysics to solve. They would not be able to roll that.

It's possible I may have left one or two out - there are a couple of other abilities that could potentially be included. But the traits in question were a lot more vague and they all said that additional specialties CAN be purchased, rather than MUST be purchased. So I interpreted that as meaning that it isn't necessary to roll the trait - it's just an option people have if they want to take more than one specialty.

We're just about finished with voting and it looks like most of you want to go with the canon rules, so this information may not be necessary anymore, but I wanted to post it just in case anyone was still waiting on me to clarify things.

[Howl]

Alright guys, the polls are officially closed. Thank you to everyone who participated.

It looks like the majority of you voted to not make any changes to the canon rules, so we will be implementing this as it states in the book. There were two people who offered alternate suggestions but did not vote, so if either of you intended your suggestion to be an official vote please let me know. (In which case that would change the results to a tie and I will have to figure something out.)