Skill Sets

[byline]

Your breakdown seems very similar to the 7th Seas Skill set system, where players chose a skill set that had basic and advanced Knacks available to the player. For example, the Sailor skill set had basic Knacks of Rigging, Climbing, Balance, and Knotwork and advanced Knacks that included Pilot, Cartography and Swimming. The Skill itself--Sailor--didn't get augmented at all during the course of the game, but gave the player access to learning and improving all the Knacks associated with it. During the course of a game, a player who didn't have the Sailor Skill could either learn one specific Knack or learn the entire Skill set and suffer no penalty to learning other Knacks associated with it. All in all, a very clean system of addressing abilities by class rather than hodge-podge pick-and-choose.

I strongly suggest you avoid setting up your system to raise levels in BOTH experience fields and skills (as you define them). You'd be complicating the mechanics well beyond what's necessary and, frankly, turn players off from wanting to play it.

[smascrns]

Sorry for the time it took me to repply but it was not dependent on me. In any case:

Your breakdown seems very similar to the 7th Seas Skill set system, where players chose a skill set that had basic and advanced Knacks available to the player.
Well, it is not that similar since in my approach a particular skill may be used with different experience fields.

I strongly suggest you avoid setting up your system to raise levels in BOTH experience fields and skills (as you define them). You'd be complicating the mechanics well beyond what's necessary and, frankly, turn players off from wanting to play it.
Food for thought. Why do you think that it turns players off from wanting to play the game?

Notice also that all of this is linked to two other concerns: the granularity of the scale for both experience fields and skills; how and how fast each one of them advances. I'll address both issues in the series of columns.

Thanks for the comments.