Engineering Skill Specialisation

[Nellkyn]

Rolling up some characters with my game group the subject of the Engineering skill came up. How do the specialisations work? This is also a possible situation for all skills with specialisations.

Our group will be a ship's crew of which two have the Engineering skill at level 1. There's four specialisations' for the safe running of a ship. Do the characters have to take a specialisation or can the skill cover all specialisations?

We wondered about allowing the skill to be used on all specialisations but at a level reduced. This could be used for all skill with specialisations.

Sorry if this has come up before but I couldn't spot it in the forum.

 

[Lorcan Nagle]

The base skill covers the specialisations, but if you've got a specialist field you have bonuses when working in that field. It works like the specialisations in Shadowrun second and third edition (not read fourth yet)

 

[Rikki Tikki Traveller]

Your engineer will have Skill-1 in one specialty and Skill-0 in all others. Remember Skill-0 is competent, so you should be fine. Just have the 2 characters pick different specialties so they can get that +1 bonus in different areas.

 

[Nellkyn]

Thanks very much for that.

Where in the v2.0 playtest document is this explained? I had a good look last night and again today and couldn't find any reference like this. I know it will be staring me in the face.

 

[Rikki Tikki Traveller]

It's right at the beginning, which might explain why you missed it.

On page 3 under Skills it states:

Some skills have specialities – specialised forms of that skill. A character may pick a skill when he gains level 1 in a skill
For example, a character might have Engineering 0, allowing him to make Engineering skill checks without an unskilled
penalty. He might then gain a level in Engineering, giving him Engineering (Jump Drives) 1. He would make all
Engineering checks involving Jump Drives at a +1 DM, but would make all other Engineering checks at a +0 DM. A
character can have multiple specialities in a skill – an Engineer might have Engineering (Jump Drives) 1 and Engineering
(Power Plant) 2. He would make checks related to Jump Drives with a +1 DM, checks related to Power Plants with a +2
DM, and all other Engineering checks with a +0 DM.

That pretty much defines the Skill-1 in one specialty and Skill-0 in all other specialties. NOTE, that it also says that if you get Skill-2 in one specialty, you still only get Skill-0 in the others.

 

[Lorcan Nagle]

the other thing to note is that every time you gain a level in the main skill, you can choose to take it as a level in a specialisation, or increase your general skill further. At this point I think it's too lightly defined as to why you'd take a specialisation over the general skill.

Going back to my earlier example of shadowrun, there you had the choice to reduce your general skill to increase the specialisation. So if you have a pistol skill of 5, you could choose to drop that to 4 and have a level 6 skill in a specific pistol. This would probably be the easiest way to handle specialisations here as well.

 

[Rikki Tikki Traveller]

I don't think so.

I think you have to pick which specialization it applies to.

So, you get the Engineering skill 3 times.

You can have:
Engineering(Mdrive)-1
Engineering(Jdrive)-1
Engineering(Gravitics)-1
All other specialties would be at Skill-0

OR you could have:
Engineering(Mdrive)-2
Engineering(Jdrive)-1
All other specialties would be at Skill-0 (including Gravitics now).

There is no, Engineering-3 skill. You HAVE to pick a specialty.

 

[Lorcan Nagle]

Ah yes, I see where you're coming from upon rereading again - that there's only Engineering 0 and then after that you have to pick specialities. Makes sense, but it could be rewritten for clarity.

 

[Nellkyn]

Thanks again for the quick reply. It all makes sense to me.

I'd not be keen on the Shadowrun system. I've always seen Traveller skills as being that much wider than individual types of equipment even as a tight specialisation.

 

[Lorcan Nagle]

Thanks again for the quick reply. It all makes sense to me.

I'd not be keen on the Shadowrun system. I've always seen Traveller skills as being that much wider than individual types of equipment even as a tight specialisation.

that was more an artefact of the third ed rules where a lot of skills were broken down into subsets. In first and second ed you had a small arms skill that could be specialised in pistols, rifles and so on and then further specialised as specific weapons. Not that it matters anyway.