[Third Imperium] House Rules: In-Game Skill Improvement

[Thile]

I have toyed with an idea how to improve skills in a more logical way. The reason for this is that the time it takes increases so fast (if I have understood the rules in the correct way).

For example: My fictional Character Adrina is a 4 term with Int 12 & Edu 9 and gets the following skills:
Before First Term:
Homeworld: Computer -0, Animals -0
Background Skills: Physical Science -0 Social Science -0

First Term: Psion/Wild Talent
Basic skills: Telepathy -0, Clairvoyance -0, Telekinesis -0, Teleportation -0, Awareness -0, Medical -0
Advancement:Rolls: Deception -1
Rank 1: Survival -1
Event: Roll 4: Spent time reflecting my Athletics (swim) -1

Second Term: Drifter/Wanderer
Basic skills: Recon -0
Advancement:Rolls: Stealth -1
Rank 1: Streetwise -1
Event: Roll 7: Life event: Roll 7: gain a contact (This is a priest who cares for those who have nothing)

Third Term: Rogue/Thief
Basic skills: Gun Combat -0
Advancement:Rolls: Remote Operations -1
Rank 1: Stealth -2 (1+1 previous)
Event: Roll 4: Planning major heist and gains Mechanic -1

Forth Term: Citizen/Colonist
Basic skills: Drive -0
Advancement:Rolls: jack of All trades -1
Rank 1: Nothing
Event: Roll 10: Experience in technical field and gains Engineering (Life Support) -1

[After all terms are done]
Connection: Priest teaches me Social Science (Philosophy) -1
Connection: An aslan friend (another player) whom I met on the colony in term 4, teaches me Language -Aslan -1
Skill Package: Investigator Pack: Persuade -1

These 4 terms give me a Skill Total of: +13 (Yes she was obviously lucky with all advancement/qualification rolls :wink: )

This means that I have +13 weeks to learn any new skill according to the books.

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What I want is to reward those who have High INT/EDU characteristics, so I am toying with two ideas:

1) INT/EDU modifier (in this case +2 & +1) will neglect that many levels from ST and make an intelligent and well educated person have it easier to improve/learn a new skill, so in my example above, this means that this character will only have a skill total of 10, instead of 13, and thus have an easier time than a normal/slow learner when it comes to get better.

2) INT/EDU characteristic divided by 4 (in this case 12+9/4 = 5) and neglect that many ST (in the above example: the character gets a skill total of 8 ), that means that a normal character (int 7/edu 7) neglects 2 from skill total.

3) Have ordinary humans (not Darrians/Zhodani that have special abilities/powers/stats) automatically neglect 2+INT/EDU modifier skills, to show the versatility in basic humans (they need some love, when all aliens get cool stuff), this means that I (as I am a human), get a skill total of 8, instead of 13, but an aslan with the same number of skills and stats would only get a skill total of 10

I would really appreciate feedback, so what are your opinions on this?

 

[locarno24]

I understand what you mean - it seems to make sense that some individuals will learn faster than others.

I'm not sure how to model it. EDU sort of jumps out, but I always thought EDU is more about what you have learned, rather than your ability to learn more.

One thing I wouldn't do is make it race-specific. Aslan (or whatever) get more than enough downsides to go with their bonuses - Aslan males can't understand anything economic, Zhodani get the whole 'Soviet in America' thing whenever trying to interact with the Imperium, etc, etc. Not all stuff aliens get is cool - plus there's no real reason they're any less capable of learning than normal humans.

I think (1) is probably easiest if you want something. Ignoring INT/EDU DMs is easy to remember and doesn't really unbalance the game unless you've got a ridiculous intelligence - at which point, fair enough. (The Hunters of Men spring to mind)

 

[Easterner]

I think you mean NEGATE not NEGLECT.

The idea is interesting but probably not worth effort needed to make it accurate. IQ doesn't help you learn training intensive skills like Gun Combat, Athletics or Acting. The sheer doggedness of these activities requires dedication High IQ types often can't apply, they'd would excel at mental tasks like Astrogation. To implement your idea means researching each skill, assigning bonuses to each based on St, IQ, DX, End, Edu etc and assessing some as negatives.

You'd end up with gibberish like ATHLETICS if ST 10+ you use ST/DX/END mods to removes weeks but subtract IQ mod unless ST under 7 in which case you add IQ mod instead unless stats for ST/DX/END are under 7 those add weeks.

What that translate to is high IQ types won't learn Athletics easily unless already powerful and use to exercise and weaklings would need longer to build up an athletic program exacerbated if high IQ type.

But IQ/END alone won't work.

 

[CosmicGamer]

Not only would each individual possibly have different learning curves, and different skills could be based on different characteristics, but different skills could just inherently take different lengths of time to learn. Example: Learning to fly would probably take longer than learning to drive a car.