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Savar
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Joined: 14 Feb 2015
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 Posted: Wed May 18, 2016 12:50 pm Post subject: lose of skills to disuse |
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is there official rules for skills degrading from lack of use?
I ask because some NPC blocks have notes of skills that have been reduced from lack of use. |
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garhkal
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Joined: 17 Jul 2005
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Location: Reynoldsburg, Columbus, Ohio.
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| Posted: Wed May 18, 2016 1:23 pm Post subject: |
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Nothing that i have ever seen. Heck we had a thread on this a while back, in relation to age and skills degrading...
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Dredwulf60
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| Posted: Wed May 18, 2016 3:21 pm Post subject: |
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| garhkal wrote: | | Nothing that i have ever seen. Heck we had a thread on this a while back, in relation to age and skills degrading... |
In my home brew special operations and espionage game I introduced a mechanic where skills that weren't used degraded by a small margin on a monthly basis; like a 1% ratio, unless a very nominal fee was paid in improvement points.
I was trying to replicate the literal fact that you can have a large degree of training, but the stuff you don't use WILL begin to fade.
This did not go over well with the players when I introduced it.
Players of a skills-based game: No fee is too small, no degradation is too slight when it comes to precious, precious skills.
I abandoned the idea after a trial period because it disrupted the way the game worked. Players lost any incentive to improve any skills outside of what they regularly used. And why should they, if they were just going to have their efforts bleed away? There would be no incidents where one of them had some rare off-the-wall skill that suddenly was just the thing the group needed to save the day.
And this was unsatisfactory in a game where I encouraged players to spread out their expertise and embrace unusual skillsets. |
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MrNexx
Rear Admiral
Joined: 25 Mar 2016
Posts: 2248
Location: San Antonio
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| Posted: Wed May 18, 2016 4:12 pm Post subject: |
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I would only introduce something like this is there was a substantial gap wherein certain skills might have not been practiced. Not simply "You haven't built a droid in three months, so you take a 1 pip penalty unless you pay a CP", but "You've been on Kashyyyk for 20 years with no contact with anyone else, and so your abilities with Astrogation are pretty shaky."
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Whill
Dark Lord of the Jedi (Owner/Admin)
Joined: 14 Apr 2008
Posts: 10297
Location: Columbus, Ohio, USA, Earth, The Solar System, The Milky Way Galaxy
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| Posted: Wed May 18, 2016 10:22 pm Post subject: Skill Atrophy |
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| Savar wrote: | is there official rules for skills degrading from lack of use?
I ask because some NPC blocks have notes of skills that have been reduced from lack of use. |
There are not official rules. Here's the thing. NPCs don't need rules for that because NPC stats aren't built using any system in the first place. All NPC stats are hand-waived into existence at the point they are first used, and then skills are increased over time as the GM sees fit. The published NPC stats blocks for movie characters that have changed for the given reasons of 'age and/or skill atrophy' were done so by the authors based on their idea of the NPC at a different point in their life years removed from other incarnations of their stat block. And NPC stat blocks changing in this manner have no bearing on PCs.
PCs are built according to a system but past changes due to age, growth from experience and skill atrophy are already figured in to the character's background regardless of what age or experience the PC starts play at. So the only place rules for skill atrophy might make sense is for PCs going forward from char gen. I've never seen a need for it in my game because the only skills that might go a long time in between uses are skills they've never raised, so they are already only defaulting to the attribute. If a PC raises a skill, it's going to be used. I love well-rounded PCs so I view it as part of my job as GM to design scenarios that keep skills from going too long without being used. It's a part of adventure variety that helps prevent PCs from overspecializing.
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Dredwulf60
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Joined: 07 Jan 2016
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| Posted: Thu May 19, 2016 3:12 am Post subject: |
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Another time I see a PC might use it is if you are flashing forward in the campaign or coming back to old PCs some decades later.
In that case I might assign the group a 'ravages of time' penalty...and have them cut out maybe a dozen or so pips worth of their PC's skills or attributes at their choice.
Ones they think they may be lacking in their old age/ retirement if they honestly consider it.
As a trade-off I'd award them X credits worth of extra gear or other perks that might be attributed to the decades of time that has passed. |
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garhkal
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Joined: 17 Jul 2005
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Location: Reynoldsburg, Columbus, Ohio.
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| Posted: Thu May 19, 2016 4:03 am Post subject: |
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| Dredwulf60 wrote: | Another time I see a PC might use it is if you are flashing forward in the campaign or coming back to old PCs some decades later.
In that case I might assign the group a 'ravages of time' penalty...and have them cut out maybe a dozen or so pips worth of their PC's skills or attributes at their choice.
Ones they think they may be lacking in their old age/ retirement if they honestly consider it.
As a trade-off I'd award them X credits worth of extra gear or other perks that might be attributed to the decades of time that has passed. |
Now that i can see. Alternately you could have it where if they say took X CP worth from skills in 'atrophy', they gain Y in CP to improve other skills..
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Tinman
Lieutenant Commander
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| Posted: Thu May 19, 2016 11:25 pm Post subject: |
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I don't recall anything in the rules as written about losing skills from disuse.
The nearest thing I can think of is suggestions that medical conditions can have a long term effect on skills and attributes, such as Boba Fett's stats being somewhat reduced in the Dark Empire sourcebook due to lingering effects of captivity in the Sarlacc.
We had one character who suffered traumatic brain injury during play, and would occasionally not be able to remember how to do certain things because of it. That was role played though, it wasn't based on rules. (He also had some memory gaps and developed a couple odd behavioral quirks.) |
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garhkal
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| Posted: Fri May 20, 2016 2:48 am Post subject: |
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Several books show some of the canon npcs having skills atrophied from disuse.. mom mothma is one of them..
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Volar the Healer
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| Posted: Wed Jun 15, 2016 6:50 am Post subject: |
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No official rules I am aware of. I think this is mostly character bckground. I might apply it to a character who moved away, then moved back a year later so hasn't played in a couple of years of "game time"...maybe.
I might apply it to a character who started in one era (say rebellion), then wanted to play again in a different campaign (say the force awakens) because he's done nothing for 20 years.
But, it's never actually come up in my game.
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MrNexx
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| Posted: Wed Jun 15, 2016 11:50 am Post subject: |
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| garhkal wrote: | | Several books show some of the canon npcs having skills atrophied from disuse.. mom mothma is one of them.. |
On the other hand, consider the Failed Jedi template. They're obviously intended to be older, and would reasonably have had higher skills at one point... but now, they have the same 18D/7D of anyone else.
I tend to design NPCs with the skills they need to have at the moment... "was once more of a bad-@$$" might be a note, and I might even want to note that his 6D in blaster was once 8D, but it's degraded with time. So, question becomes "What do skills degraded by time MEAN?" Mon Mothma has a few skills that have gone down with disuse. Does this mean that she could more easily regain them? If I hand someone Mon Mothma to play in a game for some reason, and they want to improve those skills, are they cheaper to improve? Can she regain them with just training time, no CPs? Is this a feature someone might put into a character meant to be Revan, Jolee Bindo, or Meetra Surik... once great and powerful, but due to disuse, now a starting character?
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garhkal
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| Posted: Sat Jun 18, 2016 11:49 pm Post subject: |
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Maybe they have not been used in so long, she's forgotten some of them.. Maybe her mind/body is failing (due to her old age) so can't get the most out of them... Who knows.
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