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DoubtBreak
Sub-Lieutenant
Joined: 10 May 2006
Posts: 60
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 Posted: Fri Jun 02, 2006 7:59 pm Post subject: |
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| masque wrote: |
Animal Communication is something I would consider to be a specialization of Beast Handling (a broader skillset which I would consider the Beast Riding in the rulebook to be a specialization of) or the aforementioned Behavioral Psychology (I could argue for it in both cases). ...
... I can't see any situations cropping up that couldn't be modeled by a beast handling or an academic situation.
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Now I see where you're coming from. Yes, with a skill like Beast Handling you wouldn't have any reason to file this under Linguistics. And now that you mention it, I think I did take some notes on creating a similar skill (I might have called it Animal Handling like the AD&D rules) but never actually applied it in games.
Question on that though, it strikes me that Beast Handling has more in common with Persuasion and Command than any type of driving or piloting skill - the animal doesn't have an accelerator or steering controls, and it can refuse to obey you if you don't know what you're doing, so wouldn't you say this sounds more like a Perception skill than a Mechanical skill? (I believe I've already moved the Beast Riding skill to Perception for the house rules I use.)
Hm, and the whole reason I came into this thread in the first place, a question from the Tales of the Jedi Companion: on page 125, there is a description of a ranged weapon called a "blast-rifle" that uses the skill Blast-Rifle (no specialization is listed). Every other weapon, with the exception of lightsabers and grenades has a skill listed with its relevant specialization (such as Melee Combat: knife or Pulse-Wave Weapons: light cannon). So, does the blast-rifle have its own dedicated skill which has no specializations? Or is this a misprint, and is the Blast-Rifle skill actually intended to be a specialization of some other skill? I can't find any other reference to the Blast-Rifle skill anywhere else in the book. Does anyone have some additional information on this?
P.S. Masque- Forgive me for abridging the quote like that. |
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masque
Captain
Joined: 16 Mar 2006
Posts: 626
Location: Houston, TX
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| Posted: Sat Jun 03, 2006 2:49 am Post subject: |
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Pel,
It's language if it can convey abstract concepts. If not, but it's utilitarian, I'd consider it a type of programming code, as mentioned earlier. If you're talking about a sentient species that evolved from insects, I would simply cover it with a language skill. Linguistics really is geared more for academic studies and analysis.
DoubtBreak,
The skill in the book, Beast Riding, is a Mechanical Skill simply because that's where they put all of the vehicular skills. I would consider that a subset of the proposed skill, Beast Handling, which would involve care, feeding, etc, all the various things involved with animal care and maintenance. I would probably put both under the Technical attribute, or Knowledge at the least, since they are concerned with areas of knowledge and/or technical know-how. That has more to do with how the Attributes in Star Wars are treated, though. I sometimes find their placements odd. GM fiat can always fix that, though, as long as you argue your case well.
As for blast-rifle, I'd rule that it's missing a "Blaster:" before the blast-rifle part, to keep the R&E skill convention. It works slightly different than blasters in the Rebellion/NR era, but it's just an older form of energy weapon, and can be treated the same, for all practical purposes.
And abridge all you want, I'm a wordy b@st@rd*, 
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Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid. |
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Jedi Skyler
Moff
Joined: 07 Sep 2005
Posts: 8440
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| Posted: Sat Jun 03, 2006 11:30 am Post subject: |
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| masque wrote: | | And abridge all you want, I'm a wordy b@st@rd*, |
Well, with interests in linguistics AND semantics (especially), I'd say so!  
Someone touched on this earlier, but another often-overlooked but still very prevalent application here is non-verbal communication among sentients. (Read: BODY LANGUAGE- not telepathy! That's a whole other ballgame...)
For instance, a Corellian couldn't ever actually USE the Twi'lek non-verbal head-tail language, but he could certainly learn to interpret it and use that knowledge in all his dealings. This would be a tremendous benefit when dealing with a group of Twi-leks who think they're completely safe utilizing their lekku to crack jokes about the tail-less humans amongst them. Imagine their surprise when Joe Corellian replies, "Hey, I may not have lekku, but at least I don't have to have my hats special-ordered!" |
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PsiberDragon
Commander
Joined: 31 Jul 2006
Posts: 260
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| Posted: Mon Aug 07, 2006 8:31 pm Post subject: |
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Found a REALLY good list of skills collected from WEG books... not completely sure when it was updated, but it looks pretty complete with reference materials - where the skill was located, etc...
http://members.tripod.com/~theguild/starwarsskills.html
and speaking of which, could someone drop me the info on the actual skill Lightsaber Repair from the Movie Trilogy Sourcebook (regular, not special edition). Many thanks. 
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"Love like you will die tomorrow. Hate like you will live forever." - Unknown |
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