This is a stupid question so don't make fun of me...

[Kayle Skolaris]

There seems to be a wish among some for a guideline for how many familiar skills is appropriate. As such, I propose the following: Break your Attribute Dice into pips and however many pips there are is how many familiar skills you can choose under that attribute.

For instance, the following character would have...

4D Dexterity: 12 Familiar Skills
3D Knowledge: 9 Familiar Skills
2D+1 Mechanical: 7 Familiar Skills
2D+2 Perceptions: 8 Familiar Skills
3D Strength: 9 Familiar Skills
3D Technical: 9 Familiar Skills

Note that you are NOT required to specify 12 familiar Dexterity skills if your character wouldn't HAVE that many. By the same token, there aren't 9 Strength Skills, so you could only have up to the maximum number of existing skills under that attribute and you don't get to transfer any extra to say, Mechanical skills.

Now what about Unfamiliar Skills? Well, this is how I would do it... Roll your attribute as normal with Unfamiliar Skills. A Sarkan with 6D Strength who isn't familiar with the Brawling skill will still get to roll his full 6D when he attempts to brawl. But here's the thing... Should that Sarkan wish to actually improve his Brawling Skill after play begins (and this should ONLY apply after the game has begun, not at the start) then it will cost him double for that first extra pip. In this case, it will cost 12 points to get Brawling up to 6D+1 because up until now, he's never really bothered to learn to do this sort of thing on purpose, he's only been reacting instinctively. After that initial pip, skill points are allocated as normal to improve the skill.

[Soniv]

That actually sounds like a good, clean house rule. I would suggest perhaps making it the pips above species minimum rather than pips in general, so that each PC can retain the same amount of familiar skills possible to learn, as well as representing advanced aptitude/training. 6D still gives 18 familiar skills possible, a very large amount if trained skills are not counted as familiar.

[Kayle Skolaris]

Soniv, what if the PC only has the Species Minimum for the attribute? No familiar skills at all? Or maybe one per full die instead of one per pip?

[Soniv]

Well, to me, that would represent an ineptitude in that skill. But perhaps a hybrid is in order. Perhaps one skill per die of species minimum, then one skill per pip of advancement?

[Kayle Skolaris]

The thing is, most species minimums aren't really the minimum the species can have, but rather the minimum a PLAYER can have. Thus we have some NPC humans with 1D in an attribute, but no PC human with less than 2D. Of course, this gets rather confusing with those species who can have as low as 1D in an attribute, or those rare species with a 0D minimum in an attribute.

[Soniv]

Hm, good point. Probably best to leave species minimums alone, then. I suppose the reason they made the minimum that way was because the player had 6D extra to place anyway, so they could make more balanced players.

[Camero]

The other houes rule I like for determining familiar skills (ones that are non-improved but don't incurr a penalty for use) is like the one above but even more simple. You look at the attribute dice and double that number for the number of skill options under that attribute. Dex of 4 gets up to 8 skills (subject to GM approval) and round up on a +2 and down on a +1 (3d+1 = 6 skills, 3d+2 = 7 skills)

Just another thought for when making a character out of the standard templates
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[garhkal]