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jmanski
Arbiter-General (Moderator)
Joined: 06 Mar 2005
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Location: Kansas
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 Posted: Sat Jul 05, 2014 1:39 pm Post subject: |
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Then what's the purpose of having a 4d Mechanical? If I have higher than average ability with Mechanical, then I should be able to jump into a ship of any type and fly.
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DougRed4
Rear Admiral
Joined: 18 Jan 2013
Posts: 2286
Location: Seattle, WA
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| Posted: Sat Jul 05, 2014 2:53 pm Post subject: |
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It's funny, but as my daughter and I were watching Independence Day last night, I was thinking about this (when Will Smith, as a great pilot, steps forward and volunteers to fly this alien craft he's never even been inside before).
I guess it comes down to how "realistic" versus how "cinematic" you want to make things.
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nuclearwookiee
Lieutenant Commander
Joined: 28 Nov 2011
Posts: 171
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| Posted: Sun Jul 06, 2014 12:22 am Post subject: |
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| Random_Axe wrote: | | DougRed4 wrote: | | Interesting. I've never seen anything official about "having something written down on your character sheet" for this game, though you do have a point about some things making sense whether you've been trained or not. |
That's right. However, I've always felt that certain skills can not be picked up just "on the fly". For instance, if your character background is such that you have never flown a starship, then even though your MEC attribute is 2d or 3d or whatever, if you've never been trained in the skill then you can't do it. Anything highly technical or intricate requires some actual skill base. |
But there is an obvious distinction between not being able to attempt that skill check and not being likely to succeed. Aren't concerns like this already addressed in the rules. If some task is really complex or complicated, someone without advanced training (i.e. only rolling attribute) is not likely to succeed. But why isn't that enough? Why shouldn't the character be able to attempt the task? And why not allow for the possibility that even the most inept of characters might sometimes push the right button through sheer dumb luck (i.e. a string of wild die 6s)?
Even though the attributes are often thought of as sort of "raw potential," they're functionally nothing more or less than shorthand for a listing of every skill covered under that attribute. A Dexterity of 4d = Archaic Guns 4d, Blaster 4d, Blaster Artillery 4d, . . . Vehicle Blasters 4d. So to say that Character1 with a Dexterity of 4d is less capable at shooting a blaster (or whatever skill comparison you prefer) than Character2 with a Blaster of 4d is essentially to penalize Character1 for being better at most other Dexterity skills than Character2.
But here's a question for the training crowd: what if a character increases an attribute? The book calls that training. Would this be sufficient to make them trained, for your purposes, in each of the skills covered under that attribute? If so, shouldn't the initial allocation of attribute dice at character creation also serve this purpose? Player characters receive an extra 6d to reflect their experience and heightened capabilities. Thus, any attribute above the species minimum would reflect some base level of training in each of those skills. |
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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: Sun Jul 06, 2014 2:40 am Post subject: |
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To me that is just rewarding them for having a high attribute and not bothering with the skills themselves, unless they decide to take them above the attribute.
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Random_Axe
Lieutenant Commander
Joined: 11 Sep 2013
Posts: 102
Location: Toronto
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| Posted: Sun Jul 06, 2014 9:36 am Post subject: |
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| nuclearwookiee wrote: | | Random_Axe wrote: | | DougRed4 wrote: | | Interesting. I've never seen anything official about "having something written down on your character sheet" for this game, though you do have a point about some things making sense whether you've been trained or not. |
That's right. However, I've always felt that certain skills can not be picked up just "on the fly". For instance, if your character background is such that you have never flown a starship, then even though your MEC attribute is 2d or 3d or whatever, if you've never been trained in the skill then you can't do it. Anything highly technical or intricate requires some actual skill base. |
...
Even though the attributes are often thought of as sort of "raw potential," they're functionally nothing more or less than shorthand for a listing of every skill covered under that attribute. A Dexterity of 4d = Archaic Guns 4d, Blaster 4d, Blaster Artillery 4d, . . . Vehicle Blasters 4d. So to say that Character1 with a Dexterity of 4d is less capable at shooting a blaster (or whatever skill comparison you prefer) than Character2 with a Blaster of 4d is essentially to penalize Character1 for being better at most other Dexterity skills than Character2.
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Because picking up a blaster and pointing the business end somewhere IS something that can be done on the fly without additional training (-- in SWRPG anyway! I don't want any objections from our military friends on this board, thank you! --). So there is no functional or game difference between your Character1 and Character2 above.
I'm talking about MEC and TEC skills, and only when your character's background doesn't support a natural (or taught) ability toward a certain skill. Therefore a PC with MEC 4d is going to naturally come from a Pilot-type or Driver-type template or background, which does support a natural affinity to operating vehicles, and therefore CAN be expected to jump into any landspeeder, skiff, groundcrawler or shuttlecraft on the lot, and drive it away without a second thought. So my restriction is not going to show up. |
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nuclearwookiee
Lieutenant Commander
Joined: 28 Nov 2011
Posts: 171
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| Posted: Sun Jul 06, 2014 12:24 pm Post subject: |
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| Random_Axe wrote: | | I'm talking about MEC and TEC skills, and only when your character's background doesn't support a natural (or taught) ability toward a certain skill. Therefore a PC with MEC 4d is going to naturally come from a Pilot-type or Driver-type template or background, which does support a natural affinity to operating vehicles, and therefore CAN be expected to jump into any landspeeder, skiff, groundcrawler or shuttlecraft on the lot, and drive it away without a second thought. So my restriction is not going to show up. |
I get what you're saying, and it totally makes sense that there is a correlation between characters with high MEC/TEC and Pilot and Driver types, but why not just rely on the low attribute score of non-Pilot or Driver types to sort it out? Why go that extra step and say you can't even attempt those skills?
Another option would be to take more of a "class skills" approach ... consider a character "trained" in any skill that is actually listed on the character's template, even if the character hasn't improved the skill beyond the base attribute (in addition to any other skills not on the original template that the character has actually improved). This would seem to line up with your Pilot and Driver type approach, and might actually give templates a purpose for existing!  |
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Zarn
Force Spirit
Joined: 17 Jun 2014
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| Posted: Mon Jul 07, 2014 9:46 am Post subject: |
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The skills listed under the various templates are not the only "allowed" skills. In fact, it clearly says so at least a couple of places in SW2nd ed, R&E. They're just suggested skills that seem to compliment the template 'type' (or high concept of the character, if you will).
Last edited by Zarn on Mon May 13, 2019 1:19 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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nuclearwookiee
Lieutenant Commander
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| Posted: Mon Jul 07, 2014 11:09 am Post subject: |
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| Zarn wrote: | | The skills listed under the various templates are not the only "allowed" skills. In fact, it clearly says so at least a couple of places in SW2nd ed, R&E. They're just suggested skills that seem to compliment the template 'type' (or high concept of the character, if you will). |
Yeah, I don't think there's really any disagreement about what the RAW has to say about any of this. Any talk of "trained" or "untrained" skills is clearly well within House Rules territory. I only made the suggestion about skills listed on templates as another method of identifying "trained" skills that didn't undermine the clear equivalence of an attribute and skill code of the same magnitude. It was meant purely as an option for those already inclined to depart from this area of the RAW. |
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aegisflashfire
Commander
Joined: 24 Mar 2014
Posts: 298
Location: Cincinnati, OH
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| Posted: Mon Jul 07, 2014 1:27 pm Post subject: |
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I always kinda assume that the mechanical skill is a judge of how well/quickly your brain processes/translates motion from 'something else'
In otherwords: IF I move my hand 20 degrees to the right on this console, it yields a yaw rate of 10 degrees per second, at this speed, which will place my airspeeder in such-and-such position in 4.2 seconds.
These are the mental calculations we use throughout our day just moving our body around--your brain is hardwired to make those calculations. (and they get thrown off when your brain hasn't acclimated to a change in body; say if you've recently grown--it takes a while for the body to re-learn this) But this is what bodies/brains DO--that's one of their primary function. Its directly translated in a DEX skill.
But Mechanical is different; you're asking the brain to do far more calculations based on unfamiliar 'hardware' a ship, a turret, and to do calculations for objects moving at speeds our brains never evolved to handle.
As such, DEX is your bodies hardwired control of itself; muscle memory.
MEC is sort of a 'software' your brain runs to translate all these various motions in a way that the hardware of your brain isnt' designed to process.
High MEC doesn't mean you instinctively can fly an X-Wing when you drop in the cockpit. It means that once you know where all the controls are, you've seen how it flies, how it turns, etc. then your brain 'software' can successfully manipulate it.
There should always be a learning curve when a character trys something new even a high mechanical; just familiarizing themselves with controls; turning radius, etc. But once that happens, yes, they'll be more successful than someone who's practiced for months flying, just because the person with lower MEC 's "software" doesn't translate as well.
One way you CAN justify this though, is if all ships have a similar control format; so knowledge of one still is immediately applicable to all.
Alternately the character could have spent a few minutes experimenting just to figure out those turn-radius etc calculations for their 'software'
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garhkal
Sovereign Protector
Joined: 17 Jul 2005
Posts: 14215
Location: Reynoldsburg, Columbus, Ohio.
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| Posted: Mon Jul 07, 2014 4:27 pm Post subject: |
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| nuclearwookiee wrote: | | Zarn wrote: | | The skills listed under the various templates are not the only "allowed" skills. In fact, it clearly says so at least a couple of places in SW2nd ed, R&E. They're just suggested skills that seem to compliment the template 'type' (or high concept of the character, if you will). |
Yeah, I don't think there's really any disagreement about what the RAW has to say about any of this. Any talk of "trained" or "untrained" skills is clearly well within House Rules territory. I only made the suggestion about skills listed on templates as another method of identifying "trained" skills that didn't undermine the clear equivalence of an attribute and skill code of the same magnitude. It was meant purely as an option for those already inclined to depart from this area of the RAW. |
Exactly. WE know what the RAW says on the matter what we are disagreeing on is whether the RAW was right to say it.
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DougRed4
Rear Admiral
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| Posted: Mon Jul 07, 2014 5:44 pm Post subject: |
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While everything aegisflashfire says is logical and makes sense, it's also defining how we (as humans from the planet Earth) function. And I'm not saying that to be argumentative, but just to point out that I think it's also perfectly valid for any GM to say "In my SWU, 'humans' brains don't work in that way".
I tend to view things more like Zarn posted: where Star Wars is quick-paced, two-fisted, action adventure in a very cinematic style. In fact, the rules emphasize this over and over and over. They encourage us to "Pick a difficulty number and have the player roll" to keep the action moving.
So while (like all of us, it seems), I can tend to get really focused on making things "more realistic" from time to time, I think it's also worth pointing out that it's completely 100% legitimate to just shoot from the hip and let things roll the way the rules have it, even if it doesn't make as much logical sense.
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Currently Running: Villains & Vigilantes (a 32-year-old campaign with multiple groups) and D6 Star Wars; mostly on hiatus are Adventures in Middle-earth and Delta Green
Last edited by DougRed4 on Tue Jul 08, 2014 2:20 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Random_Axe
Lieutenant Commander
Joined: 11 Sep 2013
Posts: 102
Location: Toronto
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| Posted: Mon Jul 07, 2014 8:47 pm Post subject: |
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| Ditto to DougRed4. |
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