If adding skills should extra xp be added?

[vonpenguin]

Hello. Another question for my Homebrew Post apoc setting. I plan on adding three skills to acount for the higher technology level. Should I add extra experience to account for that? And if so how much? I'm thinking 30 so that each can be made a 3 if desired or one stat can be boosted higher. Not sure though. Thoughts?

[BeardedDork]

Adding skills is not recommended, for good reason I think. The skills that exist can be stretched to cover most any situation that might arise.
I would suggest if you want to add skills for a higher technology level, you might see if you could substitute them in for existing skills rather than just adding them. Maybe Drive for Animal Handling for example or perhaps traits can be added to reflect uncommon abilities, the way Mummer allows you to perform using persuasion.

[vonpenguin]

Well I don't want to replace skills as the official ones work for any technology level. Drive could go under agility and Repair and computers under cunning or perhaps knowledge I suppose but I'm worried that would buff those skills too much.

[Pytorb]

If you think extra abilities are needed then add them. I've added Boat Handling to my list of house rules as I just think it encapsulates Agility, Athletics, Awareness and Cunning in much the same way as Animal Handling does, and is just as fundemental to some Westeros societies. What I have done though is said that a character starts as deficient in one of the two handling skills as it would be a rare culture that emphasises both equally. In game terms it also means that the decision to be deficient in an ability during character creation isn't deminished by adding an extra Ability. You could perhaps do the same with some of the abilities you want to introduce e.g. Drive and Animal Handling, Survival and Computer Use if you thought it would work in your setting.

[Zorbeltuss]

Well, not necessarily.

For example, Ironborn might forego investment of XP in animal handling and have boat handling instead. Spend XP on firearms rather than marksmanship ability. Drive and Computer use same thing. In a different environment, people simply spend time on getting good at different things.

[Pytorb]

ABsolutely. It does depend on what works for the specifics of the homebrew setting. I do think that it keeps game balance more to have some of the new Abilities, or some of the existing ones, starting at 1 rather than 2 if new Abilities are added.

[AGlumSon]

What I have done though is said that a character starts as deficient in one of the two handling skills as it would be a rare culture that emphasises both equally. In game terms it also means that the decision to be deficient in an ability during character creation isn't deminished by adding an extra Ability.

As I understand the game mechanics standard non-deficiency (rank 2) is in general not caused by "nurture" but "nature", i.e. inherent abilities and not training. So being deficient in something just because your culture does not emphasize it seems strange to me (although in some cases, such as the standard Wildlings status 1, it seems justified).

I have also toyed with the idea of adding extra skills. If I'd do it, I would just add it at rank 2 (so not give the players a penalty choice).
Of course you can only do this so often until you will also have to adjust the starting exp. Adding two new ability types would involve re-calculating starting experience: e.g. so two extra ability (21 instead of the original 19), which will start at their natural rank 2, will e.g. mean 230 starting xp for an adult character instead of 210. Of course you can only do that so often until you have to start adjusting exp handed out during play.

So, best not to add too many new abilities. Especially since all current abilities are used in some meaningful way in the game system. Putting new abilities in means you will have to start looking for ways to integrate them in the game's systems.

Would be interesting to see a developer commentary on this aspect of the rules and possible modifications. Any plans in the future to use the chronicle system for more modern settings and how are you thinking of going about this (also with e.g. the upcoming magic system)?