Talk:EotI Skills and Talents

Development Thoughts

Skills

Active Skills

Tried to make as few adjustments here as I could, and make sure I captured both the sprit of Rogue Trader, and the skills that would be needed to be rolled.

• Use Technology: This was the first skill change I decided on. It directly replaced Computer, and serves basically the same function. In name change was to keep the feel of technology being arcane, and to open it up to operation of complex, but not computer controlled, technological items.
• Commerce: This is an entirely new skill. Rogue Traders have to deal with finances and markets on a scale well beyond what EotE characters ever think about. Commercial transactions are also a large part of Rogue Trader, and I didn’t want to overload the Negotiation skill. Splitting off also let me give it a new associated Attribute (intelligence) making the Merchant Prince dependent on multiple stats.
• Medicae: 40k renaming of Medicine.
• Drive: Ground Vehicles like tanks and walkers play a larger roll in 40k then they do in Star Wars, so the Pilot – Planetary skill was adjusted to exclude flyers, which are quite different anyway.
• Pilot: Basically the old Pilot – Space, but with the similar aircraft added. Total importance of this skill is somewhat diminished by not including Void Ships
• Helm: In order to keep Pilot from becoming an uber-skill, and because of how differently they really operate, I wanted to split off the operation of the full sized warp ships from small flyers and lighters
• Ranged (Personal): Although I have some concerns with combining Range – Light and half of Ranged – Heavy into the same skill, I feel like it better represents the nature of 40k, where pistols can easily be as or stronger then rifles and use is as much a personal choice as a tactical consideration. I also considered splitting this between (Basic) and (Special) on the normal 40k lines.
• Ranged (Heavy): The idea behind this is to make the operation of heavy weaponry and turrets a different skill, in part to balance out their typically superior statistics. It also helps distinguish vehicle crews from the infantry.
• Gunnery: I wanted to change the associated attribute to make agility a less ultimate combat aid. I also wanted to split the ability to use the batteries on Void Ships from swinging an autocannon around. Rolling in crew artillery seemed logical.

Knowledge

This was always going to be a big section to change. The nature and control of knowledge is very different then in Star Wars, not to mention the subjects of interest. I knew the first thing I’d have to do was split knowledge between regular and forbidden ones.

It was easy to bring all the knowledge over from Rogue Trader, but I knew that would be excessive for the level of skill list in EotE. I needed to pare it down. So I started with the Forbidden ones. Technology, Xenology and Warp were obvious ones. It was also easy to roll Demons and Psychers into Warp – they’re all related after all. I wrestled for a while with the rest of them, trying to figure out how to combine them before I realized they were all, essentially, secrets about the Imperium itself. Once I realize I could have both a Forbidden and non-Forbidden version of the same Knowledge, the category became obvious.

With Forbidden Knowledge settled, I started on the others. Realizing I already had four skills (compared to EotE’s six total) I knew I needed to make these tight. Knowledge Imperium & Knowledge Education were obvious choices, covering the vast general topics a citizen of the Imperium should be aware of. For a little while I considered leaving the skills at that, then realized I should add a couple of more focused skills for the major themes of the game. I considered adding ‘Technology’, but realized that two little was known by the common population to make a worthwhile skill, plus it’s absence helps reinforce that part of the setting. Instead, I added Astromancy for the extensive space-based nature of the game, and Warfare because there is only war.

Talents

This section was surpassingly easy. For one, it only took 22 changes total. These changes generally fell into one of three categories:

• Renaming medical or mechanical talents in order to make them sound less "Star Wars" and more "Mechanicum"
• Clarifying pilot talents to refer to aerospace craft, piloting, driving and similar.
• Removing the purely computer related talents.