Traveller: Specialty Skills

A negative point I feel to the new edition of Traveller for me is the specialty skills. In Cepheus Engine they call them Cascading Skills. In Cepheus Light they do not exist. How specialty skills work is like this:

You get a level of Engineer, and it starts at +0. Great! You can do every engineering task without the unskilled penalty. Now, you go through your career path and get a further +1 to your Engineer skill. Great, you have Engineer + 1, right?

No. Engineer has a number of specialty skills, and you have to take that level and assign it to one specialized field of study under the Engineer skill, such as Engineer (jump drives) + 1 or Engineer (maneuver drives) + 1. The rest of your engineer skills stay at +0, and from here forward you can only raise specialty skills in Engineering. Engineer skill itself will never go to Engineer +1.

Character Sheet Needed

The problem is, on the career charts, there is no indication of what results are specialty skills. I would have at least put an asterisk by the entries that required specialty skill picks, just to let you know. So, having a printed character sheet with a skill list with the specialty skills noted is a must. If you create a character sheet yourself, you are going to be checking a real character sheet or flipping through the book to check each skill. As a new player, this tripped me up, and I expected the original non-specialty skills in the original Traveller.

Some Professions = Specialty Heavy

Another part of me feels that the system hurts certain types of professions, or allows min-maxing within specialty skills. An engineer or scientist? They need to know everything, so spreading points around to cover specialties is a must. A pilot? Why fly anything else other than the main ship? I don't need biplane piloting. A soldier? Focus on my main weapon and a few alternatives (because you know referees love to take favored weapons away). Medics? One skill, plenty rolls left to use elsewhere. Electronics or sensor operators? Specialties, spread them out. Admin and diplomats? Single skills, more rolls for fun elsewhere.

I know these are generated randomly, but where this hurts is character improvement - either through study (basic rules), or the experience system presented in the companion. I suppose it is more realistic to have your engineer off for long periods of time in college learning new things, but some players may feel the reward just isn't there for these skills. Others will say, leave engineering to NPCs.

A couple sci-fi games have this problem, by increasing depth in non-action or "fun play" areas, some character types really don't have much to do or add during the typical adventure. I need to dig out my d20 version of Star Wars because I seem to recall this issue coming up. Pilots, medics, and engineers? Character types dependent on a vehicle or a situation (something getting damaged or someone getting hurt), and outside of that not useful or very fun in normal pulp sci-fi adventures with lots of action.

An argument could be made for the medic due to the frequency of combat, but as character increase in power and their defenses increase, the medic becomes less and less needed. It is better than playing a pilot and being weak at almost everything until the pre-determined "ship combat" part of the adventure comes up, if it comes up.

Also, this assumes you are doing a more traditional "dungeon style" combat heavy type of roleplaying with sci-fi, and not something like Star Trek (TV series) where professions matter to resolving larger problems. But the combat-heavy dungeon style sci-fi is popular and a lot of what we played.

Skills as Ability Scores?

I don't need multiple specializes of Athletics skill, like Athletics skill covering the subskills of Strength (weight lifting), Endurance (running and swimming), and Dexterity (climbing and jumping). Some of these feel like "skills for ability scores" - because if my character is strong, um, the character can lift weights. If my character has a high endurance, he or she can run long distances. High dexterity? You can jump around!

So, Space Marine Brutus Strongus, make an ability roll to lift that heave piece of machinery pinning the ship's doctor? Oh wait, you don't have weightlifting skill, unskilled roll please.

Climbing and swimming? Clearly skills, and important for underwater operations or climbing mountains. Those need to be skills, but they are hidden in a framework that really does not feel like it should exist. The need for running and weightlifting skills does not feel justified in the skill bloat or complexity this adds. Some games, like Star Frontiers, don't even have skills for climbing and swimming, and just use ability scores to cover these actions, and the game works fine.

I Understand Why

The skill system is usable and I can get by with it, but it isn't my first choice on how I like Traveller style skills to work. It isn't a deal-breaker, but it does feel clunky and slightly over complex for what should be a simple system that gets out of the way of the action instead of defining and limiting the action.

I get a feeling the basic Traveller skills were too few and too powerful, you get a +4 in your primary specialty and you are well on the way to being the best at what you do. Part of this is the 2d6 dice mechanic. You also need ways to slow down character advancement and progression, and make things to improve on during the course of a campaign.

But I have seen sci-fi games with about dozen skills get it right and not need any more than that, and not need to use specialization to increase depth. Star Frontiers does a wonderful job keeping its skill list tight and adventure focused. And if I want long lists of skills with much more detailed and nuanced character design, there is always GURPS.

As it is, the skill system feels usable, but it isn't really my favorite part of the system.