Here's my take at a gently streamlined skill list for SR5e, for your consideration. Comments and feedback welcomed!
A tl;dr of my goals with this houserule set:
- I wanted to keep a light touch to avoid knock-on effects throughout the system, so I mostly merged down existing skills rather than create new ones.
- I also added some new skill groups.
- I wanted to reduce skill crunch, especially on riggers and deckers, to open up more options for both of those archetypes to be valid secondary roles for characters. This is a stylistic choice that may or may not work for your table.
- I made skill groups a bit cheaper (they now cost 4x new rank karma to increase), to encourage players to use them to further streamline and reduce skill crunch. I ditched the skill group points at chargen, and instead just made normal skill points convertible to skill group ones at 2:1.
- I adopted SR6e's approach for knowledge skills (no ranks) and language skills (just a few ranks.) Plus really cheap to buy with karma, to encourage players to take them during play.
I'd like to acknowledge that I took lots of ideas from
dezzmont's SR5.5.1 doc. Thanks Dezzmont!
