Note: You don't need to have bunches of skills at 1 to represent having some mega-basic knowledge of them. That is what defaulting to attributes is for. Everyone who has finished high-school would have a BUNCH of knowledge skills at R1 (Math, Language, History, Science, Geography etc). How often do you see those 5+ skills mentioned in a character build?
Erm. Personally, for my current character, I took "College Education" and about a dozen academic skills at 1+ (that Bachelor of Arts must be good for something and if it's just boring facts about 17. Century literature), but of course that's a special case and I wouldn't say it's required for someone who just finished school. On the other hand, with an average (3) logic attribute and no academic skills, it would be hard to justify that a character finished college, for example, but I agree completely, that for someone who finished high-school not many knowledge skills are required - personally, I don't remember most things I learned at school :-) One or two, for his favorite subjects, would be a nice touch, though.
And for dodge: I think the dodge skill is totally adequate for dodging without becoming stuck at one place. And I never doubted that gymnastics dodge is way cooler - it's the fancy version from kung fu movies, over-the-top or pseudo-realistic - I just think it doesn't fit for every character and after reading the suggestion in more than one posting, I wanted to express my feelings here. For example, my characters tend to have the athletics group - as long as they are not designed to be specifically unfit - but many also have dodge, simply because it fits the character: A soldier, for example, may be perfectly able to do some gymnastics, because he's in good shape, but he probably wouldn't get the idea to use it for dodge. A ganger, for example, without martial arts influence, could use gymnastics for example for getting around the city quickly (parkour), but that doesn't mean that he would necessarily use it in a combat situation.
What I say is, that imho it depends very much on the character: Gymnastics dodge can be pretty cool, but only for characters designed to be that way. For all others, dodge should be the default, also to give these other characters the chance to shine with their unusual style. Jackie Chan wouldn't be as cool if everyone did his moves, would he?
