[Krindi]

Obviously these are subjective to my perspective and total house rule territory.  I'd like to see what others think and receive feedback.  (And would hope that some of this discussion might contribute towards skill condensing whenever 6th edition rolls around.)

The Problem: The skill group categories are set (for the most part) at 3 skills per group, in order to make this work there are some arbitrarily narrow skills that are thrown in to "round out" the categories.  The result is that there are an excessive number of skills, many of which could simply be specializations of broader skills, which leaves the more narrow skills disproportionately unused.

The Solution: Eliminate narrow skills, rolling them into broader skills as specializations and reformulating the skill groups to be more condensed.  Goal is for the less worthwhile skill groups to gain in value.

What's Not Covered: Magic, Technomancer, or Decker skills.  There's other threads discussing the various merits of those skills and possible ways to fix the "useless" skills such as banishing, decompiling, and enchanting in general.

Updated skill groups (not listed here means no change)

ACTING	Con / Intimidation / Performance
BIOTECH	Bodytech / Chemistry / Medicine
CLOSE COMBAT	Melee Weapons / Thrown / Unarmed
FIREARMS	Short Arms / Long Arms / Heavy Weapons
ENGINEERING	Armorer / Locksmith / Mechanic

Bodytech replaces both Biotech and Cybertech
Melee Weapons replaces Blades and Clubs
Short Arms is Light / Heavy / Machine Pistols and Submachine Guns
Long Arms is Assault / Sniper Rifles and Shotguns
Mechanic includes all four of Aeronautic / Automotive / Industrial / Nautical Mechanic

Skill eliminated	Specialty it now falls under
Automatics	Any Firearms skill
Diving	Swimming
Forgery	Artisan
Gunnery	Any Firearms skill
Instruction	Leadership
Free-fall	Gymnastics
First Aid	Medicine
All mechanic skills	Mechanic
Impersonation	Performance
Biotech	Bodytech
Cybertech	Bodytech

Non-grouped skills
Animal Handling
Archery
Artisan
Assensing
Demolitions
Escape Artist
Exotic Weapon
Perception
Pilot (Any)

In addition, change Survival to be linked to Logic instead of Willpower.  These adjustments leave both Body and Willpower with no skills tied to them (besides Astral Combat).  In my opinion, this is acceptable as these stats govern survival and are unlikely to be below 3 anyways.

Would be potentially interesting to allow secondary specializations, but that's probably beyond the scope of this discussion as it would require establishing disciplines and sub-disciplines for the affected skills.  As well as considerations for balance purposes, increasing cost of sub-specializations perhaps? 

i.e. Artisan-> Spec: Painting -> Spec: Impressionism -> Spec: Forgery.  To create an average artist (3) who specializes in painting (5) with a focus on impressionism (7) and specializes in forgeries (9).

Also, it's possible that this large of a chop may overvalue the chargen selection in the Skills category, and so warrant a review of the number of skill points received for each priority level.

edit: eliminated Instruction and adjusted it to be a specialization of Leadership.

[gradivus]

I'm not for cutting out all the skills you seem to want to...

However, IMHO:
Biotechnology belongs in Biotech Group (It's called Biotech after all).
Intimidation belongs in the Influence Group.
Diving should go in Athletics.
Perception in Outdoors Group.

Additionally there should be Lang Skill Groups so yo can bundle 4 related languages for 3*rating...
Examle, 4 from the Romance languages, say, French, Italian, Spanish, Italian

[Krindi]

I'm not for cutting out all the skills you seem to want to...

However, IMHO:
Biotechnology belongs in Biotech Group (It's called Biotech after all).
Intimidation belongs in the Influence Group.
Diving should go in Athletics.
Perception in Outdoors Group.

Additionally there should be Lang Skill Groups so yo can bundle 4 related languages for 3*rating...
Examle, 4 from the Romance languages, say, French, Italian, Spanish, Italian

Yeah I replaced Biotech and Cybertech with Bodytech.  I've never seen anybody ever take one of those skills on its own in 20 years of playing Shadowrun off and on.  Biotech and Cybertech would then just be specializations of Bodytech.  Admittedly, Bodytech could use a better name... 

I reclassified Diving as a specialization of Swimming, which is in Athletics.

Intimidation I put into the Acting group as it put Acting back at 3 skills after Impersonation became a specialization of Performance.  If I put it in Influence instead then Acting only has 2 skills while Influence has 4.  My thought process was that I've seen some amazing actors be incredibly intimidating, so didn't seem out of place to have it be an acting skill.  If we're basing off the "Influence" name, then Con should also be under Influence as it's direct manipulation. 

Perhaps instead?
INFLUENCE : Con / Intimidation / Negotiation
ACTING : Etiquette / Leadership / Performance

I believe that Perception was left out of a skill group intentionally due to the comparatively high value of the skill.  That being said, Outdoors is a rather under-utilized skill group as well.  Tracking could become a specialization of Survival and Perception could be added to the skill group. 

[Squirrel]

How married are you to the concept of skill groups overall? Could you live without?

[Senko]

I'm not able to give a detailed analysis right now (getting ready for work) but a few  things. . .

1) Don't like thrown in close combat it really loses the whole melee aspect and there is a large difference between fighting with bladed weapons and fighting with blunt ones. If you really don't want blades/clubs maybe have simple, complex and unarmed. Simple are blades, clubs and other things where its basically hit him with this, complex are things like whips, nunchaku, 3 piece staffs things where you need to know how to use it or your more likely to hurt yourself than the other guy and unarmed is obviously unarmed.
2) If your after skill consolidation why not make firearms into "Ranged" and have it contain primitive, modern and heavy weapons. That'd give you a category for archery, slings and the like, a category for guns of various types and a category for vehicle mounted or emplaced weapons.
3) If you really want to consoliate get rid of all those pilot skills (seriously how often does someone take walker?) and just make it a single pilot skill with all the different types being specializations. Similarly I'd lump instruction in with leadership as a specialization.

[Krindi]

How married are you to the concept of skill groups overall? Could you live without?

I could personally live without skill groups no problem.  Skill groups do seem to be a somewhat core aspect of the skill system though, so I was trying to compromise and retain them while still streamlining things.

[Krindi]

I'm not able to give a detailed analysis right now (getting ready for work) but a few  things. . .

1) Don't like thrown in close combat it really loses the whole melee aspect and there is a large difference between fighting with bladed weapons and fighting with blunt ones. If you really don't want blades/clubs maybe have simple, complex and unarmed. Simple are blades, clubs and other things where its basically hit him with this, complex are things like whips, nunchaku, 3 piece staffs things where you need to know how to use it or your more likely to hurt yourself than the other guy and unarmed is obviously unarmed.
2) If your after skill consolidation why not make firearms into "Ranged" and have it contain primitive, modern and heavy weapons. That'd give you a category for archery, slings and the like, a category for guns of various types and a category for vehicle mounted or emplaced weapons.
3) If you really want to consolidate get rid of all those pilot skills (seriously how often does someone take walker?) and just make it a single pilot skill with all the different types being specializations. Similarly I'd lump instruction in with leadership as a specialization.

1 - my main concern with simple / complex / unarmed is that complex is then again a narrow niche skill that has no real value as part of the skill group package.  The complex entry sounds (to me) more suited to exotic weapon proficiency.  With thrown as part of the skill group, you could make a concept of someone who's highly skilled with a knife, can throw it if necessary, and is still competent once the knife is thrown.  Approaching it from the perspective of "what might a military person receive training in?"  Hand-to-hand combat with and without weapons, and training in throwing both weapons and grenades.

2 - similar to my concern about 1 is that primitive / modern / heavy is that the skills don't have enough similarity to have value as a skillgroup.  The gun bunny char might possibly see some value out of having heavy weapons, but is unlikely to see any value at all out of the primitive weapons, and so will ultimately be most likely to simply advance modern all by itself rather than purchasing the skillgroup.  Again, I was approaching it from the perspective of "what might a former military person pick up from general firearms training?"  (really they'd probably gain small arms, long arms, and armorer with a specialization in firearms...)

3.1 - I agree that the Pilot (various) line of skills is pretty stupid.  Either dropping it to 1 skill: Piloting, or 2 skills: Pilot (ground) and Pilot (aero), aero could cover aerospace and aircraft, ground could cover ground and surface watercraft.  Not sure what to do about submersibles.  Could leave an exotic vehicle skill for that, but if we do that then shouldn't aerospace have it's own skill again?  Maybe Piloting covers ground and surface water craft, and Pilot exotic vehicle for aerospace or submersibles?
3.2 - Yeah, I was strongly considering lumping Instruction into Leadership as a specialization, it's pretty similar-but-different to Direct, really.  I think that's a good recommendation.

[Hobbes]

Athletics, Firearms, Close Combat, Engineering, Outdoors and Biotech Skill Groups each turned into a single skill.  The former individual skills become specializations. 

Chemistry is moved into Biotech. 

Free-fall and Diving merged into Athletics as well. 

Leadership and Performance squished into one skill : Inspiration under the Influence Skill Group.  Intimidation moves under the Acting Skill Group to replace Performance. 

Gunnery, Heavy Weapons, Firearms into a Group skill:  Ballistic Weapons.

Archery, Thrown Weapons, Unarmed Combat into a Group Skill: Archaic Combat.

Locksmith, Escape Artist, Forgery into a Group skill: Quick Fingers

Engineering, Biotech, Demolitions into a Group Skill.  Name TBD.

IMO.  Cyber tech, Chemistry and Medicine are rarely used, only taken by very specialized characters.  The individual firearm or close combat skills add nothing to the game other than a skill point sink for character concepts.  Even merging all the Outdoors skills into a single skill few runners will take it.  Engineering is fixing vehicles, you'll always take the one for the vehicle you own.  Again the extras are just skill point sinks for character concepts.  Athletics is all about Gymnastics, running and swimming are niche, don't get me started on Free-fall and Diving. 

Skill Group points cost 2.5 times what an individual skill costs and are often only worth 2 times what an individual skill costs if that.  Make them worth buying after chargen.   

I think I hit the underperformers.  Anyway, my thoughts on the subject.

Edit: Armorer.  I forgot where Armorer was supposed to go.  Was I going to lump it in with Engineering?  Ah well.

[Marcus]

Naaa.
The skill are all right, nothing is perfect.
Automatics maybe too good, but I don't think it's that bad.
Magic is place that has A LOT kinda weird overlapping skills but even there I'm not really sure I would call for replacement given the strength of magic.

[Krindi]

I would almost say that any skill that is only taken by very specialized characters, like what Hobbes is mentioning, could probably just be replaced by Knowledge skills.

Armorer I would lump in with the Name TBD Engineering skill group, as the skill description says "As with all mechanics-based skills..."  And seeing as all of those skills are simply excuses to give Logic more skills, we could just call the skill group "Logic".

So really cutting the excess off Hobbes-style there would leave us with what?
Skill Groups
Ballistic Weapons - Gunnery / Heavy Weapons / Firearms
Archaic Combat - Archery / Thrown / Unarmed
Quick Fingers - Locksmith / Forgery / Escape Artist
Logic - Engineering / Biotech / Demolitions / Armorer
Influence - Etiquette / Inspiration / Negotiation
Acting - Con / Intimidation / Impersonation
Electronics
Conjuring
Enchanting
Sorcery
Cracking
Tasking

Non-grouped skills
Animal Handling
Artisan
Athletics
Assensing
Outdoors
Perception
Piloting

And a boatload of superfluous skills got consolidated into specializations.  Would probably need to start looking at reducing chargen skill points too.

[gradivus]

I'm not for getting rid of or consilidating skills as that would be too drastic a change without reworking from the bottom up for game balance. The poster points it out himself- it would require an overhaul on skillpoints given in chargen.

I do however think that some of the non-associated skills could be added to underutilized skill groups to make them more attractive to take or just because it makes sense.

For example, I have seen very few builds utilize the Outdoor group. By adding Perception, a key component of hunting and surviving in the wild, to this Group you'll see more people take it.

[Krindi]

Hobbes raises a good point that skill groups must be worth purchasing, otherwise they have no value.  Outdoors would be unlikely to be purchased even as 1 skill, much less as an entire skill group.  I think the real problem comes down to the fact that the skills in general are not balanced on a scope perspective.  Many of the skills are overly narrow in scope, yet the balancing is done by number of skills in the group, not by the overall breadth of benefit provided by the skill group.  It's a fundamental design flaw in the skill system.

[PiXeL01]

I suggest you look into the previous editions' skill listings. It sounds to me that you are aiming for something similar to what SR2 had, which was a lot more simplified than SR5. 

[SmilinIrish]

I'm playing with a group that is new to Shadowrun and one of the biggest complaints was that the skills were too diverse.  This is a pretty drastic rewrite, probably not good for all tables, but I loosened up my group and everyone is less grouchy.  I had several people that played meta human street Sams and they were frustrated that all they could do was shoot.  We combined all close combat into one skill, then grouped it with handguns and long guns.  This was the change I was least happy with. I lobbied for leaving close combat alone, and adding heavy weapons into a group with handguns and long guns.  Instead we created a group called Advanced Weapons with gunnery, heavy weapons and demolitions.  I like this group.  We made etiquette a derived dice pool that is logic+charisma.  Intuition makes more sense, but that is basically judge intentions.  Logic suggests that it is based on some knowledge of the customs, and the charisma is the shmooze to pull it off.  Impersonation became a specialization of Con.  Since Con was the only good skill in the Acting group we just dissolved it.  Performance is useless outside some very special builds.  I really like the changes to the influence group.  Much more useful and logical combination. We dissolved the Athletics group and combined them into a single skill called Athletics.  Stealth group, we swapped out disguise for locksmith (just makes a better group) and created a group called infiltrating with Disguise, Forgery, and Escape Artist.  Major changes were made to the decker's groups because three skills only had a couple of actions associated with those skills.  We combined electronics group into computer, and put computer in the cracking group after eliminating electronic warfare.  This caused a lot of rearranging for decking actions.  We are pretty happy with it though.  The only reason we started messing with the magic groups is because disenchanting is so useless.  We dropped it and put Arcana in the group.  If we had an aspected sorcerer, we would probably roll spellcasting and ritual spellcasting together and put arcana in the sorcery group.  Most tables probably just want to leave magic alone. 



BIOTECH                           COMBAT                        CONJURING                    CRACKING                     
Cybertechnology                Close combat                Banishing                      Hacking                     
Biotechnology                      Handguns                     Binding                         Computer
First Aid                                 Long Guns                     Summoning                Cybercombat
Medicine

ENCHANTING              INFLUENCE                 ENGINEERING               OUTDOORS
Artificing                          Intimidation                 Aero Mech                        Navigation
Alchemy                           Leadership                   Auto Mech                          Survival
Arcana                             Negotiation              Industrial Mech                     Tracking

SORCERY                        STEALTH                 INFILTRATING                   ADVANCED WEAPONS
Ritual Casting                  Sneaking                     Forgery                               Demolition
Counterspelling               Palming                      Disguise                            Gunnery
Spellcasting                      Locksmith                 Escape Artist                     Heavy Weapons

Ungrouped:  Archery, Exotic Weapon, Athletics, Throwing Weapons, Diving, Free Fall, Pilot, Animal Handling, Con, Instruction, Performance, Artisan, Assensing, Perception, Chemistry, Astral Combat





My only comment regarding abvove is that the problem with eliminating gunnery is that it is used by riggers to fire their guns...

[SmilinIrish]

Oh yes, we allow skill substitutions like allowing a blade specialist to throw knives with the same skill he stabs with.  Allowing demolitions for throwing grenades.  If someone wants to throw anything, then they take throwing weapons. 

Turning Etiquette into a derived skill just made sense.  If its that social skill that everyone needs some dice it, but never has it, make it a derived dice pool.  Now Street Sams who dump both logic and charisma will still suck at it, but shouldn't they?  Too stupid to know how to act, too socially awkward to wing it.  But with 2's in both, you can at least buy a hit.