[CanRay]

Knowledge is power!    Knowing is half the battle. 

[Zilfer]

I'm just wondering whether people do bother to buy them to the same extent that the free ones are given under the BP system. I can see players balking at buying "Elven Wines" if they could get "Pistols", for example.

When you already have lots of active skills at usable level it makes buy knowledge less painful. In most of the games I play in knowledge skill become important so I usually have a fair amount of knowledge skills.

I was actually surprised when a knowledge skill i made up. (i think i've now seen it has an equivalent somewhere) but i picked Human Anatomy/Biology. (can't remember which word i used) Anyways it came in handy in getting my Dective contact a promotion. Someone had gotten to our group's mage in the hospital. (he had erased so he was forgotten there so I was searching for him along with "Lord Necrosis". (who's a female) so a hot female nurse walked up to him and basically killed him while he had mage handcuff's on. Offical death was "Death by heart attack".

Considering the reason he was in the hospital was a gunshot wound to the back of the head.... (rolled my knowledge to see if my character would know that and could convince him with my character's knowledge and my dective friend checked it after a few "are you sure? I'll be risking my job if your wrong."

Didn't think i'd ever use a knowledge skill myself.

[Mystic]

Knowledge is power!    Knowing is half the battle. 

YOOOOOO JO....nevermind.

Information is ammunition....oops! Sorry, wrong game. I hate it when two of my favorite games are made by the same company....no I don't HA!

Actually, I've used knowedge skills quite often in-game, especially when dealing with contacts. Try talking to professional without having at least a working idea of what they do...or what they could do for you. Knowledge skills, as I use them, help the player talk to others so they can at least have a conversation and the player dosen't look like a total idiot. I once played a street sam who knew a lot about beer...aside from drinking it. It was this knowledge that ended up with a conversation about "real beer" with a bartender who became a very good contact for me in that game. And the discount and access to "the good stuff" was a nice perk.

[Phylos Fett]

Couldn't you use Knowledge Skills as Complementary Skills in SR3 to get extra successes on Tests? Hmmmm - now where do I find that information without spending hours flicking through SR3 books, until I realize it might have been a different edition...

[rasmusnicolaj]

Couldn't you use Knowledge Skills as Complementary Skills in SR3 to get extra successes on Tests? Hmmmm - now where do I find that information without spending hours flicking through SR3 books, until I realize it might have been a different edition...

That sounds correct. Probably in the section dealing with skills, around knowledge skills.
Not that many pages to look through. Would do it for you if I could reach my book but it is at home and I'm not.

Rasmus

[Phylos Fett]

Couldn't you use Knowledge Skills as Complementary Skills in SR3 to get extra successes on Tests? Hmmmm - now where do I find that information without spending hours flicking through SR3 books, until I realize it might have been a different edition...

That sounds correct. Probably in the section dealing with skills, around knowledge skills.
Not that many pages to look through. Would do it for you if I could reach my book but it is at home and I'm not.

Rasmus

Well, at least you narrowed it down to the BBB! To the Book Cave!

[rasmusnicolaj]

Couldn't you use Knowledge Skills as Complementary Skills in SR3 to get extra successes on Tests? Hmmmm - now where do I find that information without spending hours flicking through SR3 books, until I realize it might have been a different edition...

That sounds correct. Probably in the section dealing with skills, around knowledge skills.
Not that many pages to look through. Would do it for you if I could reach my book but it is at home and I'm not.

Rasmus

Well, at least you narrowed it down to the BBB! To the Book Cave!

Hope I'm correct in my guess then 
Good hunting and let us know what you find.

Rasmus

[Phylos Fett]

Couldn't you use Knowledge Skills as Complementary Skills in SR3 to get extra successes on Tests? Hmmmm - now where do I find that information without spending hours flicking through SR3 books, until I realize it might have been a different edition...

That sounds correct. Probably in the section dealing with skills, around knowledge skills.
Not that many pages to look through. Would do it for you if I could reach my book but it is at home and I'm not.

Rasmus

Well, at least you narrowed it down to the BBB! To the Book Cave!

Hope I'm correct in my guess then 
Good hunting and let us know what you find.

Rasmus

Every 2 successes from a Complimentary Skill Test count as 1 Success to the Active Skill Test (but the Active Skill Test needs to score at least 1 success) (p97, SR3). Background Skills don't count as Complimentary Skills, and there are a couple of occasions where Active Skills count. The example uses Psychology as a Complimentary Skill for a Negotiation Test (just what we need - more dice available for Social Tests - although, to be fair, these Social Tests were fairly hampered in SR3, compared to SR4A).

[rasmusnicolaj]

I like the idea of using knowledge skills more but I'm not sure SR4 dicepools need help getting bigger 

Rasmus

[Phylos Fett]

I like the idea of using knowledge skills more but I'm not sure SR4 dicepools need help getting bigger 

Rasmus

Yeah - they are big enough (bigger than the designers originally thought, and then bigger when they started throwing petrol on the fire added sourcebooks with new ways of increase them). I still like the idea, but sanity must prevail.

While reading the SR3 BBB, I noticed the use of Background Skills - free Knowledge Skills based on Active Skills to reflect knowledge you picked up from learning - ie - you learn about guns by learning to shoot guns. It brought back memories of the evil GM in me thinking about making players pay for these Background Skills before they could advance their Active Skills, or the Active Skills cost more (kinda like Active Skills cost more if they exceeded the linked-Attribute (or whatever it was called)...

[Black]

1)  Know the style of game your about to play in.  A Private Investigator may not mess in a black ops game, a combat machine may not fit into the 'mission: impossible" style infiltration/subversion style game.  Fit the style or your character will spend most his time waiting to do something
2) Have a theme/gimic somthing that makes your character stand out from a roleplaying perspective.  Something not 'annoying', but gives your character a greater sense uniqueness.  A quirk, a habit, a common phrase.
3) Specialise in some knowledge that will be useful on a semi-regular basis - be the Mafia expert, the ex-corper, the magic creature expert.  Be an expert in something that will come into play... but don't specialise too much.  And work with the GM on this one.  Maybe hmm... 'Japanese Corps' or 'organised crime'.
4) Have a role in the team that is yours, and make that role something other then 'killing machine'.  Whose the Face?  Whose the Hacker/Technomance/IT systems guy?, whose the security systems/infiltration guy? Whose the magic master?  Whose our driver?  Then expand that role beyond the minimum.  The driver could also be the drone expert, who also has contacts that speciliase in smuggling and fake SINs.  The Face is also well connected, is also good at blending in at functions, etc. The Magic user has a combat spell or two, but can also assense, use ritual magic to track targets etc.  Try mix and matching, the magic user whose spells are all 'face' type or 'infiltration' type.
5) Roleplay your character.  Make something that you will actual roleplay.  Don't spend all session min/maxing your character and telling everyone how cool your character is.  Show us how cool your character is.
6) Feel free to use your favourite tv/movie/game character, but then make it your own.  Most 'heroes' are solo players, you need to make your character a team player.  Use the inspiration from whereever it comes, but then make it fit the game and the team
7) Have a background story with hooks.  Don't overburden your character with every possible trageity, but give your character some.. character.  Have family, friends, ex-loves, enemies, rivals.  Have a reason to be a runner other then 'i need the cash'.  Have an end goal, anything from ' I want to open a gun shop' to 'I want to make megacorp X pay for firing me!'.  Gives you something to work towards and gives your GM something to make the missions more interesting
Have at least some ability in the following: Firearms, unarmed combat, dodge, perception.  Nothing worse then the Troll, whose great with longarms and machine guns, prove to have no skills in pistols or unarmed combat. 
9)carry a backup weapon... just in case.  Something small and concealable, maybe ceramic.
10) Have as many contacts as possible, and flesh them out for the GM
11) Have as many SINS as possible.  Perpare to loose a few.
12) Have licenses for your weapons, but don't expect a licence to fly when you walk down the street with your SMG swinging at your hip.  KE aren't that slow.
13)Be ready to remake your character. Its only through game play that you find out how your character works.  What seems good on paper may prove to work differently during the run.
14) Have fun, its the golden rule!

[theKernel]

Always start and end character creation by asking yourself "why is this character not an ork." If you don't have a good answer you should be an ork.

amen
Also why are binding and decompiling trap options?

[baronspam]

Always start and end character creation by asking yourself "why is this character not an ork." If you don't have a good answer you should be an ork.

amen
Also why are binding and decompiling trap options?

I think you mean banishing and decompiling, correct?  Assuming you do, basically, its too big an investment for what they actually do.  Its a whole separate skill, which is a big build point investment, for an attack that can only be used on one type of target for one effect.  If you have to get rid of a spirit have the mage stunbolt it or have the melee adept punch it in the face.  Less drain, they already have the skill, and its just as if not more effective than trying to banish it.

Dealing with a sprite is slightly less clear, but for me it boils down to rarity.  Unless one of the major campaign elements is going to be a dissonance cult, hostile technomancers with a combat sprite on tap are going to be super rare, and on the odd chance they do turn up you handle it the way you handle IC, throw your combat sprite at it and do what you came to do.  Burning a bunch of build points to decompile is a poor use of  of the build points.

Edited for spelling and typos.

[theKernel]

Thanks I'll keep that in mind for my technomancer I'm making for pbp

[UmaroVI]

The other big thing is that they are HUGELY dangerous skills to use. You try to banish something? Whoops, it was a bound spirit. Try to banish a force 6 spirit bound by a Magic 6 magician? Say hello to it rolling 12 dice, and you taking drain equal to twice its hits. That's not something you want in the middle of a fight - and you often have no way of knowing in advance how powerful the binder was. It gets even worse if you try to banish a great form spirit - you can have a Magic 5 magician with 1 initiation bind a spirit that slaps you in the face for 16 dice when you try to banish it. This means that even if you do have Banishing, it's often too dangerous to use. Decompiling is pretty similar - you're better off using the other, more versatile skills you want anyways to deal with spirits/sprites.