[CharGen] To discuss the creation of the party

Welcome back, RollingforStew. :)

Yes, welcome back, RolingforStew.

My thought is perhaps there is a bit of similarity between the Alienist the Investigative reporter and my Artist workings.

I'm open to changing characters if folks agree. I really don't mind and Investigative Reporters are useful!

Sitting at home with a aching swollen foot for at least a couple of days.

I think Artist, Investigative Reporter, and Alienist have enough differences to make them all equally valid in a party together, so I don;t think there's any need to change, Neil.

Now for Stage 3: Choose five skills that you currently don't have any points in, and add 1 point to each of them. You can't add to Credit Rating or Cthulhu Mythos.

Step 3 revised -

○ +1 to each of Reflexes, The Mean Streets, Foresight, Mental Resolve, Theoretical Sciences.

Took Archival Research away for Theoretical Sciences. Was going to go for Darkest Africa, but some affinity for mathematics suddenly made sense.

Neil, which Academic specialty did you go for in Stage 1 for +2? Western Civ?

if someone has Western Civilization, I am happy to change that one for another culture, to cover more bases.

Yes, it was Western Civilisation I'd picked.

Cradle of Civilisation is always a good choice, especially for an alienist, for the familiarity with Latin and Greek.

Perfect, I'll go all Classic!
Switched.

OK, while we're waiting on RollingforStew to do Stage 3, think about Stage 4: Adding another 5 points to skills wherever you like, with a maximum of 3 total to any one skill other than your Core Skill, which can be raised to 4. Think about what skills you're deficient in as a group as well as individually, though again, don't worry if some skills are left low as a group - you'll never miss any core clues.

So far, only MaJunior's character has any proficiency in combat (which is fine if you want to leave that arena to him), and you're collectively low in terms of Scientific generally and, to a lesser extent, Academic. I will say that there may be fewer opportunities to use Scientific skills for long stretches of the game, but at times they will come to the fore, and sometimes importantly so. That said, there are opportunities (like pushing rolls, using your Drive, etc) to overcome those hurdles so feel free to put points where you want to.

It may be worth discussing where you want to be as a group though, and whether you're ok with some deficiencies in order to strengthen other skills that you want to shine in / make sure you have a low chance of failure.

this is how my Alienist is looking, before adding the 5 skill points of Stage 4:



in no particular order, I am thinking it would be useful for me to assign them to:

-Mental Resolve
-Spot Clues
-Endurance
-Reflexes
Possibly as an Alienist dealing with hospital bureaucracy: -Legal Talk

They're all very good choices, I think.

Tentatively, with Step 4 I will probably be doubling down on what my character is already good at. I feel like +1 to Ranged Weapons and +1 to Hand Weapons are a given, and maybe +1 to Brute Strength.

Mental Resolve and Outdoorsman are high on my list, but as mentioned I haven't settled on anything as of just yet.

I just don't see a grunt in the military as excelling in academics or science, so I'm not going with any of those. While I do see rather narrow specific examples of some of those skills being applicable, I don't see them as a broad enough knowledge to justify the entire skill. Examples... ballistics would be phsyics, but subsumed with the Ranged Weapon skill. Understanding gunpowder is technically chemistry, but knowing how to reload ammo doesn't mean you understand chlorine gas (I do wish we had talents to cover narrower applications of skills, but I'm not worried about it.)

My tentative ideas are Endurance +1 for long or late gigs, Ranged Weapons +1 (even if it started out throwing stuff), +1 to patch a hole somewhere and the others boosting existing skills.

The tricky choice is [spreading skill points to cover a wide ramge of situations] vs. [boosting those areas where a group skill check might be required] , say when we are all trying to sneak somewhere... Or we all need to climb a tall wall.

I am looking at those puny 2 dice I have in Physical and Coordination, and cringe at the thought of letting everyone down... Year Zero can be punishing... Individual checks are fine, the group ones are deadly! ?

Hmm, what no stealth skill and Coordination is 3. Maybe I should consider that.

Lillian will not like mêlée. She can speak French, though.

There aren't likely to be many group skill challenges like that; where they are, I'm likely to say either one person rolls for the group (with probably a higher difficulty to cover all of those involved), or that each person rolls individually, but extra successes can be used to cover other characters that failed. We'll see, if and when it comes, and depending on the context and circumstances.

That also brings me to something that I haven't yet fully fleshed out - characters helping each other / doing the same task. I'm torn between only having one person roll when eg searching a place, and the others helping, or having everyone roll. I'm tending to the latter, just to make things easier and to give you all a better chance of success.

I feel like having a teamwork rule you like in place may be warranted.

If we're all searching a room or sneaking through a building, all of us rolling individually makes absolute sense. But if some foul monstrosity is trying to kick in a door and two people are holding it shut? I feel individual rolls might not fit (although arguably could still work from a mechanical standpoint).

But don't mind me, I'm just thinking out loud.