[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Donny Brook

I'm not sure I understand the purpose of this effort, but I see downsides.

Certainly in many of the examples given it seems to me that it is possible, and even likely, that a person would have some of the skills within an umbrella and not others. For example the typical maverick litigation lawyer is typically tempermentally unfit for learning a lot of Administration.

On the other hand, I would consider reducing inter-skill defaults by 1 across the board.

Originally Posted by Donny Brook

I wouldn't say it worked OK. I'd call it a constant problem that was improved massively by adding skills to games.

There are several purposes for it. Here are some that seem to be more common IME:

• Consolidating skills reduces the chance of having 'orphaned skills' in a campaign - skills that had points spent on them, but never used in-game even though their skill group was relevant. That is, instead of hoping a default or a rare skill comes up, you are essentially guaranteed to use a default-like benefit regarding to a skill-group.
• The long 200-ish skill list looks intimidating to players, and runs a huge risk of a player missing some skill that was important for a concept, particularly if they for some reason haven't memorised the names and bodies of all those skills.
• On the contrary to the above, a modest number of consolidated skills means that a character meant to cover a niche will in fact be able to cover said niche. E.g. a street thief will not somehow manage to miss the somewhat-obscure Filch skill, a xenobiologist will not miss Hazardous Materials (Biological) and NBC Suit etc.
• The current skill list makes skills priced too expensively compared to attributes, but directly reducing skill prices will make achieving high levels too easy. Consolidated skills will instead allow generalists to be priced fairly while preventing cheap 30s.