Jetski specialty?

[Phantasm]

Quick random question, since I saw some of these out on Lake Greenwood yesterday.

Would you call a jetski its own Boating specialty or make it familiarity penalties for Boating (Motorboat)?

I can see arguments for doing it either way, hence the question to the hive mind.

[awesomenessofme1]

To me, if you're making the assumption that a jet-ski does count as a boat (which seems arguable but totally reasonable to me), it looks to me like it would definitely be part of Boating (Motorboat). The Basic Set explicitly says "any open powerboat". It's open, it's powered, and we're already making the assumption that it's a boat.

[Humabout]

First: Question. By Jetski, do you mean the type you stand up on or waverunners (that you sit on like a motorcycle)?

Having ridden jetskis and driven small motorboats, Id day that a waverunner /could/ be a familiarity penalty on Motorboat. A jetski is likely its own specialty that has a default to motoroboat because of stuff like balancing involved.

[Phantasm]

The stand-up kind. The motorcycle-controls types are mostly familiarity penalties, in my opinion, but the stand-up kinds made me curious.

[Humabout]

Yeah, I'd call that its own specialty, imo.

[Pursuivant]

I've seen HR specializations for Boating (Jetski), sometimes called "Water Bike" to allow for ultratech variants.

If you consider that to be skill creep, the difference in controls, control posture, size, and center of gravity makes it a familiarity of Boating (Motorboat) with an initial penalty of -3 or -4.

[Phantasm]

I personally do not consider new specialties of existing skills to be skill creep, as in many cases the listed specialties have missed certain things that would normally be covered by the underlying skill.

The 3e skill creep gave us such skills as Abacus (the use of a tool for math), Ciphering (counting on your fingers), and Bulldancing (in 4e, this would be a Dancing combined with Acrobatics for dancing with bulls, vaulting over horns and whatnot). 4e has avoided that kind of skill creep, even with all the new skills listed in Imbuements and Psionic Powers, as those are situationally-derived skills for non-muggles.