Skill Advancement

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Emerikol

What causes them to go from 8 to 4 for the maximum cost in the skill advancement table? I admit I like the fact they went to just one table. Were people under the old system going for broader character concepts that covered too many categories? Was there any thought to limiting how many different skills a PC could have?

3e had several unsatisfactory features:

There were three different skill progressions: Physical (½, 1, 2, 4, 8. 16, 24, 32 ...), Mental (½, 1, 2, 4. 6. 8. 10, 12 ...) and Mental/Very Hard (½, 1, 2, 4, 8, 12, 16, ...). Having just one makes things simpler.

Most Mental skills seemed too cheap to buy up to high levels.

Buying Physical skills up to high levels was expensive, and buying up attributes in play was double the price you paid at character generation.

Talents hadn't been invented, as such.

The combination of these things created strong incentives to create characters with most of their points in attributes and advantages, and few points in skills. That's a perfectly valid character concept, but other concepts were disadvantaged. The new pricing made a wider variety of concepts cost-effective.