Using Talents AND Wildcard Skills Together

[Captain Joy]

I'm strongly considering allowing my PCs to have Talents and Wildcard skills together, with individual skill overlap, which I know is a no-no. This thread is so you can talk me out of doing something stupid; or help me make it work.

I plan on making up consistent 12-skills-each type Wildcard Skills based on niche/occupation. Talents in this campaign are only available as part of your species template and all contain 5 skills each. E.g. my intention would be to let a PC whose species talent gives them +'s in Mechanic (Aerospace) to provide that bonus to their Mechanic wildcard skill.

They way I see it, their talent and wildcard skill both give them bumps at a character point cost of +1/skill, so that seems fair. It's not obvious to me how allowing them to have both will break this campaign.

Please illuminate me.

I have both the Talents and Wildcards Power Ups books.

[Varyon]

I think having Wildcards be "these precise 12 Skills" misses much of the point of Wildcards (that being that they aren't simply a given set of Skills but rather apply to a large number of skills when used in a certain way - for example, Arcane Lore! from the most recent Pyramid applies to Physiology and Surgery, but only as it pertains to locating and removing mana organs and the like). That said, however, I honestly don't think your proposed intersection of Talents and Wildcards will break anything.

[the_matrix_walker]

I personally don't think it's a big deal to combine them, provided that Talent provides a bonus to effective skill when using a Wildcard skill in place of a skill covered by the Talent, but does not raise the Wildcard skill for all purposes.

For example if you have a Talent that adds to driving, it only would add to Wheelman! when using the driving skill, and not when using it to replace Gunner for vehicle mounted weapons, etc.

If your game is using Wildcard Points, there is even less of a possibility of abuse here, as the actual points in the Wildcard skill are what matter.

[Phantasm]

I'm going to chime in on the side of "Talents as a Conditional Bonus to Wildcards" side of things. I've done this in my own games, and it hasn't broken anything. In fact, it's given some folks who were debating whether to take higher levels of certain skills instead of a wildcard (as the wildcard is itself quite expensive) incentive to take a level or two of a 5-point Talent to complement the wildcard, giving them a bit of the edge they were looking for in those areas.