Character creation/Advancement in TC:Aeon/Core

[maekkel]

Hello
I´m trying to figure out the character creation/advancement.

Paths:
First you apply Origin, Role and Society path.
This seems quite straightforward each one give you 3 dots to allocate to the preferred skills, and a connection at 1 dot and and Edge. If skills hit level 3 you also pick a trick and speciality.

1) Is it possible to put skilldots from different paths that "share" a skill to it? And thus make a character with a Skill at 5, without the 6 free dots?

2) It seems better to invest in Path Ratings than individual skills/specialities/edges. As a dot of a path is cheaper than buying the skills/edge just by itself with the added benefit of getting a connection dot.
-- This seems to be quite exploitative. as you can easily have all 3 path cover 12 different skills.
-- Connections: If i advance in a path, must the new dot be in the existing connection? or can it be in another one?

3) Buying additional (society/different) paths lay the other one dormant? I.e. is the old one blocked to be advanced?

4) Skill tricks are very, very valuable. it seems to be it´s better to learn each skill at 3+, instead going to an Jack-Of-All-Trades approach. Is this a design choice to favour specialized/competent character than non-focused ones?

Favoured Approach:
- You can change your favourite approach... does it subtract the dots gained before and relocates them to the new favourite approach? Or do I +1 dot in each of the new favourites?

[MoroseMorgan]

1. Yes.
2. Yes, but also most Paths also come with additional responsibility. At chargen spreading out all of your skill picks will be better XP wise in the long run, but the majority of your skill dots will be spread out, and specializing does seem to be better than generalizing for most of the current splats, as TN8 is a harsh mistress.
Re:connections, I believe you can have multiple.
3. Nope, as long as you don't go past the cap of 5, IIRC.
4. Skill tricks are powerful, yes, but you only get one at chargen, and need to pay XP for any additional skill tricks in play. Can't speak to the design choices.

Re: Favored Approach this has come up a few times both in Scion and Trinity talks, and to my knowledge we haven't gotten a good answer. It seems kinda fiddly to move the dots, especially since anything over 5 just gets shuffled around in the same arena. I personally chalk it up to a design hook that was put out there in development that wasn't used, and forget about it until someone asks this question again.

[Mateus Luz]

About Connections
There are 3 aspects of connections, Community, Contacts and Access. You can use one of them, per session, not just the Contact.

Every character is part of a community that can grant a few advantages, and the higher your connection the higher are the advantages, but also more they expect from you, so you have one community per path.

Contacts are people you know that helps you a lot. You have your path dots to distribute among your contacts, if you have 4 dots in a path you can have 1 4-dots, or 1 3-dots and 1 1-dot, or 2 2-dots, or 1 2-dots and 2 1-dot and so on.

Access is basically thing you can use as member of a path. While you have your stuff, that can be related to you pats, the path access are stuff you don’t own, but you can use if you ask for it, like the laboratory in the university, or the staff house from a big company.

Let’s say you have 4 dots in the Local Police:
You are probably one of the most important members of it, the other officers can help you with a lot of things, like general informations, pointing the proper person to talk and things like that. That’s the community
There is one commissioner that helps you a lot when you need, even crossing some limits to do so (he is a 3 dot contact), and there is the cleaning lady that always inform you who what’s working late and pick the thrash bags so you can check (she is a 1dot contact).
You can also get a few items when you are doing your job as police officer, a gun, a bullet proof vest, a car. As you are important you can command a big crew of policemen when needed, you can use the laboratory crew to check on some digitals or a blood sample without questions, and maybe even have access to the evidences collected for other investigations. those are the access advantages of that high connection to the police.

[johntfs]

a bully proof vest,

I could have used one of those in grade school. I wouldn't have gotten nearly as many wedgies that way.

[Mateus Luz]

I could have used one of those in grade school. I wouldn't have gotten nearly as many wedgies that way.

Correct now, but for sure it would be really useful on high school.

[maekkel]

Bully Proof vest... the kids need them now, we can´t wait for the 22nd century to happen.

Thanks Mateus for explaining the path connections better.
I understand to upgrade the Role or Society path - and that this deepens potentially all the connection aspects. But it feels a bit weird for the Origin Path.
- To be clear an Example:
Origin: 2 dots Oceanian: Connection: Genetic Engenineer - 2
Role: 2 dots Space Military: Connections: Spacer Captain - 1, UNMC -1
Society: 3 dots Upeo wa Macho: Connections: Leviaathan Captain - 2, Off-Earth Colony 1
- If the character uses their connection with their Role Space Military they would handle their community at 2 dots as their path rating, the same for access , right? but with contacts - the level of the contact is used - not the path rating, correct?
Also the character would have a total of 21 + 6 dots of skills to distribute and: a total of 12 edges.

Skill tricks: Character creation says that you get 1 speciality and 1 skilltrick for any skill that hits 3 dots, not just the first. So a starting character that uses their starting dots per path + 6 free could just have 5 skills at 3 each with it´s own skill trick and speciality... After character creation I have always to pay for skill tricks and specialities?

[Mateus Luz]

First the Connection thing. It is a bit unclear to me, but I use this way (it may be wrong, but worked)

Access grant something useful, a clue or a weapon or a piece of information. Every use consumes 1 dot in the next rolls, but it don’t affect the connection value.
The number of dots in a specific contact defines the tags and the enhancement it grants when using it. Every use consumes 1 dot, but don’t affect the tags or dots in the contact.
The community use is not as powerful as access or connection, it will not add to rolls or grant equipments, but may add a little randon info, so it don’t consumes dots.
You roll the remaining dots + Attribute to activate (check if you could get the help), but the effective result is not affected (the access value or the connection dots).

You get 3 Skill dots and 2 Edge dots per dot in path, so if you start with 3 path dots (1 for each) you have 9 Skill and 3 edge dots, plus the skill and edge dots you get unrelated to the paths. The total is 15 (3x3 +6) skill and 10 (2x3 +4) edge dots, before any experience.
if, somehow, the SG allowed you to add all this dots in the paths, the total would be much higher 27 (3x7 +6) skill and 18 (2x7 +4) edge dots.

Now the easy one, Specialities and Tricks: on Creation you get one speciality in each skill with 3+ dots, but you get only 1 skill trick in one of the skill with 3+ dots (not one in each). The Skill trick total is a bit badly described as it changed during development and not all texts were corrected, but Core page 37 specifically says “Characters start with one Skill Trick.“
let’s say you went to maximize specialities, you have 15 dots, you put 3 on each skill to a total of 5 skill on 3. You get 5 specialities and 1 skill trick total.

Later you can spend XP for more specialities on the skills on 3+ dots, up to one per skill (the limit of one per skill is not clear, but I believe it’s the case). Having 4 dots increase the speciality to 2 enhancements, 5 dots increase to 3 enhancements.

You can also spend XP for skill tricks, it’s limited to 1 on 3 dots, 2 on 4 dots and 3 in 5 dots for each skill.

[maekkel]

Thank you!