Stepping back into Aldea

[Klaus Æ. Mogensen]

Experts get three extra upgrades at level 1 and one extra upgrade each level after this (this is to make Experts less 'front-loaded').

So Experts get 5 upgrades, plus one for every level after that (plus ones for intelligence/being Human). So a Level 20 expert would have had 24 upgrades, if I do the math right? That seems like a lot.

It is. However, considering what level 20 Adepts and Warriors are capable of, I don't think it is unbalancing. A level 20 Warrior has, compared to a level 20 Expert, +5 attack, +1 defense and +5 toughness (not counting the bonuses you can get from Warrior-only feats). Is having 11 extra fully trained skills really any better than that? Especially as each added skill is likely to be less central to the campaign than the previous.

If you feel it is unbalancing, you could demand that every other upgrade must be used on a Knowledge or Craft skill. This would make high-level Experts scholars and/or jacks of all trades.
Edit: Or Perform. You could even demand that Experts at first level must choose to be either scholars, craftsmen or entertainers, with upgrades from odd-numbered levels (including at least one at level 1) required to be either on Knowledge, Craft or Perform skills, respectively.

- Klaus

[reverend keith]

I don't get it Reverend. How are your 1st and 2nd points (a-d) different than the BR rules?

In my system, either you don't have the skill ("unknown"), you have it at half ranks ("normal"), or you have it at max ranks ("favored"). . . and there are no class skills and no "favored-but-not-known" skills.. (Did I mention that I hate picking favored skills at 1st level, and then discovering later on that the GM isn't going to be using one of them as much as other skills in the game?)

If the player doesn't pick a list of favored skills then how do you decide which are "trained"?
Because there are no "class skills", PCs can pick *any* skill they want, assuming the narrator is cool with it.

First level starting skills (2+INT for everyone but Experts, who get 6+INT) are all favored, but the PCs have the option of taking two "normal" skills instead of one favored. Above that, you need the Skill Familiarity feat.

For an example: Erik the Expert picks up the Skill Familiarity feat. He can pick any four skills in the book that are unknown to him and upgrade them to normal skills. (he now has those four skills at half his level for ranks, rather than zero.) Instead, he could have chosen four normal skills and upgraded them to favored (full level in ranks), or made two unknown skills into favored skills.

Are you just changing the names to make them more intuitive? Trained instead of favored?

Sorry. Keeping the terminology does cause confusion, but in essence I'm jettisoning the "pick your class skills" stage of BR character creation.

[reverend keith]

In standard BR, you can have 4 states of skills: favored/untrained, favored/trained, normal/untrained, and normal/trained. You have to decide all your favored skills at level 1, even though many of may never be trained (even those that derive from your background culture). A favored/untrained skill is no better than an normal/untrained, but you get more out of training a favored skill than a normal skill.

Well said, sir. You nailed the exact reason why I came up with my house rule.

(I really should read this forum more often...)