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How do BWG players handle the Int skill limit in a BWG campaign?

I did not see anything about it in the Campaign test rules. It seems that it could be a potentially awkward issue as characters increase Attributes.

It isn't game killing or anything, and I suppose that players can simply choose what skills they want to eventually have at an XP total of 100 for their Gang Leaders and so forth, and just wait for the characters to get to that point. But that seems like it would stymie a perception of character growth over time, if just a bit.

Like, you don't want Quick Draw because you want to eventually take Deadeye and you only plan on having an Int of 3, so you wait until you get to both RC 6 and Int 3 to take Deadeye because you want to also have Run and Gun and Duelist, and you plan to pick those before you get to RC 6, because of course you can't increase an attribute more than once if you have enough XP to up to after a Scenario.

It just seems like you have to carefully plan out where you want your character to be at max XP, rather than growing the character dynamically.

What do ya'll hombres think?

Actually, when I wrote the campaign rules, there was no skill limit. You got an attribute high enough and automatically unlocked the skill. But that lead to people with all kinds of crazy abilities and it felt more balanced to have the max based on Int.

I've been meaning to go back and update the campaign rules. Was going to make it that like you said, you get a skill point and you can spend it, or wait to raise the attribute you want high enough for something else. But, once you learn a skill you can't unlearn it and take up something else. So yeah, you would have to plan out your characters a little bit. Or you can just wing it and take em as they come

Here are my thoughts from the other thread:

If I were running the campaign, I'd allow people to learn additional skills, but no more than twice their Int. I wouldn't let people swap out skills.

I guess we can do that.. or just revert back to the old rules, you automatically get the skill when an attribute reaches the right level.

I was planning to add the campaign rules to the Skinwalker expansion rulebook, and that will include 6 new skills, 1 for each attribute at level 5. But so far the only one I came up with is to allow humans to have pets.. thinking it will be the Int skill, if someone has it they can swap add a beast familiar or 2 varmints in place of 1 human henchman.

Planning to add a different mode of play for each expansion so the undead one will probably get the larger scale gang rules where it's more squad based (a few "units" of 3 or 4 henchman lead by a professional). And then the tommyknocker mines expansion will dungeon-crawly RPG rules where a GM controls all the monsters and each other player controls a 100 XP hero.

I am running a campaign where individual players control a single character and play cooperatively, so I will probably just allow all skills characters have access to.

I don't have to be as worried about balance as I will be controlling all of the bad guys and they will just have whatever stats and equipment I deem appropriate. If the PCs are hard core the bad guys will just have to be equally hard core or simply more numerous.

Plus, my house rules include additional Morale rules for Fear, Terror, and Madness, so Intellect is an important stat to have when characters start encountering the supernatural elements of the setting. You may have oodles of skills, but if you pee your pants and run off of the table they don't do you any good.

I recently reworked how I am handling Skills in my campaign.

Every character has access to the level 4 and level 6 skills of the Attribute in which their Profession gets a +1 bonus. For every two points of Intellect beyond 1, i.e. 3 and 5, a character gains access to the level 4 skill of a different Attribute. At Intellect 6 a character gains access to the level 6 skill of one of the two previously unlocked Attributes.

This way the max number of skills is 5, and you don't have the problem of people wanting to get the level 6 skill rather than the level 4 skill and therefore having to "save" skills granted by Intellect.

Once your Intellect is 3, you pick an Attribute and get the level 4 skill once that Attribute is 4. The same thing happens at Intellect 5 and 6. It also helps to create a little separation between the Professions.

I also liked it because I gave the professions a choice between two different +1 bonuses, so that helps to further define how you want your character to go. Is your Wrassler priority the Strength 6 skill or the Melee Combat 6 skill?

That sounds good .. Also, in the expansion there's going to be 6 new level 5 skills too

 Necros wrote:
That sounds good .. Also, in the expansion there's going to be 6 new level 5 skills too

Ah, more skillZ. That's cool. The skills in the current version of BWG are simple and a bit samey samey, although not really in a bad way. Quickness 6 +1 DP, Stamina 6 +1 HP, Ranged Combat 4 ignore two weapon penalty, Melee Combat 4 ignore two weapon penalty. It has symmetry and makes the game simple and easy to play. Some times diversity breeds complication without providing much in return.

There was a tad bit of a hole in that Attributes at 5 risked being undesirable because they did not provide access to a skill. I tweaked the rules a bit to make Attributes at 5 more desirable in my campaign.

As the campaign is really character driven, I got rid of Gang Leader, Professional and Henchmen rules for Characters (I will still use them for bad guys though). As a result, I tied HP and DP to Stamina and Quickness, respectively. Just as with the Intellect skill access bit above, Characters get HP and DP at Attribute points at 1, 3, and 5. That leaves the level 6 skills intact for those who want to have those level 6 skills and pick up 4 HP or DP, and it (as with the Intellect skills access) gives a good reason to have Attributes at level 5. It also means that if you have unlocked skill access you get something at levels 3, 4, 5, and 6, so you have more of a feeling of growth to your character.

That leaves Strength, Melee Combat, and Ranged Combat as Attributes without a nifty bonus for level 5, but the impact is ameliorated because with Strength, level 5 does something important in allowing you to carry more stuff and increasing melee damage; and with MC and RC, rolling more dice allows for the chance of more successes, which makes higher TN attacks more efficient and leads to a greater chance of causing an unsavable wound.

MC and RC get a lot of play in terms of dice rolling, and are almost always opposed rolls, rather than something like Quickness or Intellect which likely involves rolls that require a single success. Once those Attributes get up to 4, you've got a pretty good shot at hitting at least one success on even high TNs.