Okay, so I've been working on a Fallout PnP based on SPECIAL and d20 (mostly 4e) and in my Fallout PnP, I have the skills: Athletics, Barter, Craftsmanship, Deception, Energy Weapons, Explosives, Heavy Weapons, Investigation, Light Weapons, Mechanics, Medicine, Melee Weapons, Persuasion, Pilot, Pugilism, Science, Security (Lockpicking and Pickpocketing), Stealth, and Survival, and that's only 19, and I was hoping to have 21 so its divisible by 3 and not every skill is tagged by my Fallout group. I had Mechanics with Craftsmanship before, but I split them up since I felt Mechanics had too much going for it. Craftsmanship is all about designing custom equipment, weapon mods, and custom ammo. Mechanics is basically repairing, but I made repairing a crucial part of the game, so I don't want those two things together. I might just end up splitting Security and adding in "Academics" - history and other trivia not featured elsewhere - if I don't get any suggestions. What were some skills you have wanted to see before or do you have any suggestions in general? And don't say Toaster Repair.

How about adding a new Hacking skill and separating that from Science?

Same for picking pockets vs picking locks, as these are somewhat different skill sets.

I've been getting that suggestion a lot, but I would really like to see someone come up with a totally new skill. If it helps, dehydration, fatigue, and starvation are apart of the game (I'm assuming that's how the survival skill was first brainstormed from, as well as bringing back outdoorsman), the team can be created from humans, ghouls, robots, super mutants, S'Lanters, and Mutated Crocs (except those last two happen much more farther into the game).

I think you are already pretty well covered for any situation with the remaining skills in your list, unless you want to break down Persuasion into more categories like Intimidation, Seduction, etc., perhaps adding something like Disguise (but that seems like your Deception skill).

Science could be useful for things like cooking chems, etc., while Hacking seems like a different kind of skill.

Camouflage.

Throwing?

Chemistry

Forgery

Tracking

1. Should be a part of Endurance and/or Agility.
2. Craftsmanship?
3. Perception should be the deciding factor to how good at investigation you are, if you are blind as a bat, can barely smell and is slow as hell to pick up on things then why would 100 in Investigation magically make these things untrue? Just saying, if you have bad perception you'd never get good at investigating in the first place.
4. Light... Weapons?



I'm just gonna copy paste a skill list and you can pick up things or ignore them if you like.


01 Knifes - For fighting or assassinating with knifes
02 Blunt weapons - For fighting with hammers, sledges, baseball bats et cetera.
03 Guns - n/a
04 Big Guns - Minigun is still covered by Guns and Gatling Laser by EW, but with Big Guns, you can use every 8 STR weapon perfectly fine.
05 Energy Weapons n/a
06 Explosives - n/a
07 Chemical Weapons - Used for acid weapons, fire weapons and radiation weapons. (As none of them belong to Energy Weapons, Guns or Explosives.)
08 Traps - Determines how well you can spot, avoid and disarm traps.
09 Chemistry - Is used for crafting chems, acids and poisons.
10 Electronics - Is used for recharging depleted cells, tapping energy sources, getting through electronic padlocks, crafting electronic things and repairing energy weapons.
11 Mechanics - Is basically Repair, only that now, it only counts for mechanical things.
12 Hacking - n/a
13 Lockpicking - n/a
14 Sneak - n/a
15 Medicine - Is used for treating diseases, radiation poisoning, addiction withdrawal and determines how effecient drugs are.
16 Doctor - Is used for fixing broken limbs, collapsed lungs, closing up arteries(?) et cetera.
17 Herbalism - Determines how efficient your tribal remedies will be.
18 Armorer - Determines how well you can repair, modify and craft armors.
19 Steal - Determines how well you can steal things out in the open and pickpocket.
20 Persuasion - n/a
21 Deception - Determines how well you can lie when confronted, how well you can smuggle and how well you can disguise yourself, also determines how good of a poker face you have.
22 Intimidation - Determines how well you can intimidate enemies to run off or NPC's to give you information or items.
23 Barter - Determines how well you can trade things.
24 Politics - Determines how well you can talk to leader characters about political issues.
25 Taming - Determines how well you can tame wild animals to be become companions.
26 Climbing - Determines how well you can climb up things.
27 Outdoorsman - Decides how well you can travel, spot and avoid things in the world map.
28 Fencing - For fighting with long-bladed weapons
29 Throwing - Determines how well you can hit with throwing weapons, such as knifes, hatchets, spears and grenades.

I went with some skills from J.E. Sawyer's Fallout PnP skills, mostly the part where he made the "active" version of the main attributes as skills. How can someone with 1 Charisma have high Speech or how can someone have 1 Intelligence be skilled in Science or Medicine - I guess you can be a savant, but those are skill the "active" version of Intelligence. Sawyer's RPG even had the Academic skills. Athletics and Investigation are also apart of that. The attributes are suppose to be passive characteristics, like Strength determining if you can handle a certain weapon, or how Perception really defines your eye sight and range capabilities. Obviously, I made it so they have a large responsibility in deciding how high your skills are. One of your suggestions was climbing, which is basically apart of Athletics, but more, and could be determined by your strength or agility attribute itself.

Craftsmanship is inspired by Survival. I really liked how you unlocked new food ideas the higher survival went up, and craftsmanship is the same. The higher your Craft skill is, the more schematics you unlock. In addition to that, you may also need a high skill in energy weapons or science to help make certain weapons, armor, mods, and ammos.

Light weapons = Small Guns. Why did you ask me about that and not Heavy Weapons? I felt the naming is better because when I think of small guns, I think of handguns. I guess Light Weapons may make some people think of swords or something, so I could change to it to "Firearms".

I feel like your list has too many redundant skills. 29 is a large number, pretty much half of the skills wouldn't be tagged and I like to keep it divisible by three. I mean, come on, knifes and fencing? Sure, its different fighting styles, but so are shotguns, SMG's, Snipers, ect. The attributes and the weapons themselves help decide how proficient you can be. Chemical weapons can easily be energy weapons, but its a nice idea.

Might end up splitting science into Chemistry (or add Chemistry to the Medicine skill) and Electronics, keeping Hacking apart of it, but also adding robot repair. I feel like Electronics and Mechanics might overlap too much though. Basically, the science skill is intelligence's active skill - "the ability to obtain knowledge from computers and graphs/charts". Physics is apart of mechanics and chemistry is already in medicine.

Herbalism seems very minor and is already apart of survival.

Camouflage? Deception has costumes, if that's what you mean. Survival increases your ability to remain hidden on the world map, or at least avoid dangers, and Stealth has the active ability to remain hidden.

Throwing Range is a derived stat, from Strength I believe. Thrown weapons are apart of the melee weapons, like in New Vegas.

Chemistry is apart of medicine.

Craftsmanship is forgery.

What do you mean by Tracking? Like hunting down someone? Investigation feels to that, and more.

Camoflage would be blending yourself, or concealing an object in the environment. You can combine it as stealth I guess.

Tracking would be following/hunting a man, animal, mutant, deathclaw.

While I agree throwing range is based on STR, I skeptical about combined throw with melee. But if you are going for keeping things simple, then ok.