From Character Law #5806, p. 48:
[A] character cannot choose the same talent more than once. In addition, a character cannot choose talents that duplicate each other. For example, a character cannot take a +3 St stat bonus and a +8 St stat bonus.
Our group recently had different opinions on how to interpret this - specifically, what "duplicate" means.
One player was going to take Animal Empathy (which gives +25 for maneuvers with a certain type of animals) and combine it with Summon (which gives +20 to any skill that would allow you to direct the summoned creature's actions).
The idea was to apply this to a riding beast. If tailored to, say, horses, it would allow the character to summon a wild horse, and get +45 to all taming, control and riding attempts.
Clearly, the talents overlap when it comes to skill bonus when dealing with the specific animal; but despite the considerable overlap, these are also very different talents.
So could the player pick those two talents despite the overlap?
Or is this a case of duplicate effects, because the +25 and +20 stack, and thus forbidden?