Topic: Skill specialization

[netbat]

Has anyone house ruled a different skill specialization setup? The x2 skill ranks always seemed off to me, especially if you specialize late and go from 10 to 20 ranks at once.

I have been thinking of just adding the specialization as another skill using the same progression as the main and adding its skill rank bonus. e.g. if I have 5 ranks in history and the category with a stat  bonus of +5, I have a total bonus of +30. Buying one rank in the specialization History(Ancient Mayincatec) would give a total of +33.
Not sure if I want to limit specialization to only after 5 ranks(or some other number) in the general, or if I want to make it Everyman as long as it is less than the general.
Any thoughts or different ways of specializing?

[jdale]

If you have 10 skill ranks that's +30 (ignoring category ranks which don't specialize). If you buy an 11th rank that would be +32 (don't forget diminishing returns).

If you specialize, you've spent as many DP as 11 ranks, but your unspecialized skill rank bonus is +30 and your specialized bonus is +50. So, you got a +18 bonus relative to what you would have had with the same DP cost, and -2 to everything outside the specialization. I think +18 is ok if the specialization is meaningful, it has to be narrow enough that it's actually leaving something out.

Diminishing returns are very important for keeping specializations balanced, because x2 ranks is not at all the same as a x2 bonus.

[Wynther]

My take on skill specialisation would be rolling twice and taking the better result when the specialisation comes up.

[jdale]

Rolling twice gives a much bigger advantage than +18.