On page 18, in the paragraph directly under KNOW: [FIELD]

The paragraph says "Know skills are loosely grouped into three types: academics, interests, and professional training."

Shouldn't Art be added to that list and three changed to four?

The text for the psi trait (page 32/33) mentions still needing to take the Instability and Mental Vulnerability traits, as well as a second mental disorder for level 2 psi, all of which are no longer the case according to the psi section

Okay folks, I'm not sure this is the right place to post this, so you do what you have to with this post.

This could very well just be me, but I would like a more detailed breakdown of the meaning of Aptitude and Skill ratings, p. 14.

Like, an Aptitude can go from 0 to 30, 5 is a child, 10 is an unaugmented human, 15 is transhuman, but no hints for what higher ratings could mean. Same for skills, 50 is advanced training, but 60, or 70, or hell, 80 or 90? What do ratings like those mean?

Did you leave those high ratings out of the table because they're very subjective, because they're rare...? It makes it slightly trickier to give a pc or npc the effective ability you envision, I think.

My very personal opinion would be to add the assessments for higher ratings. Other than that I'd be very grateful if someone could tell me what they think the higher ratings mean in their opinion - they're not word for word the same as in first edition, and that confuses me a bit.

BTW, a related problem I'm having with skill range: a skill of 50 is defined as advanced training, but it still succeeds only half the time. I think I'm missing something. Like, I've read that easy tasks can give you a +10, +20, even +30 if they're really really basic. You can also get a bonus by spending extra time. But it still looks quite strange. What am I not getting or taking into consideration? Again, thanks to anyone who can clarify this for me.

I think this probably is an editing error, the tables being cut in half. The previous playtest documents had the values:

APTITUDES
Rating Assessment
5 Child
10 Unaugmented Human
15 Transhuman
20 Enhanced
25 Superhuman
30 Posthuman

SKILLS
Rating Assessment
10 Rudimentary Ability
20 Some Familiarity
30 Novice
40 Basic Professional Competence
50 Advanced Training
60 Experienced Professional
70 Expert
80 Authority
90 Master
98 Pinnacle of Achievement

Those should be included in full in the final book.

You are assumed professional with a skill value of 40, and you shouldn't roll for routine tasks, only when the situation is challenging or forces are working against you according to the Game Mechanics chapter. But everyone makes errors. Even if you work in a field where you are assumed to have an academic degree in your field, probably having around 50 in the skill just after leaving university, most workplaces would have routines that double or triple check your results for quality assurance. In most lines of work, the workday would consist of tasks that are easy or very easy, giving +20 or +30 to the test if any check is needed at all. Only those working at the very frontier of their field with research or development (and thus having PhDs or the like) would have to solve hard or very hard tasks on a normal day. At most places of work I have been, what distinguishes experienced employees from newbies are that the latter use more time on the same task. You get +10 per extra minute or 25% extra time on task actions according to the Game Mechanics chapter. So your newly educated professional would be guaranteed to succeed on a slightly hard test using two-and-a-half times as much time on the task.

In my opinion, this works out. What can be hard to agree upon in a group is what the difficulty levels very easy, easy, hard, very hard etc is relative to. A hard task for an untrained individual would be easy for a professionally trained in the field. I suggest that it should be made clear for what kind of character those levels are relative to. I would assume it is relative to an experienced professional (with 60 in the skill.) So if you are making a Pilot:Ground Vehicle test, whether it is a hard or an easy test would depend on whether someone who have been a professional driver for most of his or her career with experience from different vehicle types and terrains would find it easy or hard, not the average commuter who only use the car queuing to the office and back and take an occasional weekend drive (which I would assume would have at most Pilot: Ground Vehicle 30.)

Fighter Module - "common shape adjustment" text is doubled.

Edit: Digital speed is listed as Ware, yet it is featured as a morph trait in Traits list

Thank you for the full tables, Androminous, much appreciated, now it makes a lot more sense, and your very thorough explanation is really, really useful! I'm copypasting your reply for my group's use, it'll clear up a lot of doubts.

Can I ask Adam & Rob to include a shortened version of Androminous' answer in the rules, or an otherwise brief sidebar about the thought process behind the skill ratings and how they're actually supposed to work in play? I've been told many other new gms and players misunderstand these concepts and I think it would be beneficial to spend a couple words on them, and it'd help transition to this game.

Thank you guys!

Page 6, Step 2: Career: Academic.
I just want confirmation that the numbers are right, since it is the ONLY career that has 90 points in Active Skills, and 130 points in Knowledge Skills. Considering all the other Careers are 130 Active and 90 Knowledge, I think maybe there should be more knowledge skill points?

They all but the Academic have the same values. It equates roughly to 790 CP in skills from the 1st Edition, with 5 CP extra on Reputation, and the same effective values on Aptitudes (an average of 15, since COOrdination has been removed). I have placed an Spoiler with a little more detail on http://eclipsephase.com/ep2-focused-builds-how but you can grab the second entry on each step of character creation on 2nd Ed and add the numbers for a total on all the entries (the only different being the Academic).

My confirmation petition is more in the lines of "just give him 20 extra points on Knowledge Skills" or something like that that makes it attractive over other packages.

I'm pretty sure we're supposed to use Guns skill to shoot the weapons on bots we're jamming, but the Interface skill description on page 15 still mentions using Interface for weapons mounted on bots.

I don't know if we're supposed to use Interface for vehicle mounted weapons, and I think we are supposed to use Interface for fixed emplacements. In any case, it would help if this was clear. I'm assuming Guns since the Security ALI has that skill (which is presumably used to shoot from the controlled bot).

I've been viewing it this way:

Jammed -> Use Guns. Use your aptitudes for things like SOM checks. You can use the Vigor or Flex pools of the drone, and if you have a Drone Rig, you can use your Insight pools as Vigor for the drone. You can use the Insight, Moxie, and Flex pools of your own morph for actions you take with the drone body. You cannot use your own Vigor pools for these actions.

Autonomous mode -> Issue command to ALI. ALI uses Guns. ALI uses its aptitudes for things like SOM checks. ALI has access to the Vigor and Flex pool of the drone, but has no ego pool points. You can't spend your own morph's pool points on the drone's actions.

In the case of Jamming, you've actually done an integration test. At that point, I think you're pretty fully immersed in the body. Your mind is still running on the original morph, so Endocrine Control, Mind Amp and similar mods still benefit you.

Edit: Added more Guns vs. Interface
While I think it should be Guns, the rules don't really support my interpretation.

Pro Interface support:

• Bot/Vehicle ALIs don't have Interface, but are often armed. If they use Interface to shoot this isn't a problem.


• p. 15 of Making Characters explicitly says Interface is used for bot/vehicle weapons. This rules out my Guns interpretation.

Pro Guns support:

• Security ALI (and Kaos ALI) has Guns skill, which wouldn't be useful if Interface was used to shoot.


• When sleeved in a morph, you use Guns. Jamming a bot seems to be about the same as sleeving, so using Guns seems to make sense.


• p. 9 of Actions and Combat mentions that spaceship weapons, habitat defense systems, and emplaced turrets use Interface. These are all essentially weapons on a stationary mount that is not jammed. Similarly, these use Insight pool instead of Vigor.

Mixed:

• p. 2 of Actions and Combat says to use Guns for ranged weapons and Interface for electronic weapon systems.

If it is Interface for firing bot weapons while jamming, it's probably appropriate to use Insight pools for this action instead of Vigor.

On p. 12 on making characters, it mentions that selecting psi-chi sleights raises your base infection rating. I'm under the impression that is no longer true?

I think it is "INHERENT FLAWS" now. See p. 36 to find it. The Case has it as a trait.

p. 26 The Wizard module has a WT of 6, rather than 4.
p. 29 Perhaps the DUR, WT, and DR of the Infomorphs should be shown here too.

It would be nice if the skill cap were 100 instead of 98. Players buy these in increments of 5, so 98 ends up being strange. Obviously, having a target number higher than 98 isn't useful (since 99 still fails), but those extra 2 points are nice for keeping even numbers when you have a penalty.

Pg 43. Gear packs for Techie career.

The techie get's Fokus, but it doesn't list a number of doses. I assume it should be 5 like all the other drugs in the equipment packages.

Page 27, Flexbots, have some confusing elements. Does shape adjusting 'stack' by flexbot, allowing flexbots to grow more complex as they get bigger? Do you get a set of limbs each flexbot, or do you need to use the shapechanging 'ware to have limbs at all? How do flexbots interact with positive traits? I assume if any flexbot has a given bit of 'ware, other than armor affecting 'ware or durability 'ware, they all get it, to reduce bookkeeping, but that being explicit would matter too. While it doesn't seem extremely efficient, can a flexbot stack up on pool affecting 'ware on each bot? Overall the flexbot rules are much simpler and have fewer weird interactions and calculations, which is very good, but it just needs some more clarity, though not so much specificity that flexbots require tracking a bunch of weird edge rules and interactions.

On the subject of jamming and guns, I assumed jamming just used guns. Minimizing the difference between jamming a drone and your own morph seems ideal just to reduce the learning curve of jamming, especially because now psi uses the jamming rules sometimes and it doesn't make sense for them to need interface.

EDIT

Can Swarmanoids join a flexbot if they take shape adjusting? How would that work mechanically? Can Swarmanoids take a cyberweapon and pneumatics to start smashing folks to death? What about ranged weapon implants? Like many other weird morph mechanics they seem to have been slimmed down in complexity, which is really good, but need just a smidgen more clarification on their limitations and capabilities.

Async Interest (p. 8): The title for Async and their skills feels disconnected because they are on 2 separate columns. I think it would work better if you moved the text to the next column.

Fray and Perceive base skills (p. 11): The more I think about it, the more this doesn't make sense. What is meant about the base rating being 2x the aptitude? Does this mean that if you had INT 30, then perceive is 90 (cause 2x 30 = 60 for base, then +30 for aptitude)?

I'm going to repeat this. I don't like getting bonus points for having high stats. It encourages builds that exploit this. I think you should be given 30 ranks for fray and 30 point for perceive.

Languages (p. 11): I'll say it again. I don't like freebies. Languages, as is, encourages builds that grant more freebies.

Academics and Chemistry (p. 18): This annoys me. Chemistry is mentioned as an example in the text for a field, but it isn't listed as sample field below.

All infomorphs currently have digital speed listed as a ware, not a morph trait.

I agree that introducing another mechanism for calculating Fray and Perception leads to confusion and adds little. Just giving every character a fixed number of ranks achieves the same. This could be added to a table that includes the fact that everyone also gets Know: [Faction] 30. Giving 30 ranks of Perceive and Fray would probably be too much, but 20 would be more in line with the average character.

Looking at it again, it seems that I read it wrong. I thought I read base skills several times in the chapter, such as getting base skills for background or career. One thing lead to another.

I'll reread a few more times. In the meantime, it wouldn't hurt if the relevant section was rewritten.

Maybe replace this:

with this:

Errors that need fixing.

Crafter module: It lists repair spray as a common shape adjustment. I can't find repair spray in the gear section. In fact, I found that fixer swarm says that it is sometimes called repair spray.

Fighter module: Under common shape adjustments, it lists common shape adjustments. This is redundant.

Infomorphs don't list DUR. In the mesh, p. 28, it list the DUR of different devices, software, and even infomorphs. I think that making characters chapter should list DUR for infomorphs, or at least make a reference of where infomorph DUR can be found. The DUR is different for each infomorph type, so I think the players aught to know this when selecting morphs.

Another infomorph question.

Lets say that I'm looking to make a few dozen forks. If I had my primary fork sleeved in a infomorph that cost 1 mp or more, would every fork made from the primary also be sleeved in that same infomorph type? Maybe there would be some sort of copy lock that prevents the copying of infomorph sleeves.

I'm wondering this because I can't have several dozen Case morphs, as each Case after the first must cost at least 1 mp. I'm effectively breaking this rule by forking infomorphs.

Maybe I'm over thinking this. I'm trying to find new ways to stress test the rules.

In fact, your own server is 2 resources... after the third fork you have running there, you are saving costs (and I think there was no mention on how much egos can run there!)...

Also, while a physical sleeve is lost once you resleeve (left behind, destroyed, whatevs), an infomorph carries his "sleeve" with it, and to backups (it's software!).

One of my characters I've made for these beta rules uses a Flexbot. The way I built it might be having some unexpected effects, so I'm posting some of the details.

First off, it is composed of 1 Crafter, 1 Rogue, 1 Fighter, 1 Wizard. The combined flexbot has 90 DUR, 6/4 armor, medium size, and 8 shape points. It costs 7 MP.

I can use the shape points to improve the armor to light combat armor, giving it 16/12 armor points. (Yes, I did improve all modules, not just 1). 90 Dur and 16/12 armor makes it competitive with a Reaper as a combat machine. When you consider that its 7 MP vs the Reaper's 12 MP, its a tempting option.

Cost reductions. I know that I can get 6 MP in negative traits so I buy Proprietary Tech 3 times, 1 per module, for the Crafter, Rogue, and Fighter modules. This would reduce the price of those modules to 0 MP, which is not allowed, so I buy positive traits to bring them to 1 MP each. The Crafter and Rouge get the toughness trait (+10 DUR for the Flexbot, bringing it to 100 DUR), and the Fighter got the lethal trait. Am I correct to assume that the combined Flexbot will be able to benefit from the lethal trait? The net cost of the Flexbot becomes 4 MP.

Fixer Swarms. 3 of the modules are Proprietary Tech, creating difficulties in repair. However, one of the affected modules has a fixer swarm. Does this combination mean it can repair Proprietary Tech? What exactly can it repair? It would be weird having a Proprietary Tech fixer swarm be unable to repair its own Proprietary Tech. The answer is important as I'm considering making the Wizard Proprietary Tech even if I get no points just so it can be repaired by the fixer swarm.

Forks. The Flexbot will have 4 cyberbrains and 4 mesh inserts. I need only 2 to run the Flexbot effectively, cyberbrain for primary ego and mesh inserts for muse. This leave 6 devices that can run forks of my character (or someone else). Do I need to leave the cyberbrains empty to get the pool points (for why I ask, see Transhuman on Flexbots and aptitude bonuses)? The mesh inserts I have no problem with. I can fill them with infomorph forks. Can I fork the infomorph types to keep the MP cost down? For instance, 1 ego is sleeve in an operator infomorph (2 MP), so can I make 3 forks of that and keep the price at 2 MP?

Familiarity trait. It has been mentioned by one of the devs that you can use Familiarity trait to cover all Flexbot modules and all possible combinations. Does the same work for infomorphs? They are more or less the same. Can I pick infomorph and expect it work with all infomorph types? What about familiarity with robots? I might want to control some with my many forks? Jamming requires integration tests.