Fiddling with the base skill scores & pure strain humans

I have decided to adjust the base skill scores of skills in a given skill area. To repeat: Skill areas collect a number of related skills and each skill area is ranked from 1 (best) to 4 (worst) with 4 being the only rank that occurs more than once. Base skill scores are determined randomly.

While my initial proposal used base scores of 4d6-L (rank 1), 3d6 (rank 2), 4d6-H (rank 3) and 2d6 (rank 4) this seemed somewhat strange to me... especially as I am not too sure about whether 3d6 really is better than 4d6-H (and so far I had been too lazy to do the calculations).

For the next release I wanted clearer and better separations between the ranks. Thus the new base skill scores are determined like this:

• 5d-2L for rank 1
• 4d-L for rank 2
• 3d for rank 3
• 2d for rank 4

Clearer, better and definitely more distinct.

Additionally I toyed around with pure strain humans as a character race. I decided to give them an additional advantage: Pure strain humans receive two skill areas at rank 1 (expert) while all other races just may rank one skill area at 1. Reminder: skill areas give benefits when starting out but also will provide extra abilities when increasing in level and the latter fact is the reason for this further increase in power. I want every character to be exciting to advance through the levels and pure strain humans - lacking mutations - need some compensation for that. So they now receive extra education and have two areas of expertise that increase whenever they advance a level. Sounds fair compared to one area of expertise and potential increases in mutational power for the other races.

As for robots and cyborgs we will have to see ;-)