Nature vs Science

[hpthatchfield]

Under "Running the Game", the distinction between nature and science could be made more clear. I like science as a skill, but maybe nature could be honed into a narrower category / split into two categories? Is it essentially just "medicine?" or is it kind of a "lore-nature" check that's more akin to like natural history? Or is it a distinction between "biology" and "chemistrophysicastronomy?" I think any of those could be ok, but I might be in favor of switching to medicine and science as the two int categories, and leaning more on "survival" for more practical nature-y checks. Thoughts?

[prappleizer]

Great question. First I think ALL the new skills added should be given brief descriptions to motivate their inclusion and explain when they should be used.

In my mind, the classic "nature" check is somewhat rooted in the natural world, it's a skill that would be learned "on planet" and can be extended into space but generally in the way of "this is the way of things". However, I almost never use nature checks in my games because of the weird bits of overlaps with survival, etc.

I like your idea of trying to resolve this tension, and I agree that "intuiting" the nature of things seems more like a WIS skill to me anyway.

• Medicine: Biological checks, will also apply to understanding alien life forms you may be unfamiliar with
• Survival: Intuitive sense of the world, tracking, nature, etc.
• Science: Int based knowledge of how to calculate something, to use physics/math/chem to arrive at a solution.

What was once a nature check has been "split" between survival and science, with a bit more clarity now about what applies when?

[prappleizer]

After some consideration also, I think that we can probably drop stratagem -- it's sort of just a combo of insight and survival in some sense?

I was just coming up with things I thought might apply to space battles, etc., but I think playtesting will be the thing that ultimately highlights what, if any, extra skills are needed

[hpthatchfield]

I think the balance between medicine, survival, science, and also insight kind of spans the range of things in int and wis that would be needed. I'm trying to think of a counterexample check that would require an additional skill, but I can't so far?

and yeah, I think strategem is cool, but maybe it can be a bonus to insight given by specific backgrounds / subclasses specific to the setting (like pilot). Making the "martial" classes more mentally well rounded, I guess.