Grouping/Categorizing Skills

[Eunomiac]

For new players just setting out to design their first characters, 25 skills is a lot to take in (especially considering all of the trappings associated with them).  I’ve been working on a way to make the available skills a little easier to grok.

I’ve noticed is that skills tend to group by triplets quite easily.  So, with a few repetitions, I drew up this rough categorization of triplets covering all 25 skills.  I am sure I’ve overlooked several things, so please offer your comments – it will greatly help my understanding of how the skills can be used, and in turn help my players.  If others find this useful, I will keep this first post updated with any changes.

Brute Physical: Athletics, Endurance, Might
Agile Physical: Athletics, Driving, Stealth
Physical Attacks: Fists, Guns, Weapons
Physical Defense: Athletics, Fists, Weapons

Social Attacks: Deceit, Intimidation, Rapport
Social Defense: Discipline, Empathy, Rapport

Stress Tracks: Conviction, Endurance, Presence

Magic Know-How:  Conviction, Discipline, Lore
Mundane Knowledge Gathering: Contacts, Investigation, Scholarship
Perception: Alertness, Empathy, Lore

Acquisitions: Contacts, Craftsmanship, Resources
Covert Ops: Burglary, Deceit, Stealth
Character-Defining*: Performance, Presence, Survival

* As is always the case with brute-force categorizations like the above, this is my “miscellaneous” category.  Originally containing only Performance and Survival, I noticed both of those skills seemed like they’d go largely ignored except by characters whose concepts strongly suggested them.  Presence only seemed to fit that bill when I reread its description -- Presence is a lot narrower than I initially thought, more of a "leadership" skill than a social skill, so I added it here to emphasize that (i.e. players might be disappointed if they took Presence only to discover they really meant to take Rapport).

So, there we have it.  Do any of those triplets grate on you as missing something, having fuzzy edges, or having one skill too few/too many?  On the last point, I was considering adding Presence to Social Attacks, but YW215 (directly under the picture of Harry demonstrating that Chivalry Is Not Dead, Dammit) suggests otherwise: the main text mentions the three “main” social attack skills as above.  And, though the marginalia to the right argues against using Discipline as a social defense like I've done, it does strike me as the go-to defense for your garden-variety Intimidation attack.

Thanks in advance for your input!

[ways and means]

I would add endurance to physical defense and add disclipline to the stress track (hunger)

[devonapple]

What I had done awhile back when creating characters for a convention game was to split skills in terms of general potential plot/investigative performance, to ensure that the important ones got assigned to apex positions:

Problem Solving/Investigative: those skills which generally help to overcome plot obstacles (I include Social conflicts in this realm) - most of these skills should be apex skills among the players:
Lore, Deceit, Rapport, Resources, Scholarship, Stealth, Driving, Empathy, Presence, Burglary, Contacts, *Conviction, Intimidation, Investigation

Combat: skills which contribute to fights - these can be assigned in a variety of configurations, but at least 1 character should have one of these as apex skills:
Weapons, Fists, Guns

Personal: skills which are primarily designed to bolster or protect the character - nobody *really* needs these as apex skills to keep the plot moving, but folks are going to want them anyway for self-preservation purposes:
Alertness, Discipline, Athletics, Endurance, Might

Miscellaneous: skills with can serve occasionally to bolster the other types of conflict, but rarely have a direct impact - some people may have these for character development, or a setting may increase their usefulness:
Performance, Craftsmanship, Survival