Hmm...
Here's what Harry's character sheet looks like:
5: conviction
4: endurance, intimidation
3: alertness, discipline, lore
2: athletics, contacts, investigation, rapport
1: fists, presence, scholarship, stealth, weapons
--------------------
By category:
5: willpower
4: fitness, charisma
3: perception, willpower, intelligence
2: fitness, background, perception, social
1: violence, charisma, intelligence, sneaky, violence
And the total points:
willpower: 8
Fitness: 6
charisma: 5
perception 5
intelligence 4
background 2
social 2
violence 2
sneaky 1
So skills would be something like
4: willpower
3: charisma, fitness
2: intelligence, Perception
1: background, social, violence
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Assumption: most difficulties in the system are lowered by 1.
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Old harry has 6 things he's good at and 4 things he can sort of gimp by in. New harry has 5 things he's good at and 3 things he can sort of gimp by in. So not a whole lot of change there.
What about stress meters and passive defenses?
Old harry has:
Stress:
Physical 4
mental 4 + consequence
social 3
Passive defenses:
Physical: 2
Social: 2
Mental: 3
New Harry:
Stress:
Physical 4 (assuming fitness)
mental 4 (assuming willpower)
social 4 (asuming charisma)
Passive defenses:
Physical: 1 (assume violence)
Social: 1 (assume social)
Mental: 4 (assume willpower)
------------------------
Now, lets look at one of our sample characters:
Xiao Jing-Wei5: Lore, Discipline
4: Conviction, Rapport
3: Empathy, Presence
2: Deceit, Resources, Scholarship
1: Alertness, Contacts, Craftsmanship, Endurance, Investigation
Stress:
Mental: 4
physical: 3
social: 4
Passive Defences:
Physical: 5 (using Lore)
Social: 5 (using Lore)
Mental: 5
-------------
To:
4 intelligence
3 social, willpower
2 perception, charisma
1 background, fitness, violence?
Stress:
Mental: 4 (assuming willpower)
physical: 3 (assuming fitness)
social: 3 (assuming charisma)
Passive Defences:
Physical: 4 (using Intelligence)
Social: 4 (using Intelligence)
Mental: 3 (assuming willpower)
----------------------------
1:
At first glance doesn't seem to change things too much. Still possible to have characters that feel different, despite the lower number of skill points. Also reduces skill level inflation. On the other hand, may be much harder to fit in attacks, defenses, and stress related skills all at once. With generally lower weapon totals, may lead to interesting dynamic of tough vs dodgy characters, but with high weapon bonuses, defense skill wins.
2:
reduced number of skills is easy to fill up the pyramid. Around 20-25 skills points seems to be the practical maximum. Would consider making characters explicitly tiered to avoid them having every skill, if you want to play at higher power.
3:
May make trapping switching stunts more powerful, since it's much harder to have two good skills.
4:
Still doesn't seem to change main problem of system, they seems to encourage play at 'scooby gang' power level, rather than 'Harry Dresden' power level.