I am still early on running CoC to the group I play with, and I have already run into some interesting instances, where I had trouble figuring out what skill might apply and wanted to sort of give them a chance in game to improve a skill that they had never had before.
The two game play examples I ran into was where they were using a biplane and trying to bomb a target. The pilot had the flying skill, but the second person in the plane was trying to drop a heavy item onto a specific location (about 50 feet around). They did the practice run (and I assumed the skill was required a combination of strength and dexterity), and they made an extreme success on that as a basis. They did the complete run in the tense situation where it really counted, and missed. But I sort of wanted to give that character some experience as a "bombardier".
In the situation tonight, they have found the bad guy, and with careful observation they waited for him to leave the building, and then they decided to burn the building down. And I don't think that's necessarily as easy as it sounds. I wanted them to roll for arson. But didn't know how to play it.
As a group, they may never get the chance to burn something down again, or bomb something. But if the base skill for those things is 1%, having worked and tried it, had the chance to fail and succeeding, I think they might actually get an arson skill with 5%. That they could then roll on and improve (if it comes up many times).
Given that nobody ever gets more HP, and will remain squishy to a bullet no matter how long they play, it's nice to reward them with skills that may get used.
