Leftover Professional Skill Points in New Edition BRP?

[Brent Chumley]

If you end up having left over points after spending your allotment on Professional Skills, can you spend them on Personal Skills? I have read over and over how the points work in the rule book, but it seems like you just lose any leftover Professional Skill points if you can't spend them all on those. I know you can spend leftover Personal Skill points on Professional Skills, but is the reverse allowed as well? Thanks!

[NickMiddleton]

I think from this (Page 16) "You might want to shift some points around at this time but keep the professional skill points and personal skill points separate" the intent of the rules is that no, you CANNOT redistribute unspent (because of hard cap) professional skill point on personal interest or other non-profession skills. The asymmetry is deliberate.

However this is BRP - I don't think it will have a hugely negative impact if allowed. Pick what your table agrees suits you all best and apply it consistently and it shouldn't be a problem.

Edited September 20 by NickMiddleton

[g33k]

+1 for @NickMiddleton's opinion.

another option might be to consider if there's another skill one might "reasonably" add to that profession, and put some points into that one too.

[Mugen]

There's a good chance that those few leftover points will go to a skill that will never be tested in the campaign, or will not be enough to change a failure into a success.

Like that player in my Mask of Nyarlathotep whose best skill was Herbalism, at 93%, which was only tested once in the whole campaign, unsuccessfully...

[Maruelio]

As far as I understand you can't by the rules, but if you and your players are okay with that I don't think that it would be problematic if you just spend the points as you like.

[Nozbat]

Personally, I'd allow players to use any points left over if they can convince me that the chosen skill is congruent with their character and chosen occupation.

@Mugen is right .. those extra points often go into a weird and usually niche interest of the player.. thinking of one of my Cthulhu characters who was an undertaker.. or Viking characters who played chess.. or another player who was a stage magician doing sleight of hand card tricks. Those skills just added colour to the game and allow for some individualisation. They were never that important or impactful and gave players some sense of agency.

I also don't see why players should be penalised if they take less common occupations and have less professional skills than the usual suspects of say Private Detectives, or Mercenary soldiers etc .. somebody may want to be a Rus Mink farmer or a Steppe Nomad falconer. Cthulhu characters tend to have very similar in occupation choices. When did you last play a Religious Zealot? Or a Medium? Equally other BRP characters tend to be fighting types so I think diversity and equality of opportunity are something to embrace and make room for.

Rules in my opinion are there for guidance.. and really life as a Player Character isn't that fair so they need all the help they can get. It's almost as bad being a player as living in a TV soap opera... the worst always does happen

[Lloyd Dupont]

7 hours ago, Nozbat said:

Rules in my opinion are there for guidance.. and really life as a Player Character isn't that fair so they need all the help they can get. It's almost as bad being a player as living in a TV soap opera... the worst always does happen

But... this has only one in a million chance to happen! 😮

[Ravenheart87]

How do you have left-over skill points? O.o

[Mugen]

19 hours ago, Nozbat said:

 

@Mugen is right .. those extra points often go into a weird and usually niche interest of the player.. thinking of one of my Cthulhu characters who was an undertaker.. or Viking characters who played chess.. or another player who was a stage magician doing sleight of hand card tricks. Those skills just added colour to the game and allow for some individualisation. They were never that important or impactful and gave players some sense of agency.

There's an unwritten rule in most skill-based RPGs and BRP that not all skills are equal.

There are basically 3 tiers of skills 

Tier one skills are always interesting, and not having these will penalize your character or your party.

Tier two are situational, but not useless.

Tier three are almost never used, and will never really matter.

Of course, the tiers depend on the game and campaign. Egyptology in a game set in Egypt will be tier 1 or 2. In a game set in South America, it will be tier 3...

[Atgxtg]

1 hour ago, Mugen said:

There's an unwritten rule in most skill-based RPGs and BRP that not all skills are equal.

There are basically 3 tiers of skills 

Tier one skills are always interesting, and not having these will penalize your character or your party.

Tier two are situational, but not useless.

Tier three are almost never used, and will never really matter.

Of course, the tiers depend on the game and campaign. Egyptology in a game set in Egypt will be tier 1 or 2. In a game set in South America, it will be tier 3...

Quite true.

Even the old Bond RPG mentioned this, and it only had 15 skills (16 for NPCs). Some things will always be useful and some things usefulness will depend on the game and type of adventures being run. 

 

To the OP:

As far as what to do with "leftover" profession points, I'd say go back and spend them on professional skills, unless there is a very good reason why the character is under skilled. If there is a good reason then talk it over with the GM and see if they will give some sort of compensation for the lost points. Either points for something else, better attributes, a temporary bonus to improvement rolls, whatever.

In situations like this I find it helps to consider why the rule exists in the first place. The main reason for the restrictions on spending skill points is mostly to ensure a realistic balance of skills and to prevent someone from mini-maxing their skills to be superb in one or a handful of very useful skills (i.e. Greatsword 457% and nothing else). So any deviation from that has to be viewed from the point of what happens if the GM makes an exception, not only in this instance, but in future. 

Edited September 23 by Atgxtg

[Brent Chumley]

Thank you all for your comments and suggestions to my question!!! I found that after calculating all of the extra points received from the various skill bonuses (Age, Culture, Characteristic, etc...) that there are more than enough points to be spent on Professional AND Personal skills by just moving numbers around that there won't be any leftover points. I am still new to this system and just hadn't done the work yet!!!