Skills for converted Gadget/Gizmo/Hardware/Naturals

[Curbludgeon]

Conversion Book 1 notes that Gadgeteers, Gizmoteer/Gizoid, Hardware, and Natural/Genius characters, during their relatively easy few week adaptation to Rifts Earth, select among other more specified skills "one additional skill in each available category." What defines an available category seems open to interpretation, and I'm not aware off-hand of it being mentioned in either the Rifter or the website's official errata, and so am curious as to how others have handled such in the past.

[Orin J.]

Conversion Book 1 notes that Gadgeteers, Gizmoteer/Gizoid, Hardware, and Natural/Genius characters, during their relatively easy few week adaptation to Rifts Earth, select among other more specified skills "one additional skill in each available category." What defines an available category seems open to interpretation, and I'm not aware off-hand of it being mentioned in either the Rifter or the website's official errata, and so am curious as to how others have handled such in the past.

it's the skill catagories. y'know, the ones in rifts. the ones mentioned in every rifts OCC's skill list.

[drewkitty ~..~]

I believe what the book refering to is how the PF1 classes had a list of allowed skills for that class. (elective and secondary)

And OJ are refering to is the Related Skills allowed skills tables. What is in most of the PB Character Classes...and not necessarily just OCCs.

The however is, not all of the PB character Templates are in the Character Class format. Being of the Education level & skill program template type. For these, the only allowed table is for secondary skills.

[Curbludgeon]

I'd ask then, Orin J, what makes those categories available? Is it when one of those characters has a skill coming from that category? Can it be any skill? If one of the above characters takes, say, Carpentry, are they only then able to gain another Wilderness skill upon conversion? It seems like it could lead to a situation where a Hardware character with some diversity in their Secondary Skills would gain a considerable skill boost in comparison to one more specialized.

The reason I bring this up is that I'm considering how best to adapt the Gizmoteer class to Rifts Earth as someone able to create magical items without themselves possessing personal abilities. By determining how many skills a converted character effectively gets in each Gizmoteer program, I might get a little insight on how many fewer a program with access to Mystic Herbology should perhaps have, as an example.

[guardiandashi]

I'd ask then, Orin J, what makes those categories available? Is it when one of those characters has a skill coming from that category? Can it be any skill? If one of the above characters takes, say, Carpentry, are they only then able to gain another Wilderness skill upon conversion? It seems like it could lead to a situation where a Hardware character with some diversity in their Secondary Skills would gain a considerable skill boost in comparison to one more specialized.

The reason I bring this up is that I'm considering how best to adapt the Gizmoteer class to Rifts Earth as someone able to create magical items without themselves possessing personal abilities. By determining how many skills a converted character effectively gets in each Gizmoteer program, I might get a little insight on how many fewer a program with access to Mystic Herbology should perhaps have, as an example.

I actually read it a little different. but the gist is lets say you have a robot vehicle specialist hardware char. he comes from heroes unlimited or equivalent and shows up on rifts earth. it is relatively easy for him to learn the rifts robot mechanics and robot electronics skills to update to rifts tech. its more difficult for him to learn mechanical engineer and electrical engineer because they already used their 1 electrical and 1 mechanical skill upgrades.