FATEwiki - Combat Skills

Notes on my considerations about Combat-related Skills.

I seriously considered, rather than weapon types, breaking them down "professionally" by the types of weapons/fighting tactics/styles a person would be used to, e.g., Cop/Guard/Thug, Soldier, Assassin.

Thus a cop would know about small arms, shotguns, batons, and basic brawling. An assasin might know sniper rifles, explosives, some exotic weapons (garrote). A soldier would know small and large arms, grenades, tactical arms, etc.

That started overlapping a few things, though, and making skills a bit more like Aspect, so instead I went to a simplified set of skills.

I need to still look at some conflations. I've merged all Hand-to-Hand together. I mean, who gets training in punching/martial arts and not be able to apply that to a club/baton/knife?

On the other hand, that makes it easier to get Really Good (The Pyramid notwithstanding) a lot more easily. Is that a problem?

A wikified note from Fred Hicks about skills and rules revisions: [1]

You should probably add a note in the Exchange-based Combat section to the effect that broader skills work better for it. I realize that to you this is obvious, but it was not to me when I read it.

Sure. And under the skill list building section, we should talk about how the "style-based" skills work well with exchange-based, etc (Fencing, Pistolero) while Turn-based Combat is better supported by the hard specifics (Sword, Dagger, Gun).

[...] That or I will use a 'Firefight' skill rather than Shooting for opposed ranged combat. I guess in my mind 'Shooting' implies accurately firing a gun rather than shoot, maneuver, etc. Again, this need for broad skills in exchange based combat didn't click for me because the melee example given works quite well with specific skills.

Sure, but recognize the contradiction in your approach. "Sword-Swinging" gets to include defense, but "Gun Shooting" doesn't. One "Fight using X tool" skill should have a certain rough-hewn equivalence to another, at least IMO (it's one of the big dangers in mixing skill breadths within a given category).