Dangerous Skills

[Esoomian]

A recent discussion on this board set me wondering about upskilling the more dangerous skills and if there were any risks to it.

For instance assume a character wants to train with a lightsaber or learn a force power from an a partially corrupted file.

Would you just let that character spend the character points and learn the skills required or would you create an element of risk to the situation so they may injure themselves or become corrupted in some way?

Please don't just stick to my examples either, the question is supposed to be more focused on what skills may be dangerous to learn especially if a qualified teacher is not available.
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[garhkal]

I had one pc who when making it, decided for his backround he had a cybernetic limb and some scarring from his learning of demolitions on his own... representing the few times he blew himself up, though not fully...
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[jmanski]

So you're meaning the hazards of training itself? Other than your examples, the obvious to me would be minor injuries to oneself (IE scraped knuckles from a repair skill) or items not properly repaired (partially or non-functioning); as well as junk laying around from parts kits and such.

Looks like I am stuck in a repair rut...
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[Esoomian]

I'd not thought of that, training on engineering or repair skill could lead to 'prototype' type creations which have all sorts of different quirks that those made when fully trained don't have.
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Don't waste money on expensive binoculars.

Simply stand closer to the object you wish to view.

[Matthias777]

Depending on the skill and how it was being learned, I could definitely see imposing a risk of some sort on a character. For someone training a given skill, I'd have them make a roll at their initial skill level. For Lightsaber, they'd make a Lightsaber roll; if they fail it by too many points (more than 10 is what the RAW states), they take damage. For things like repair skills, I might give them an injury if they rolled a 1 on the Wild Die...anything from scraped knuckles to something bad enough to give them a Wounded status, depending on what they're doing. Obviously, if they're reassembling a comlink, there's not much they can do to hurt themselves. If someone's training to raise their Demolitions skill, you have to think, "Would they actually train on live bombs?". More likely, they're working on a simulated explosive device, and if they screw up, a little red light tells them they'd be dead if it was real. It's definitely something I will consider implementing, depending on the situation. Thanks for the idea!
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Arek | Kage

[Bren]

Learning to make explosives is dangerous. In fact in the real world, making explosives at home historically has been pretty darn dangerous. garhkal's player with the cybernetic arm is not exactly coming out of left field.

Learning to fly planes in WWI was pretty dangerous. The first missions flying them in combat was very dangerous.

I guess overall I don't feel a need to harm PCs during training without a better understanding of how that would improve the fun of the game.

[Esoomian]

That is a good point, I know some of my players would enjoy the element of risk, particularly if they succeed but even if they fail as long as the result is not death or horrific maiming whereas others would only enjoy the element of risk for a mundane activity like upskilling if they did succeed.

I suppose instigating this sort of house rule would put the burdan of making sure the game remained fun on the GM by making the negative results more like plot hooks or potential for advancing in new directions rather than just outright penalties.
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Don't waste money on expensive binoculars.

Simply stand closer to the object you wish to view.