Dear Polaris community, dear Philippe,
I am very excited to now have the English pdfs of Polaris Rulebook 1 and 2. As usually, when I learn a new game system, I did not read the rule book cover to cover, but started very opportunistically by going through a full character creation and looking up things while I went along. I greatly enjoy the deep character creation (acknowledging that it does take a lot of time), the design and general feel of Polaris.
That being said, I stumbled over a couple of things that were unclear to me (maybe because of the translation?) and where I thought it would be good to have the view of the experienced community here. I am sure other future Polaris players and GMs will have similiar questions, which is why I am starting this thread (I will also add to it when I encounter new questions).
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Skill prerequisites:
Some skills have prerequisites, e.g. Political Science (Geography 7, History/Archaeology 5). Do these refer to the global level of those skills or the Mastery level? Also, what if a character gains a Mastery level for a skill through Higher Education (e.g. the Political Science Higher Education), but does not meet the prerequisites: Does he still get the Mastery level?
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EDIT:] I found some answers on the first part of the question in the French section of the Forum :
http://www.polaris-site.com/forum/index.php?topic=4067.0. (global levels), but that doesn't solve the second part of the question. It's particularly relevant when your character undergoes Higher Education in Political Science. Education gives +2 on a Science/Specialized Knowledge of the Player's choice (e.g. Geography). Higher Education gives you +1 on Geography, +1 on either History or Law and +2 on Political Science. However, even in the best case, with +3 on Geography, as both Skills are restricted (X), to reach the requirements/global levels required for Political Science (Geography 7, History/Archaeology 5), your character would need a natural bonus of +8 to start with. As Science/Specialized Knowledge is INT/INT, that would mean your character would need an Intelligence of 19 or higher to fulfill the requirements at the time of his/her higher education?
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"Common, modern languages"
Some Initial Training options (e.g. Education) provide the character with Mastery levels for Languages , with the limitation to "choose
from common, modern languages only". However, the Language Skills don't mention "common, modern". Do sign language or some of the specialized languages fall under "common, modern"?
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Accessible gear "Contact Weapon"
The profession spy has access to "contact weapon"s, however I couldn't find that category in the equipment section of Core Rulebook 2. Does it mean all melee weapons, or hand-to-hand weapons like the Shock glove?
- False Identities
Some professions can choose "false identity" as professional advantage. What I was wondering is, if the character still needs to apply skills like disguise/deception (for interactions) and forgery (for documents) when incorporating his own false identity or does the false identity come with everything a "normal" identity comes with, e.g. ID card, documents, etc.