There are five basic skills in the game:

• Athletics
• Combat
• Engineering
• Piloting
• Science

Athletics is the only skill that must be at least level one. There are ancillary skills: Diplomacy, Psionics, Sanity, etc. that may be relevant for a specific mission or campaign but you can get along just fine by ignoring them.

When you build a character, you will choose a set of numbers to arrange in the skills however you choose with the caveat that Athletics skill cannot be zero. It is a good idea to put your highest skill in your profession.

For example, an engineer might choose the first set (4,2,0,0,0). put 2 in Athletics, 4 in Engineering and zeroes to start with in all other skills. This will make you great at Engineering but you'll be pretty one dimensional. If your ship gets boarded and you have to fire your blaster, you might wish you'd paid a little more attention to Combat at the academy.

The basic skills cover what is standard. These ancillary skills aren't used often in the game. They are treated the same as the basic skills in all regards. That list is not exhaustive. An enterprising Enemy might create a new skill relevant to a mission or campaign. It would probably be better to assign the operation of a mining device to Engineering than to create a “Mining” skill. Some missions call for using Science skill to cook.

Technically, you could choose one of the ancillary skills as your profession but it is not recommended.

Ancillary skills include the following:

• Diplomacy
• Psionics
• Sanity

Additional information regarding these skills begins on page 46.

Starting Skill Sets:

(4,2,0,0,0) (4,1,1,1,0) (3,3,1,0,0) (3,2,2,1,0) (2,2,2,2,1)
(3,2,1,1,1,1)

Rearrange these as desired but Athletics must be at least 1. Note that the last set includes an extra “1”. This might be used if you are using ancillary skills.