Character generation limit on maximum attribute and skill ranks

[drjones]

I was working on getting a Destiny campaign underway and ran into an odd situation during character generation. More context is available in a previous topic it sparked, https://bg.battletech.com/forums/general-discussion/best-plausible-stats-for-novice-mechwarrior/msg1877770/#new. In essence, one player decided to see how good a green MechWarrior, in terms of piloting and gunnery, could result from the character generation process. The answer appears to be about 1/1 skills in tabletop terms. These stats seem overly high and point to what seems to be an oddity in the rules. According to the relevant rules (pg. 70) any individual attribute or skill can have a maximum starting value of four, with possible further increases from life modules (pg. 73-74). The oddity that became apparent is that this limit is the same regardless of the character's starting experience level; a lower limit (two?) for green characters might be more accurate and also help avoid the issue I encountered. (A corresponding higher limit for veteran and elite characters would also make sense to me.)

[drjones]

Thinking on this some more and factoring in the maximum skill of six, a progression of 2/3/4/5 as maximum starting skills for green/regular/veteran/elite characters might make sense.

[drjones]

Continuing along this line of thought and having considered the difference between attribute/skill advancement in character generation versus continuing game play, I'm currently looking at the idea of a soft cap, using the values previously posted, with any advancement beyond those values during character generation requiring twice the normal cost in points. For example, a green character wanting a skill with a value of three would pay four points for it. Similarly, an elite character wanting a skill with a value of six would pay seven points for it.

[koraq]

I like these ideas! It sounds like they would work.