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Essentially none of these made it into the game.
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These are Jesse's proposed skill revisions after listening to Brian some. An example of MechanicsHacking.


Unless otherwise stated, assume the skill is the same as in Exalted (specifically, solar exalted)

Missile is one skill, with Missile(thrown), Missile(archery), and Missile(firearms) in the same model as Crafts skills.  This is because the charms for Archery and Thrown are essentially identical, and no discipline seems to specialize in thrown weapons.


Investigation and Awareness are combined into Observation, the skill of noticing important details of people, places, and things.  Knowledge of the law goes to Bureaucracy or Lore, but the rest (and most charms) are now Watchfullness.

This is because A) awareness otherwise seems a little wimpy, B) the two kept appearing in the same disciplines when I was trying to come up with lists (especially if Archers have Truth as a schtick), and C) if your sense is good enough, you should be able to act as a truth detector on people as well as noticing things about places.


Martial Arts is gone.  Instead, some charms may be moved to other skills as appropriate (mostly Brawl, Melee, and Athletics).  Melee is divided into Melee(armed) and Melee(unarmed), the latter being more martial-artsish, but using the Melee charms.  Brawl+Strength is used to hit.


Ride and Sail are combined into a single skill, Travel, on the model of Crafts skills (i.e. Travel(Land Mounts), Travel(Helecopters), Travel(Navigation and Cartography)).  This also covers the common ground of these skills, navigation.  This is because the two skills seem very similar, covering much of the same actual skills (and charms useful for one are almost always useful for the other as well) and because otherwise, only one discipline each favored them.  Besides, "Travel(Navigation)" seems intimately in keeping with Nethermancy.


There are thus 21 skills:


Melee (skill family, Armed and Unarmed varieties, Armed might be proken down furthur)

Brawl

Missile (skill family, combines Archery and Thrown)


Dodge

Athletics

Travel (skill family)


Endurance

Resistance

Survival (skill family)


Observation (combines Awareness and most of Investigation)

Larceny

Stealth


Lore (field per dot?)

Occult (special case, see ExaltedHackingDisciplineMagic and ExaltedHackingIntuitiveMagic)

Linguistics (languange per dot)


Bureaucracy

Crafts (skill family)

Medicine (skill family?)


Performance

Presence

Socialize

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Though you have some good arguments, I'm not fond of the name Watchfulness -- and that's the combination I'm least convinced of anyway -- and I'm not yet convinced that this degree of mechanics change is something I want to do.

We could go and design our own house system, from scratch or with a base -- that's what I tried to do with GURPS.  I fear that if we screw with the skill list of the base system, there will be endless hordes of players wanting to add skills to it.

I'm unconvinced of Watchfulness because I see aspects of Awareness in Larceny, Occult, Socialize... and don't see a justification for picking Investigation as the one to combine it with.  --bts

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I understand you'd like to keep martial arts (and not use an unarmed variety for melee).  Did you still want to make Brawl ST-based for hitting?

I initially folded investigation into awareness, and just called the whole thing awareness, on the thought that anything investigation did could be done with careful watching, with the exception of compelling truth, which seemed like a moderately archer/seeker/wizard thing to do anyways--observing actively enough to draw facts blatantly to the surface, rather than just ferret them out for yourself.  More that investigation could be subsumed into awareness than the other way around.

What about Missile and Travel?  Jury still out?

(question--what skills usually cover natigation and direction sense, like figuring your way out of a maze?)

--jesse cox

Outside, navigation is Survival.  Indoors, it's Larceny or Int+Awareness.  On the sea, it's Sail.  The unified Travel ability seems too weird to me; the Thrown/Missile combination is the most likely I've seen so far, and I'm still thinking about it.  It messes up the nice five-fold split... --bts

You probably don't want to combine them.  If you want to emphasize the sneaky aspects of thrown weapons and give things like direction arrow to archery, you should certainly keep them separate.  The only question is where to put firearms, but really, I'm guessing it's a separate skill (direction bullet?).  It probably replaces archery on a modern sheet.

Which then brings up some other odd effects of trying to modernize the skillset.  Cabbies, particularly london cabbies, are supposed to know their cities backwards and forwards and always find the shortest rout.  That's overland, outside navigation.  Does that mean good cabbies have lots of survival, or more plausably larceny?  Or does it come out of their "vehicles" skill?  If sea navigation comes from Sail, and sail is "vehicles" then we've got some wierdness.

One reason I was thinking of "travel" as a family of skills was for people like nethernancers, who could be learning things like planar navigation (which could just come of their flavor of occult) and for things like navigation caverns (which I guess is survival or larceny, or possibly awareness).  It's probably best to leave the skills separate with overlap, and like cooking, leave navigation as an "everywhere and nowhere" skill.

Eh.  I'm probably worrying far too much.  Any system has brokennesses, and a good troupe will deal just fine.  I should probably be trying to think of ways to demechanic things, rather than to mechanic them in good and interesting ways.--jesse

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I'd make guns part of Archery: the schtick of an Archer picking up an M-16 and using it like he was born an infantryman is too strong to ignore.  They're a different charm tree, though: generating arrows of Essence isn't very useful with a gun.  I quite like the tree at ExaltedHackingFirearmsCharms.  I'm definitely in favor of "Mounts" and "Vehicles" at least; cabbies have Vehicles, which helps them drive and navigate using the tools in their vehicle: the map in the glovebox, just as it helps you use a sextant and pocket watch to navigate a boat.  Knowing your city well?  Moderately high Int, or just written into your background that you know your city well.  I don't think it's important enough to require a skill, instead of just being part of your background.

I guessed that Travel was intended for Nethermancers, and I certainly see the flavor benefit there... but it's not something I really want to give *everybody*.  Troupe?  Next you'll be calling me a Storyteller, and that's a killin' offense in these parts.  --bts