This question covers a few aspects of Skills that should help explain a few things...
quote:
Skill question(s): As a young high-society person who works for her father, what vocation would you suggest for her? She already has the medicine skills, so I'm not sure that also taking something like 'physician' would make much sense, and given her background I'm not sure that she's had much time something like 'teacher' or other traditional vocations.
Also, for hobbies how would you like me to handle her fencing and athletics interest? Should I just take 'running' or make a new skill called 'athletics', and should I make a new skill called 'fencing', or is it possible to take "Melee Weapons: Swords" or something like that?
So skills fall into several categories:
PSS (Primary Skill Sets), this would be the equivalent of your 'class' in D&D and includes the main Military, Science & Engineering Skills.
Miscellaneous Skills: These are extra sub-skills for each PSS that expand on the Primary Skills and are cheaper than those suites to buy but are not necessary to start the game. Players will not start with any of these skills but may acquire them as the game progresses.
Vocation Skills: These skills are used to determine what a character did before joining the Army etc. Each player has one of these skills.
Hobby Skills: These extra skills are available for players to customize their character and flesh them out with a bit more detail. Players may choose a total of two Hobby or Language skills.
Language Skills: This is essentially your starting language plus any other languages you may have learned. Literacy is also included as a separate skill as many people in this ear were not literate. If a player chooses Literacy it must be in a language they can speak (usually the native language is English so Literacy would also be in English).
So based on the questions above, if this were my character I would probably select Science as my PSS. Medicine is a Science skill, so Sarah should start with Medicine Lvl 1 as her first skill. Characters start with 2 Primary Skills, the second can be from a different PSS so Sarah could take Melee Weapons Lvl 1 to reflect her interest in Fencing (Melee Weapons Skill covers all melee weapons and it is also a more expensive skill for a Science PSS to learn.)
She would need to be literate, so that would be her Language Skill. There is no 'athletics skill' so Running would be the best option there as a Hobby Skill. There is no 'physician' skill, this would be covered by Medicine however Teacher would probably be a compatible Vocation skill but Sarah could choose from most of the available Vocation Skills.
