Jumping Bodies in Play - sorting out skills

Burning Empires General Questions
1

The Naiven of my Vaylen FoN and Cotar Fomas jumped bodies into the noble house last session after getting mind fucked. I think I’ve sorted out most of what transfers and what doesn’t, but the section on skills confuses me and I want to be sure I’m doing it right.

On p.198, it says, "When a Vaylen jumps bodies, it may take its Will- and Perception-rooted stats as is. The rest of its skills - Agility, Perception/Agility, Power, Forte or Speed-based - lose any advancements made. Existing skills become encoded at the new host’s roots. When the Naiven takes a new host, factor these new roots. Occasionally this will be beneficial, but generally it’s like starting over."

I’m having trouble understanding what happens to what since there are no examples, so I’ll just pull a few from the two characters involved in the jump.

Old body stats: Will 6, Perception 6, Agility 4, Speed 4, Power 5, Forte 4
New body stats: Will 4, Perception 5, Agility 4, Speed 4, Power 4, Forte 4

[ol]
[li]The old body has Command 6. It’s a Will-based skill, so does it transfer “as is,” meaning “Command 6” or do I keep the advancements but refactor it with the new host’s root Will (4 instead of 6, so: “Command 5”) because “existing skills become encoded at the new host’s roots.”
[/li]
[li]Physical skills are a bit more straightforward, right? You get the skill but the new exponent now equals the new host’s root stat. So, “Physical Training 4” is Power/Speed-rooted, so it becomes “Physical Training 2” in the new host. Correct?
[/li]
[li]What about overlapping skills? The old body has Close Combat 5 (Will/Agility) and Soothing Platitudes 5 (Will). The new body has Close Combat 2 and Soothing Platitudes 4.
[/li][/ol]

Thanks!

2

When performing this exercise, it may help to keep the intent behind it in mind: The worm is able to encode purely mental skills perfectly (i.e., Will- or Perception-rooted skills). Its encoding is far less perfect when it comes to skills with a physical component because muscle memory is a huge part of their function.

  1. Keep Command 6.
  2. Correct
  3. As for overlapping skills I’d say take whichever is more advantageous, while remaining inside the bounds of the above. In this case, you should have Soothing Platitudes 5 (from the worm) and Close Combat 2 (from the new body…which is what it would have been if the worm simply brought over its Close Combat skill). If the situation had been reversed–the old body had CC 2 and the new body had CC 5–then you should take CC 5.
3

Much appreciated, Thor! That’s exactly the clarification I needed. :slight_smile: