macksting wrote:Scholastic skills are superior to secondary skills in their breadth and quality of knowledge. Secondary skills are intended to be picked up by self-teaching and trial and error, while scholastic skills are intended to be learned through study and represent a formal education.
Being trained for a month by a mechanic in an auto shop doesn't represent a formal education, but it may represent solid grounds for self-study as you move beyond what is being taught. The formalities and precision of scholastic training, or even of on-the-job training amounting to more than a third of a term of study as above mentioned, are more demanding than a secondary skill's results would offer.
So it does make a difference. That month of working with a mechanic would be a solid basis for a secondary skill in my opinion, but seriously insufficient for a scholastic skill.
Here's the thing, sure the definition of the training of a secondary skill and a scholastic skill are importantly different, but what about total game effect? On a skill like Cooking it's pretty simple (using an example reprinted in a lot of Palladium books). The secondary skill lets you make something edible, the scholastic skill lets you make something that's high end restaurant good.
But what about something like running? No differences in bonuses to Spd, PE, or running duration. Body building? Training regimen would be different (lifting weights in a gym vs lifting rocks over your head), but the bonuses are identical. Even auto mechanics. In most game situations it always ends up being a fixed/not fixed type of outcome to the roll. Whether it's using factory authorized specifications (scholastic), or "that seems about right, now pass me the duct tape" (secondary), the end game effect is effectively identical. One could nitpick on the differences, but as a player I'd be rather pissed off if my GM told me that even though I made my roll by a wide margin, I didn't succeed in a particular case since I was using a secondary skill instead of a scholastic skill.
This whole point is of course only with skills that are naturally available as a secondary skill. A month helping out a mad scientist won't necessarily give you a skill like genetics or mechanical engineering. Those kind of skills take YEARS to master.
Now a house rule I occasionally use (sliding back on topic here) is that a player can get a skill that's not normally available as a secondary skill for the cost of two secondary skill slots. This is only for during character creation only, and only with GM approval. I made a Freed Slave character that I really wanted to have WP Heavy. Seemed like the best compromise we could come up with at the time. Some skills this would be inappropriate of course, use with discretion.