In Mechwarrior Second Edition, a great deal of emphasis was placed on your character’s attributes. It was much more profitable to boost your stats in character creation than your skills. Spending a few points to boost a few skills was paltry compared to boosting an attribute which would grant you an across the board bonus.
To correct this, Mechwarrior Third Edition does not allow your attributes to influence your skills at all during character creation. Instead, your character will find it easier to grow in game in the areas he is naturally inclined towards because those skills will cost less experience to advance.
I believe that the shift in third edition is too far to the extreme. A genius should come out of the High School path knowing more Academics than a complete moron, for example. I’ve come up with the following tables for house rules to correct this. Based on the TN modifiers for the link attributes of a skill, the character gains the appropriate bonus to his skills. To avoid confusion, I record this modifier separate from the actual skill bonus (as the skill bonus reflects his “level” of knowledge vs. ability… sometimes this might come in handy).
| Normal | +2 | +1 | 0 | -1 | -2 |
| +2 | -2 | -1 | -1 | 0 | 0 |
| +1 | -1 | -1 | 0 | 0 | +1 |
| 0 | -1 | 0 | 0 | +1 | +1 |
| -1 | 0 | 0 | +1 | +1 | +2 |
| -2 | 0 | +1 | +1 | +2 | +2 |
| Difficult | +2 | +1 | 0 | -1 | -2 |
| +2 | -2 | -2 | -1 | -1 | 0 |
| +1 | -2 | -1 | -1 | 0 | 0 |
| 0 | -1 | -1 | 0 | 0 | +1 |
| -1 | -1 | 0 | 0 | +1 | +1 |
| -2 | 0 | 0 | +1 | +1 | +2 |
If you want the details, I averaged the bonuses. In the case of normal skills I rounded up, and for difficult skills I rounded down. Then I changed the sign to reflect the difference between a skill bonus and a TN modifier.
These bonuses are fairly small and will only affect the characters with the more extreme attributes. This is intentional, since the system is fairly good as it is. Whether to use these bonuses on unskilled checks is up to the gamemaster. As always, leave me feedback on what you think and how this works out for you if you try it!