Traveller Skill Specialty Idea

 Traveller character skills are recorded in integer increments: Engineer-1, Mechanics-2, and so on.

In Mongoose Traveller 2e, some skills have specialties. You have to choose one of those when you reach level 1 in a skill that has them. In the case of Engineer, the player must choose one of Jump Drives, Maneuver Drives, Power Plant, or Life Support to receive the benefit of the "1", the other specialties being treated as skill "0", which removes the Untrained penalty of -3.

Disclaimer - Hot Sports Opinion: I hate level-0 skills. And I think all the above is overly complex and isn't worth the effort. Sure, they aren't complex mechanics and players can quickly learn them, but it would be better not to have to learn them at all. I think this approach is a crutch to support other inelegancies.

Let's say in character generation you end up with two levels of Engineer. That could be:

• Engineering (Jump Drives)-2, Engineering (all others)-0; or
• Engineering (Jump Drives)-1, Engineering (Maneuver Drives)-1, Engineering (all others)-0
• (substitute other specialties as you like).

What is the point of this? To reward you for being specialized but also also less useful in generic play. You could be the chief engineer of a ship with Engineering (Jump Drives)-3. But if the life support system is crapped out, you're just Engineering-0.

The more specialties as skill has, the worse this dynamic gets.

So to be most useful in the widest variety of circumstances (because Traveller play is usually very unpredictable), for skills that have specialties, the prudent character would put one level of skill in every specialty before moving to a second level of specialty. In other words: Engineering (Jump Drives)-1, Engineering (Maneuver Drives)-1, Engineering (Power)-1, Engineering (Life Support)-1 is wiser than Engineering (Jump Drives)-4.

An Alternative: For each level of skill, choose a specialty to add to.

Remove the specialization requirement and make it additive. Engineering-2? Great. You're good at all the engineering stuff. But you can choose two things to be even better at. And maybe a list that's longer than the current list of specialties. For engineering that might be Damage Control, Hull Structures. For Mechanics, which has no specialties, maybe Grav Bikes, or Firearms, or Ship Salvage. History-2 (Specialties: The Fifth Frontier War, The Ziru Sirka).

This could be extended to specific abilities such as Gun Combat-1 and take the feature Quick Draw, or Sniper. Melee-1 could be Grappling. 

Specialties can be added, optionally, for additional flavor and detail, rather than mechanically constricting a character's ability.