Most of those are simply due to point restrictions. A rock star who moonlights as a hacker actually gets a lot out of being a rock star. He's going to be charismatic, wealthy, have an easier time finding people to talk to etc and he has to pay for that. Similarly a weightlifter is going to be strong, have contacts with people that are also strong and angry and he needs to pay for all of that (since it could conceivably be very useful). A nun shouldn't need to spend too many points for that occupation unless you're trying to be a high ranking member of the religion. If you actually plan on roleplaying as a nun you could probably gain some points with a righteous disadvantage.Starmaker wrote: This kills the variety in secondary skills and quirks. Say, I'm doing a cyber-espionage adventure. One dude invests heavily in coding. Another is focused on social engineering, maintains hundreds of fake profiles and has thousands of contacts. A third picks stuff here and there, stealth, weapon use, etc - a generalist. But no one can be a chess grand master, or a professional musician, or a weightlifter, or a nun. Why? Because this shit costs prohibitively too many points for a flavor skill. In real life, a rock star who moonlights as a hacker is a more enviable person than a college dropout hacker who spends his free time fapping to /u/. But a story has a beginning, an end, spotlight and downtime, and the difference between ("So guys, you have a free week, what do you do?") "I perform at a concert and go home with two hot fangirls" and "I post desu on facebook and get wasted" is not big enough to warrant paying half the point budget for it.
What I'm trying to say is that your complaint is just a factor of the point level that the game is being played at. If you're playing at 150-200 points I think you could make any of those ideas work, and if you're playing at a lower point level then your character is going to be less impressive.
I've never found this to be necessary. If your character just wants to be decent at something ("I studied oriental basket weaving in college") then take it as a half point or point skill. Even a 50 point character can free up enough room for 4-6 half point skills for flavor.In many games flavor skills are often free. If you characters hobby is lockpicking and bypassing alarm systems you lose, but renaissance history, cabinetmaking or underwater welding is just fine. If you want to be a world renowned expert that's another matter, but expertise itself isn't that useful.