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Old 03-03-2017, 02:13 PM   #1
johndallman
Night Watchman
 
Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: Cambridge, UK
Default New Technique family of the week: Focussed

Edit: This is the start of a series where I intend to invent a lot of Techniques, to fill out the support for non-combat skills. There's more about my plans and objectives here.

Focussed: Average, default Prerequisite, cannot exceed prerequisite +4. This is a large family of Techniques, allowing buying up a skill with a narrow focus. Many of them will not be very useful to adventurers, but they allow ordinary people to become quite skilled at something specialised. Examples include:

Edit: Techniques I've changed to yellow text are ones that I now think are too broad for Focussed. They'll reappear in a different family.

Edit: Techniques marked with a * are suggestions from discussion.

*<Specific procedure> (Administration). This lets you buy up skill for a particular activity. Purchase requests are very popular.

Flush <poison> (Body Control). This lets you buy off the skill penalties for a specific poison. This is mostly useful as a demonstration of skill, unless you are liable to get poisoned the same way a lot.

<Specific Person> (Body Language or Detect Lies). This lets you buy up skill for application to a individual person. This is useful for trying to analyse the policies of powerful people when your only information about them comes from speeches, staged public appearances, and the like. For example, it could have been practiced by Kremlinologists during the lifetime of the Soviet Union.

<Terrain Type> (Camouflage). This lets you buy up skill for a particular kind of terrain, usually the one you live in, or expect to fight in. Terrain types are as per Survival specialisations.

<Specific Activity> (Carpentry). This lets you buy up skill for a narrow Carpentry activity. For example, an employee in a furniture-making workshop might focus on making dovetail joints.

<Specific Program> (Computer Operation) this lets you buy up skill for using one particular piece of software. This was quite common in the early days of personal computers, but is now usually confined to expensive software for specialised tasks.

<Specific Subject> (Connoisseur) This lets you buy up skill for something quite narrow, such as a specific composer for (Music), or an artist for (Paintings).

<Specific coin or note> (Counterfeiting) This lets you focus on one specific piece of currency.

<Specific Group> (Diplomacy). This lets you focus on a group, such as a nation, a political party, or a socioeconomic group. If your technique level is 20+, you do get the +2 reaction for Diplomacy at 20+ from that group.

<Specific Person> (Disguise). This is the technique of disguise as a specific person. It's only useful if there's someone whom it's very important to be able to impersonate well. Access to the person, cooperative people who know them, or films or lots of photographs of them, is necessary to improve this technique.

Telegraphy (Electronics Operation (Communications)). This lets you buy up skill for the specific purpose of sending or receiving Morse or similar codes faster.

<Structure type> (Explosives (Demolition or Underwater Demolition)). This lets you buy up skill for a specific type of structure.

<Bomb type> (Explosives (EOD or NOD)). It is possible to focus on defusing a particular type of standard bomb, but it may be a bad idea: military bombs sometimes have anti-tamper devices that are varied randomly, and IEDs just vary.

<Device type> (Explosives (Fireworks)). Buying up skill in a particular kind of firework is a good idea if you work in a factory that makes them!

*<Specific Person> (Fast-Talk, Intimidation or Streetwise). This lets you buy up skill for application to a individual person. This is not cumulative with bonuses for Manipulation from Social Engineering, since it's operating in much the same way.

<Particular document> (Forgery). Buying up skill in a particular document, such as Country X's identity cards, or Country Y's driving licenses.

<Specific Sports Event> (Boating, Jumping, Lifting, Running, Skating, Skiing, Swimming, Throwing, etc.) Buying up skill in a specific sports event. This helps explain the remarkable GURPS skill level equivalents demonstrated in many sporting events.

<Species> (Mimicry (Animal Sounds or Bird Calls)). Buying up skill in mimicry of a specific kind of creature.

Throw Rider (Mount). Buying up skill in throwing a rider.

Packing (Parachuting). This lets you buy up skill for the purpose of packing parachutes, which is an IQ-based roll.

<Specific preparation> (Pharmacy or Poisons) This lets you buy up skill for preparing a specific drug or poison.

Phlebotomy (Physician or Surgery). This lets you buy up skill for the specific purpose of drawing blood, which is a medical support profession in some countries, such as the USA.

*<Device type> (Professional skill: Munitions factory worker). Buying up skill in a particular kind of explosive device is a good idea if you work in a factory that makes them!

<Specific ritual> (Religious Ritual). This lets you buy up skill in a specific ritual or ceremony.

*Grapevine (Savoir-Faire (any) or Streetwise). This lets you buy up skill for dealing with rumours: hearing about them, working out which ones are true, and passing them on where they'll do most good.

<Source> (Scrounging). This lets you buy up skill in using a particular kind of source of goods: rubbish dumps, backs of supermarkets, railway workshops, etc.

<Specific Procedure> (Surgery). This lets you buy up skill in a specific surgical procedure.

Last edited by johndallman; 03-12-2017 at 10:45 AM. Reason: Preface
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