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Anthony · 03-26-2014, 04:52 PM

Ugh, nothing like going through a list to remember just how many stupid little skills there are. My preferred scheme is to allow any skill to be variable levels of specificity -- something like:
All top-level skills are Very Hard, and will have subskills that are Hard, Average, or Easy. When defaulting, any child of a given skill defaults at 0 from that skill; any parent defaults at -2 per step away, any cousin defaults to the closest shared parent. Thus, you might have Melee Combat (VH) with something like One-handed, Two-handed, and Unarmed as Hard skills, individual weapons as Average skills, and maybe specialized things as Easy. Weapons that are easier or harder to use would get bonuses to hit rather than changes in skill difficulty.
This makes most skill vs skill defaults pretty easy, but the reality is that skills within a given category are pretty interchangeable so it's kind of fair. The defaults could be worse if, say, the cost curve for skills was different.

03-26-2014, 04:52 PM	#8
Anthony Join Date: Feb 2005 Location: Berkeley, CA	Re: There is only Lite Ugh, nothing like going through a list to remember just how many stupid little skills there are. My preferred scheme is to allow any skill to be variable levels of specificity -- something like: All top-level skills are Very Hard, and will have subskills that are Hard, Average, or Easy. When defaulting, any child of a given skill defaults at 0 from that skill; any parent defaults at -2 per step away, any cousin defaults to the closest shared parent. Thus, you might have Melee Combat (VH) with something like One-handed, Two-handed, and Unarmed as Hard skills, individual weapons as Average skills, and maybe specialized things as Easy. Weapons that are easier or harder to use would get bonuses to hit rather than changes in skill difficulty. This makes most skill vs skill defaults pretty easy, but the reality is that skills within a given category are pretty interchangeable so it's kind of fair. The defaults could be worse if, say, the cost curve for skills was different. __________________ My GURPS site and Blog.