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Old 10-04-2014, 05:11 AM   #1
johndallman
Night Watchman
 
Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: Cambridge, UK
Default [Basic] Skill of the week: Breath Control

Breath Control is the HT/Hard athletic ability to breathe very efficiently. With a successful roll, you can increase the time you can hold your breath by 50% - breath-holding rules are on B351-2 - or recover a fatigue point in two minutes (presumably of rest). The later use can't be combined with magic for restoring fatigue, which would seem to include Recover Energy. Breath Control is a prerequisite for Body Control, and a possible supporting skill for Invisibility Art. While it isn't an esoteric martial arts skill, it's mostly found on characters that have those skills.

I don't usually dig into Pyramid for these posts, but it seemed worth checking "The Last Gasp" from Pyramid #3/44, since that has lots of detail on fatigue points. It reckons Breath Control is a cinematic super-skill, and it certainly is by far the best way of recovering fatigue, if you have high HT and can afford 4 or 8 points for the skill. However, other GURPS books regard it as at least somewhat realistic: GMs may want to slow the fatigue recovery it provides.

Breath Control is found on templates in Dungeon Fantasy, Horror, Madness Dossier, Monster Hunters, SEALS in Vietnam and Supers, and in styles in Gun-Fu, Martial Arts, Gladiators, Yrth Fighting Styles, Power-Ups 1: Imbuements, and Tactical Shooting. Power-Ups 3: Talents has several Talents that include Breath Control.

Bio-Tech allows fatigue losses from mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to be offset entirely with a successful Breath Control roll for each point. Technical Grappling allows Breath Control to be used to halve fatigue damage from choking holds. Chinese Elemental Powers gives +2 to Meditation with successful use of Breath Control, lets it reduce damage from drowning attacks in the same way as Technical Grappling and lets it reduce the time to recover from ability crippling. Gun-Fu and Tactical Shooting make it a supporting skill for Precision Aiming and Underground Adventures makes it a supporting skill for an Escape technique.

What has Breath Control done in your games? Has it been seen as realistic, semi-realistic or cinematic? Should it be merged with Body Control?
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