[diminsonsam2]

Originally Posted by rabuf

Skills have difficulties, which determines their initial offset from their base attribute. Easy, Average, Hard, and Very Hard. So Occultism is easier (by one level) than Physician, in your example. This represents the relative ease or difficulty of acquiring a particular skill.

Originally Posted by johndallman

Ah, you need to look at the Skill Cost table. This is on p170 in the Basic Set, or p13 in GURPS Lite. The values in the tables are the same, except that GURPS Lite doesn't have a column for Very Hard skills.

Occultism is an IQ/Average skill, which is marked at the start of the skill description on p212 of the Basic Set, or p16 in GURPS Lite. If you find the Average column in the table and read down to the row with 12 points, you'll see that gives you IQ+3. If your character had an IQ of 12, that would give them Occultism at (12+3) = 15. So roll against Occultism, you'd roll three six-sided dice. If the total of the dice was 15 or less, you'd succeed. If it was 16 or higher, you'd have failed.

ah thank you my good sirs you are gentleman and scholars I feel so silly now I have found the chart and I cannot believe how confused I was but putting together your comments made me it click now is there a method to narrow down the tons and tons of skills