[Tomsdad]

Originally Posted by aesir23

Well, I'm not planning on changing the cost of skills. But I think it's appropriate to reduce damage across the board before applying trained strength bonuses, and I think it would be fair to cap the bonuses at some level. IDHMBWM, and I don't remember if TG already includes a cap on Trained ST bonuses, but if it doesn't DX +10 seems like a good upper limit.

I think a max cap on the progression is a good idea. But I think if you don't adjust the cost of skills in line with better progression then cheaper skills with better progression will become dominant. I do like the unskilled penalty to damage idea though. It will certainly make a big difference between untrained levy and a trained soldiers.

Originally Posted by aesir23

I really don't think it's going to break anything. If you're worried about skilled fighters suddenly blasting through armor, you should be enforcing Edge Protection and other optional rules from Low Tech.

I think edge protection will be the only relevant optional rule here, and only comes into play against a subset of weapons, and even then only partially. There are ways to expand that of course (I've posted a couple here myself).

Originally Posted by aesir23

There are two advantages to doing it this way.

1: It's realistic. When you increase skill, you build muscles and Neuro-pathways that allow you to generate more power with certain specific movements. Additionally (and IMHO more importantly) you learn to use your whole body in coordination, bringing more muscle groups and more of your mass to bear on the problem.

Oh I absolutely agree with the real world rationale and correlation behind it, it's just in GURPS you tend to have to pay for what you get. Most Olympic sprinters and marathon runners would quality for high HT's or fit or even v.fit a natural result of their training but would you give them points breaks on those because they have running at 15+.

Originally Posted by aesir23

2: It makes skills a better deal. You seem to think it makes them too good a deal, but I disagree. Skills are a pretty bad deal compared to Dex, leading to a lot of optimization away from buying skills. This little incentive helps. I suggest combining it with more generous defaults to help even more.

A lot of this will be subjective based on our own games. DX is not such a great deal at my table, because I don't allow 'high' stats, but if you allow higher DXs than me then yes it possibly becomes so. I tend to rely on value adding to get extreme results (so I tend to be sensitive to value adding elsewhere which this is)

My issue with this idea is that a high skill can now at the same time, increase damage, increase chances to hit, and with combat options reduce chances to defend against. Basically an advantage in skill can be leveraged in a few ways already in combat. Adding this way would seem to make it the factor without flows in combat.

However as above a lot of this is going to depend on individual game experience and on what combinations of skill you have in play. This idea will play out different if you have high skill going up against low skill a lot or high skill vs. high skill most of the time etc.