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Old 07-01-2017, 06:08 AM   #31
ErhnamDJ
 
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Took a bit of a break, but I'm back now.

GURPS House Rule: Skill Pricing
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Old 07-01-2017, 03:17 PM   #32
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Originally Posted by ErhnamDJ View Post
Took a bit of a break, but I'm back now.

GURPS House Rule: Skill Pricing
Whew, that's a rather extreme response, I think. Concern about too powerful attributes when it comes to buying skills, and solutions like half-stat defaults have enjoyed some popularity (and then there's related things like T-Bone's ESCARGO).

But totally divorcing attributes from skills? I do see the appeal, and as you point out, it's not even just for gamism and ease of use, there's some simulationist aspect about it, too, with "intelligence" and "talent" being rather vague and often interchangeable aspects (I still think that the non-GURPS concept of IQ is a serious atrocity, at least almost nobody takes Briggs-Meyers stuff or D&D alignments seriously).

I'm just wondering where this leaves us with DX and especially IQ. What's the remaining role for those attributes? Some popular house rules already took us half way to HERO 6Es "No derived stats", i.e. when Per and Will are removed from IQ. Now if skills are, too, we might as well ditch it. DX serves as some kind of quasi-default for purely physical actions, but that can be solved by just moving that to a proper skill.

On the other hand, one could solve a few of your points easily with some technical assistance: If we agree that IQ and DX are more about adaptability than just being a math wiz or gymnast, then starting with skills for defining your character is a good point. But then the computer comes in and "min/maxes" your character, i.e. moves points to IQ/DX if that results in a cheaper build. That way building a character is as fast, using RAW.

Just spitballing here. I do find the idea quite intriguing. Defaulting from attributes, talents, incompetences, it all goes away and why someone is competent at a certain group of abilities is more a narrative concept (or your own personal view of developmental physiology and psychology, nature vs. nurture etc.).
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Old 07-01-2017, 04:39 PM   #33
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I'm just wondering where this leaves us with DX and especially IQ. What's the remaining role for those attributes?
I already have the rules for this done. I should get a post up with them fairly soon.
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Old 07-01-2017, 06:14 PM   #34
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Ok, that's one approach.

Starting skills at 8 seems like a good idea. I'm a little worried about how deep that makes some skill holes. its costs 16 points to have an 11 with a sword. I'd probably be tempted to either skip a melee weapon entirely or to go all out.

Your skill list is missing guns.

Do you know how this changes effective point values? I'm assuming it generally requires more points to play the same concept...
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Old 07-01-2017, 06:49 PM   #35
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its costs 16 points to have an 11 with a sword.
It costs twelve points, actually. Four points raises the skill to 9, then four more points raises the skill to 10, then four more raises it to 11, for a total of twelve points.

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I'd probably be tempted to either skip a melee weapon entirely or to go all out.
I am concerned that I am creating that incentive. I originally had a more complex pricing scheme where different skills levels cost different amount. Under that scheme, going from skill 8 to skill 9 cost less than going from skill 10 to skill 11. It proved much too complicated, however.

If this is a serious enough problem, it could be worth looking for solutions. I don't know what the simplest option would be. Perhaps the first level in a skill could always cost one point. It adds complexity to the rules and slightly favors the better skills.

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Your skill list is missing guns.
Don't usually see those in medieval fantasy. There would be a different list, with different prices, for various types of games. The example I present is meant to approximate that sort of fantasy game that doesn't have firearms, so I left the skill out. If someone wanted to introduce them into the setting, it would be as simple as giving the skill a price. The very primitive firearms you see in the medieval world would likely merit no more than a cost of two points per level to use. They're decidedly worse than most other options outside the battlefield.

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Do you know how this changes effective point values? I'm assuming it generally requires more points to play the same concept...
I did some character price comparisons to look at that. They're about the same. It varies a lot based on the type of character. Characters that previously purchased high attributes and then had lots of different skills at high levels will now cost more points to build, but characters that focused on only a few skills will now cost much less.

My inclination is to leave the character point totals the same. A hundred point character can still be the world's best swordsman and still have plenty of points left over. And that's the best skill in most games where you'd want it. You could easily take plenty of the other, cheaper, skills at a high level.
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Old 07-01-2017, 10:22 PM   #36
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GURPS House Rules: Attributes Without Skills
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Old 01-15-2019, 01:10 PM   #37
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GURPS House Rule: Limited Use
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Old 01-16-2019, 01:36 PM   #38
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Took a bit of a break, but I'm back now.

GURPS House Rule: Skill Pricing
I asked this on your blog, but we can also bring the discussion here if you want:

What about Techniques? You're rather pricing them even more out of favor by reducing skill costs below 4 per level.
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Old 01-16-2019, 03:48 PM   #39
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What about Techniques? You're rather pricing them even more out of favor by reducing skill costs below 4 per level.
There are plenty of ways to handle that. I'm inclined to treat techniques as limited versions of the skill. That would be a way to do it.

Or you could just divide the cost of the techniques by the reduction that has been applied to the skill price in my pricing system. If a skill costs half as much as it did under the RAW (2/level instead of 4/level), then you can now charge half as much per level of the technique.

The only real issue I see here is one of point granularity. If you want to buy a technique of a skill that costs 1/level, then maybe that technique should cost a quarter of a point per level, and we don't have quarter-points. If you're willing to go that far, I wouldn't necessarily be opposed.

There are plenty of different ways to do this that seem reasonable. I would just pick which one you like the most and try it out.

My perfect world pie-in-the-sky solution would be to multiply all the trait costs by ten, so we would have the granularity to do things like apply modifiers to traits that now cost only a single character point. But even I am reluctant to go that far. I'd have to have players extremely devoted to messing around with the rules to try that out.
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Old 01-30-2019, 02:56 AM   #40
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GURPS House Rule: New Advantage - Bestow

This is one I've been working on for a while. If you've been in the IRC channel or the Discord, you've probably seen me talk about this one at some point in the past few years. But since the topic came up here on the forums recently, I thought I would post it here as well.
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