Talents & Martial Arts

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by Infornific

Personally I think adding in esoteric skills makes it a little over-powered (and I rarely say this about Wildcard skills) but it's a good skill to easily represent "guy who's trained in a wide range of martial arts" while keeping things simple. Don't forget it includes limited Acrobatic and Jumping abilities.

In canon, we already have hard and soft chi to cover those TBAM skills.

[Infornific]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

He's going to want his best combat skills at DX+2 or more. Just one pt in other DX-based skills might well be enough. If that's still too much use Dabbler.

As to why custom Talents are bad it's not so much that they're "bad" as they are _whiny_. "I want a character who's good at a lot of DX-based Skills without having a high DX and I want it to be cheap too! So change the rules until I can get what I want!" irritates me.

There's usually a better, simpler answer elsewhere in the rules.

Talents are in the rules. Technically, we're not talking about custom Talents, we're talking about Talents linked to established Martial Arts styles. And frankly official Talents include some fairly munchkiny examples.

In this case we're talking 5 points for a narrow range of (mostly combat skills) - a focused style. A broad range like knightly combat or such will be more like 10 points. A very broad one will be 15, as much as DX! and about as valuable. Remember, combat skills like a lot of GURPS abilities get less valuable as they become more redundant. So the costs seem fair.

This is not "I want a character whose good at DX based skills without buying DX" - it's "I want a character really good at a particular fighting system without being really good at all other DX related skills." Yes you can build William Marshal using the normal rules but no one would ever build a player character that way.

Realistically, knights and many other warriors trained from an early age. They should have high levels for their combat skills without necessarily a high DX that allows them to become quickly competent at other physical skills. Talents can be a useful game mechanic to represent this. There's plenty of fictional and even real world precedent for people highly competent at just about everything (high DX and IQ.) But there should be a way to build characters with a more narrow focus.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

He's going to want his best combat skills at DX+2 or more. Just one pt in other DX-based skills might well be enough. If that's still too much use Dabbler.

Yes, but why would we use Dabbler to represent a skill that the character canonically has trained in and is adequate at, even when using it Per-based and IQ-based?

Ser Barristan Selmy is described as someone with a gift for swordsmanship (and all other fighting, apparently) and he has trained it for all his life, but he still has other skills. His DX isn't just the basis for his fighting skills, so it makes little sense to artificially inflate it just because they are really high.

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

As to why custom Talents are bad it's not so much that they're "bad" as they are _whiny_. "I want a character who's good at a lot of DX-based Skills without having a high DX and I want it to be cheap too! So change the rules until I can get what I want!" irritates me.

Talents are official and in the rules. Asking for a character that mechanically conforms to the description given does not strike me as 'whiny', it strikes me as what players are supposed to do with the character creation system.

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

There's usually a better, simpler answer elsewhere in the rules.

Only if one is willing to represent someone really good at a given niche with something else than the canonical rules artifact to represent such characters.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Infornific

At a minimum, DX 12 and skills in the 16-18 range. Selmy upon being retired from the King's Guard declares he could cut down all the men facing him if he wanted - boasting but there was a sense he could back it up.

He boasted he could defeat five seasoned knights like carving through a cake. Not only seasoned knights, the other knights of the Kingsguard, which even though standards had fallen down from the time when they truly where the best warriors out of a population of many, many millions, still included only fairly high skill fighters.

Given how GURPS makes it very hard to fight multiple foes, if he could even half-way back that boast up, we're not talking skill 16-18. We're talking enough skill to cut through multiple men with skill 14-16 like carving a cake.

At his best, he was a painter. A painter who only used red. If not using Weapon Master (which is probably unsuitable for games set in G.R.R. Martin's world), he needs skill in the middle-20s.

[The Benj]

Originally Posted by Icelander

He boasted he could defeat five seasoned knights like carving through a cake. Not only seasoned knights, the other knights of the Kingsguard, which even though standards had fallen down from the time when they truly where the best warriors out of a population of many, many millions, still included only fairly high skill fighters.

Given how GURPS makes it very hard to fight multiple foes, if he could even half-way back that boast up, we're not talking skill 16-18. We're talking enough skill to cut through multiple men with skill 14-16 like carving a cake.

At his best, he was a painter. A painter who only used red. If not using Weapon Master (which is probably unsuitable for games set in G.R.R. Martin's world), he needs skill in the middle-20s.

Preferably also in Intimidation, because that's totally what's going on there.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Icelander

Yes, but why would we use Dabbler to represent a skill that the character canonically has trained in and is adequate at, even when using it Per-based and IQ-based?

Why would we use a Talent? Sounds to me like a character who has lots and lots of points in the actual skills.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by malloyd

Why would we use a Talent? Sounds to me like a character who has lots and lots of points in the actual skills.

Sure, he does.

But the marginal utility of raising weapon skill #2, #3, #4, #5, etc. is nowhere near the same as that of the primary weapon skill.

Rather than enforce that all characters have only one high weapon skill, I'd rather have the option of being good at more than one available at a more reasonable character point cost.

The Job Training trait is meant to address a similar concern. One way of modelling a knight like Ser Barristan Selmy is to give him decent Attributes, high Talent for the things that make him remarkable in-universe, Job Training for his job skills and a solid level of skill bought with points as well.

After all, he's presented as far above the elite who are themselves a cut or two above the 'ordinary' knight, which in-setting means a man of superior educational and nutritional opportunities, born and bred to a certain profession and trained since he was five years old.

[Anders]

Originally Posted by Icelander

He boasted he could defeat five seasoned knights like carving through a cake. Not only seasoned knights, the other knights of the Kingsguard, which even though standards had fallen down from the time when they truly where the best warriors out of a population of many, many millions, still included only fairly high skill fighters.

Given how GURPS makes it very hard to fight multiple foes, if he could even half-way back that boast up, we're not talking skill 16-18. We're talking enough skill to cut through multiple men with skill 14-16 like carving a cake.

At his best, he was a painter. A painter who only used red. If not using Weapon Master (which is probably unsuitable for games set in G.R.R. Martin's world), he needs skill in the middle-20s.

Or the man had consumed a little too much "liquid courage".

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Anders

Or the man had consumed a little too much "liquid courage".

He was sober in the scene, both in the books and the show. And he wasn't even trying to intimidate them for any purpose, he just did it to make the point that they weren't fit to fill his shoes, even in his old age.

The character isn't all that boastful. As far as one can judge from the books and show, he really could have posed a serious threat to the other knights of the Kingsguard, even five against one.

A Song of Ice and Fire is usually fairly cynical in tone and a lone hero against several ordinary men generally loses.

The most 'cinematic' aspect of the books is that characters exist which are very competent and many of those are point of view characters.

On the other hand, skill at arms isn't confined to point of view characters and some 'random' sellswords demonstrate what I'd estimate to be skill 18+ in GURPS terms. It's just that for every one that gets to that point, dozens, maybe hundreds, of levies and men-at-arms die of disease, wounds or other dangers of warfare.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Icelander

But the marginal utility of raising weapon skill #2, #3, #4, #5, etc. is nowhere near the same as that of the primary weapon skill.
.

That's why you8 don't do it at all rather than demanding a talent that lets you do it at a major pt discount. These duplicative weapon skills usually aren't worth the space they take up on a character sheet much less the pts you spent on them.