Capping Skill Default Levels

[Tomsdad]

Originally Posted by Sindri

Skills are not utility costed. This is known and can be trivially figured out after examination of the skill list unless your perception of the usefulness of skills in campaigns on average is very unusual.

You using italics don't make you more right. You have to look at the whole context

Yes 40 points spent on broadsword makes you as good at broad sword as 40 points spent on lance makes you as good at lance,

But does 40 points spent on Broadsword gives you more benefit in more skills that 40 points spent on lance, yes/no?

So if yes, what is the overall effect in terms of overall benefit of 40 points spent on broadsword compared to 40 points spent on lance?

So again what are repercussions of this vis a vis the utility cost.
Utility cost meaning the amount of utility you get for a cost in points?

Are there too many melee skills in abstract yes, does the system when taken into a whole give a certain amount of flexibility to reflect that these skills are often pretty interrelated, yes.

If you think these two things balance out, that is a different question. But messing with default system will have an impact on it all and so does ignoring it when it comes to comparing skills.

[Sindri]

Originally Posted by Tomsdad

You using italics don't make you more right. You have to look at the whole context

Yes 40 points spent on broadsword makes you as good at broad sword as 40 points spent on lance makes you as good at lance,

But does 40 points spent on Broadsword gives you more benefit in more skills that 40 points spent on lance, yes/no?

So if yes, what is the overall effect in terms of overall benefit of 40 points spent on broadsword compared to 40 points spent on lance?

So again what are repercussions of this vis a vis the utility cost.
Utility cost meaning the amount of utility you get for a cost in points?

Are there too many melee skills in abstract yes, does the system when taken into a whole give a certain amount of flexibility to reflect that these skills are often pretty interrelated, yes.

If you think these two things balance out, that is a different question. But messing with default system will have an impact on it all and so does ignoring it when it comes to comparing skills.

Not utility cost, utilty costed. As in having had their costs assigned based on their utility rather than, say, their difficulty to learn. GURPS with things like guns skill being easy while things like jewelry are hard attempts the latter rather than the former. There are occasional hints in the skill rules where utility costing appears to have had influence but for the most part it is unlike other kinds of traits like advantages which try to be utility costed (with occasional hints of difficulty costing to their detriment). Accordingly it is prefectly in nature with skills to do whatever one feels is necessary to defaults without doing anything like condensing the skill list.

[Tomsdad]

Originally Posted by Sindri

Not utility cost, utilty costed. ...

Really?

You have fun with this.

Or hell even if you replace cost with costed in my post, you still didn't answer the question(s).

[Sindri]

Originally Posted by Tomsdad

Really?

You have fun with this.

Well I thought there was an important distinction between a trait's efficiency or the amount of utility you get for a cost in points and the philosophy upon which the costs were assigned for the type of trait in question.

[Tomsdad]

Originally Posted by Sindri

Well I thought there was an important distinction between a trait's efficiency or the amount of utility you get for a cost in points and the philosophy upon which the costs were assigned for the type of trait in question.

Not when we're discussing the actually effect in play.

Even philosophically the points I made still stand because just saying philosophically doesn't remove defaults etc from the equation.

Broadsword is more efficient than lance because you get more skills at default, it has more utility for the same reason.

Your points only stand if you ignore the differences in each skill's defaults and there relationship to other skills.

And that's as true in play as philosophically.

In effect in GURPS broadsword is philosophically as difficult to learn as Lance both are DX(avg), but while you learning Broadsword you are also learning other skills to a lesser extent. This is not true of Lance which can only defaulted from one other skill (spear) and itself can't be used to default to any other. I.e someone with spear skill can attempt a couched lance charge using their spear skill, but someone with lance can't attempt to fight with a spear (or at least knowing lance isn't a help).

[Otaku]

For the record, I am still confused over using Techniques for a Skill known at default. I will attempt to explain why one more time, as concisely as I can, because while GURPS isn't a reality simulator, when applicable you are supposed to be able to reality check situations and if the game rules deviate from them, it needs to have a good reason (like reality is less fun or overly complex).

Just going by GURPS Basic Set: Characters, there are some combat Techniques that it is ignoring reality to claim you cannot use at a "double default" and/or are lacking a straight-up DX based Default. Several Techniques are pretty general weapon uses like Feinting; it seems pretty silly to disallow using a Broadsword at default to not Feint... even more so if it isn't the DX default but from another weapon like Shortsword!

There are many more examples but again, keeping it short.

[Sindri]

Originally Posted by Tomsdad

Not when we're discussing the actually effect in play.

Even philosophically the points I made still stand because just saying philosophically doesn't remove defaults etc from the equation.

Broadsword is more efficient than lance because you get more skills at default, it has more utility for the same reason.

Your points only stand if you ignore the differences in each skill's defaults and there relationship to other skills.

And that's as true in play as philosophically.

In effect in GURPS broadsword is philosophically as difficult to learn as Lance both are DX(avg), but while you learning Broadsword you are also learning other skills to a lesser extent. This is not true of Lance which can only defaulted from one other skill (spear) and itself can't be used to default to any other. I.e someone with spear skill can attempt a couched lance charge using their spear skill, but someone with lance can't attempt to fight with a spear (or at least knowing lance isn't a help).

It just doesn't seem that important to me. Yes these are parts of the skill normally but, aside from the lack of tight costing based on usefulness, changing stuff is implicit in house rules. I don't fret about trying to maintain the previous balance of power with any of my other house rules so why should I about this one if it is warranted to be put in place? It's bad if a house rule makes things actually unbalanced but it's not important to perfectly maintain the original balance.

I don't really get how the distinction you are drawing between the actual effect in play and philosophy works in this case either. If a philosophy of costing is bad it should be discarded in which case there will be bigger changes than messing with defaults a bit. If the philosophy is good then changes in tune with it won't be that disruptive.

Originally Posted by Otaku

For the record, I am still confused over using Techniques for a Skill known at default. I will attempt to explain why one more time, as concisely as I can, because while GURPS isn't a reality simulator, when applicable you are supposed to be able to reality check situations and if the game rules deviate from them, it needs to have a good reason (like reality is less fun or overly complex).

Just going by GURPS Basic Set: Characters, there are some combat Techniques that it is ignoring reality to claim you cannot use at a "double default" and/or are lacking a straight-up DX based Default. Several Techniques are pretty general weapon uses like Feinting; it seems pretty silly to disallow using a Broadsword at default to not Feint... even more so if it isn't the DX default but from another weapon like Shortsword!

There are many more examples but again, keeping it short.

The "you can't use techniques without a point in the skill" school includes the note that some things which happen to be techniques are also options that everyone can use.

[Tomsdad]

Originally Posted by Sindri

It just doesn't seem that important to me. Yes these are parts of the skill normally but, aside from the lack of tight costing based on usefulness, changing stuff is implicit in house rules. I don't fret about trying to maintain the previous balance of power with any of my other house rules so why should I about this one if it is warranted to be put in place? It's bad if a house rule makes things actually unbalanced but it's not important to perfectly maintain the original balance.

I don't really get how the distinction you are drawing between the actual effect in play and philosophy works in this case either. If a philosophy of costing is bad it should be discarded in which case there will be bigger changes than messing with defaults a bit. If the philosophy is good then changes in tune with it won't be that disruptive.
.

I'm not talking about weather or not you should change stuff, balance is subjective anyway even if it worth worrying about in the first place.

I'm making the point that you seem to be ignoring the effects that different defaults has on different skills.

When you started about skills not being utility costed, you seemed to be talking about the system as RAW not theoretical changes you might be making.

[DangerousThing]

Originally Posted by Sindri

The "you can't use techniques without a point in the skill" school includes the note that some things which happen to be techniques are also options that everyone can use.

As far as I know it is RAW to *use* techniques with a defaulted skill. But techniques don't seem to be inherited from the prerequisite skill, though I'd

However, unless you have at least a point in the skill, you cannot improve the technique. BA 229.

For example, if you have Brawling as a learned skill, then you could perhaps improve the technique "Kicking" which is at a -2 normally. Kicking is a Hard technique with a maximum equal to the Brawling skill level in this case.

Though if you want to improve a lot of techniques, it's usually more efficient to improve the prerequisite skill.

If the technique requires TbaM or WM then you must have one of those advantages.

Does this make sense?

[pfharlock]

Originally Posted by Otaku

For the record, I am still confused over using Techniques for a Skill known at default. I will attempt to explain why one more time, as concisely as I can, because while GURPS isn't a reality simulator, when applicable you are supposed to be able to reality check situations and if the game rules deviate from them, it needs to have a good reason (like reality is less fun or overly complex).

Just going by GURPS Basic Set: Characters, there are some combat Techniques that it is ignoring reality to claim you cannot use at a "double default" and/or are lacking a straight-up DX based Default. Several Techniques are pretty general weapon uses like Feinting; it seems pretty silly to disallow using a Broadsword at default to not Feint... even more so if it isn't the DX default but from another weapon like Shortsword!

There are many more examples but again, keeping it short.

What I'm about to say is no kind of answer because I realize this is a conversation about rules, buttttt...

At some point common sense has to rule out. If a technique very clearly is something anyone who knew the skill could do, then as a GM I would likely allow it, on the other hand, if the technique in question were something highly specialized that would need special training or preparation to pull off, well maybe in that case I wouldn't allow it unless you had specifically trained the skill.

The default rule of not allowing techniques unless you have a point in the skill seems reasonable enough to me.

There is no rule system that can cover all of reality because reality is more nuanced and multi-faceted than a fixed rule system can ever be. At some point you just have to apply common sense.

Honestly I wouldn't even want to play a rule system that modeled everything (reality) perfectly, there would be so many exceptions for edge cases I'd never be able to remember the rules. A simplistic rule system that covers 80-90% of reality is good enough for me, I can use common sense for the rest.