Waterfowl: Amphibious or Racial Swimming Skill?

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Most modern humans are rather sedentary all things considered, so using our "default" walking isn't really comparable in my opinion.

What suggests that the defaults in GURPS are intended to be those for modern-day Americans with desk jobs? Most of them seem to be intended more to represent people who have some level of physical activity. After all, we're only TL7 and 8; people at TL0-5 got a lot more exercise than we do, as a rule.

[Flyndaran]

I was only responding to Jason Taylor's idea of what counts as default.
I'm sorry for not being clear.

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Most modern humans are rather sedentary all things considered, so using our "default" walking isn't really comparable in my opinion.
I'm a lazy nerd, but have no problem walking all day aside from horrible boredom. I'm too oblivious to safely wear headphones outside.
Our species lack of instinctive swimming is odd for a mammal, but not so much for a primate.

What I mean is, if you could yomp like a Golani, or a Gurkha you would have walking skill. What you have(unless there is something about you I don't know) is called, "being human".

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by ravenfish

I would lean towards amphibious. A duck can, for example, stay on the water indefinitely without risk of tiring out and drowning. Moreover, while a dabbling duck is not overly graceful in the water, my impression is that it isn't much more graceful when walking about on dry land.

A creative solution, of which I may not have considered all the implications, would be to give dabbling ducks Walk on Liquid (refluffed as "Float on Liquid") so they can hang out on the surface all day unimpeded, but need to make swimming rolls like anyone else if they want to dive [EDIT: and suffer the usual non-aquatic penalties to skills while doing so].

Walk on liquid would be the right choice. Ducks aren't good at swimming as such. They're just buoyant.

[Gnomasz]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Walk on liquid would be the right choice. Ducks aren't good at swimming as such. They're just buoyant.

If they're just buoyant, I'd call it a perk at most (like Cannot Float is a quirk). A 0-point feature, if it gives penalties to diving.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by jason taylor

What I mean is, if you could yomp like a Golani, or a Gurkha you would have walking skill. What you have(unless there is something about you I don't know) is called, "being human".

Yes, being able to walk all day is just being human. That's what I was trying to say. I can't run all day, or march many hours carrying 80 lbs like modern soldiers. They have skills.
I've worked off my unfit and fat, but may still qualify just barely for Gurps default human in this regard, nothing special or skilled.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Yes, being able to walk all day is just being human. That's what I was trying to say. I can't run all day, or march many hours carrying 80 lbs like modern soldiers. They have skills.

On the other hand, swimming takes a special effort, and a skill that not everyone has (I learned to swim in my teens, not very well, but the last time I was in a pool I found that I had lost the knack). But a duck or a dolphin can do it from infancy, and a fish doesn't even need to surface for air. Buying certain advantages obviates making certain skill rolls. A fish might still roll vs. Swimming for endurance on long journeys, or vs. Aquabatics to pull off a fancy maneuver such as leaping into the air, but it doesn't need to roll to move about under its own control, or to avoid drowning—and you or I do.

[Flyndaran]

I never learned how to swim. I can doggy paddle from instinct, but that's it.
We're odd for mammals for needing a skill, but Gurps is humancentric for obvious reasons.
Using us as the default, should that mean ducks could walk all day? But adding float on water seems useful, but not so much as how humans can float with minimal training.
For barely competent shapeshifters, I say a perk for that would work. But proper waterfowl should have either racial Swimming or full Amphibious.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

For barely competent shapeshifters, I say a perk for that would work. But proper waterfowl should have either racial Swimming or full Amphibious.

If you want to say that ducks are not very good walkers, one way to do that would be to make them Semi-Aquatic. Though geese, at least, can be alarmingly fast and aggressive.

[Bruno]

Fast in sprints, but they don't have good endurance for a land chase. Stubby little legs and slapping webbed feet at the far end of a long body just aren't efficient for running. Of course if a goose decides its going to tear after you it can always take to the air and whap you in the face with its wings.

Swans are another miserably hostile waterbird that is happy to chase you onto and across land and beat you up. Because they're generally only good at taking flight from water you can outrun one if you flee with determination .

I think swans are more specialized for water, but they're again another "natural in water" animal that's more like "natural on water". Diving ducks and loons and cormorants are good under water as well on top of it, but they're even worse at walking than swans are - the better they are at swimming, the more the legs get moved to the back of the body (like an outboard motor), leaving them very unbalanced on land. The exemplar is a penguin - or a seal; both animals can get around on land, and hangs out on land quite a bit at the right locations and times of year, but both animals really do better in the water.

The other side of things could be an Amphibious creature that's quite at home in the water, but not a really able swimmer - buying your swimming Move back down to 1 or 2 gives you a character that moves freely, but not swiftly.