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Old 03-07-2019, 07:58 PM   #1
AlexanderHowl
 
Join Date: Feb 2016
Default High Skill Levels

So, one of the things that you can do in GURPS is reduced the time required to do task by up to 90% in realistic campaigns (admittedly at a -9 to skill [-7 if you have the Efficient Perk for the skill]). Now, this does not mean that characters can violate physics or anything, a car cannot be made to go 10x its maximum speed, but it does allow you to turn a 10 day task into a 1 day task. In essence, higher skilled characters should be able to earn up to 10x as much as lower skilled characters by taking the same amount of time.

For example, let us say that you have a character with DX 12, IQ 12, Goodwife 4, High Manual Dexterity 4, Efficient (Sewing), and Sewing/TL3-24. The character could easily reduce their time to complete a project in 10% the normal time. How would you reflect that? Would you allow them to take Wealth (Wealthy) instead of Wealth (Struggling), and increase their earnings proportionally, to reflect their great skill and production? Or would you keep them at Wealth (Struggling) but allow them to do a week's worth of work in half a day?
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Old 03-07-2019, 08:27 PM   #2
Racer
 
Join Date: Jan 2006
Location: London, UK
Default Re: High Skill Levels

I'm reminded of a fictional example in The Three Musketeers :
To replace Queen Anne's two stolen Diamond Studs , the Duke of Buckingham seeks out a renowned jeweller . Asking how long to replace the two with identical ones to the rest of the set , the craftsman replies next week . The Duke sets twenty times (or similar) the normal fee upfront in Gold on the man's workbench and asks him how fast now ? Jeweller calls to his assistant " Call my wife & tell her to bring food & drink - we'll be at work all night ! Tomorrow afternoon do you Sir ? " . It's an extremely long time since I read it & different adaptations word it differently - I'm probably wildly paraphrasing here - but you get the idea .
Parker from Thunderbirds open the Bank of England's Vault in 3 minutes , with a hairpin or Star Trek's Scotty fixing something in 4 fours instead of 2 days ( even taking his normal quadrupling of time taken into account ) spring to mind to .

[EDIT] Found it : Chapter 21. The Countess de Winter

...

He was lost in these reflections when the goldsmith entered. He was an Irishman--one of the most skillful of his craft, and who himself confessed that he gained a hundred thousand livres a year by the Duke of Buckingham.

"Mr. O'Reilly," said the duke, leading him into the chapel, "look at these diamond studs, and tell me what they are worth apiece."

The goldsmith cast a glance at the elegant manner in which they were set, calculated, one with another, what the diamonds were worth, and without hesitation said, "Fifteen hundred pistoles each, my Lord."

"How many days would it require to make two studs exactly like them? You see there are two wanting."

"Eight days, my Lord."

"I will give you three thousand pistoles apiece if I can have them by the day after tomorrow."

"My Lord, they shall be yours."

"You are a jewel of a man, Mr. O'Reilly; but that is not all. These studs cannot be trusted to anybody; it must be done in the palace."

"Impossible, my Lord! There is no one but myself can so execute them that one cannot tell the new from the old."

"Therefore, my dear Mr. O'Reilly, you are my prisoner. And if you wish ever to leave my palace, you cannot; so make the best of it. Name to me such of your workmen as you need, and point out the tools they must bring."

...

A Master Craftsman can be worth more than any Gold .
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Last edited by Racer; 03-08-2019 at 06:07 AM.
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Old 03-08-2019, 12:04 AM   #3
Maz
 
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Default Re: High Skill Levels

Quote:
Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl View Post
For example, let us say that you have a character with DX 12, IQ 12, Goodwife 4, High Manual Dexterity 4, Efficient (Sewing), and Sewing/TL3-24. The character could easily reduce their time to complete a project in 10% the normal time. How would you reflect that? Would you allow them to take Wealth (Wealthy) instead of Wealth (Struggling), and increase their earnings proportionally, to reflect their great skill and production? Or would you keep them at Wealth (Struggling) but allow them to do a week's worth of work in half a day?
With such high stats and so much talent and enough dedication to pour so many points into a skill, this person wouldn't (or at least shouldn't) do the same basic production as a more average tailor. They would be the person kings and popes would hire.
And so it makes sense to give them a higher wealth.
If they insist on doing normal labour then i would use the job-rules where you get paid based on how well you make your job-roll. Then higher skill=more production=more pay.
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Old 03-08-2019, 07:51 AM   #4
ericthered
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Default Re: High Skill Levels

If I see a character capable of making large amounts of money via daily labor, I generally ask the player to either put wealth on the sheet, or to add an explanation (often disadvantage level) as for why they won't quickly gain that wealth.

I'm also fond of telling players that wealth, status, and rank are free, but assigned by the GM in accordance with character concept and abilities.
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Old 03-08-2019, 08:52 AM   #5
Apollonian
 
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Location: Shoreline, WA (north of Seattle)
Default Re: High Skill Levels

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Originally Posted by ericthered View Post
I'm also fond of telling players that wealth, status, and rank are free, but assigned by the GM in accordance with character concept and abilities.
I like that. Consider it adopted.
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Old 03-08-2019, 09:34 AM   #6
whswhs
 
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
Default Re: High Skill Levels

I don't run campaigns with characters who have skill-24. Oh, in principal, such a character might exist in the background of the world somewhere. But there would be no more than a handful, and PCs wouldn't be likely to run into them. And most of my campaigns don't allow high enough point budgets for PCs to BE them. (The one that did had PCs who put a lot of points into superpowers instead.)

But if such a character existed, I would figure that they were a unique genius and were working on projects of their own. They might be Leonardo, painting La Gioconda and designing war machines. Or Shakespeare, writing plays for the Mermaid. Or John von Neumann, up to his eyebrows in higher mathematics and war research. Or if they were seamsters, they'd be making dresses for royalty or billionaires. They wouldn't get their money from high volume of output, but from unusual projects; and they wouldn't be primarily motivated by money, unless their skill-24 were in Finance or Merchant or something, so they wouldn't have extraordinary wealth, though they'd almost surely be well off.
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Old 03-08-2019, 09:39 AM   #7
Stormcrow
 
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Ronkonkoma, NY
Default Re: High Skill Levels

Quote:
Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl View Post
For example, let us say that you have a character with DX 12, IQ 12, Goodwife 4, High Manual Dexterity 4, Efficient (Sewing), and Sewing/TL3-24. The character could easily reduce their time to complete a project in 10% the normal time. How would you reflect that? Would you allow them to take Wealth (Wealthy) instead of Wealth (Struggling), and increase their earnings proportionally, to reflect their great skill and production? Or would you keep them at Wealth (Struggling) but allow them to do a week's worth of work in half a day?
What makes sense for your campaign? That's the only answer.

GURPS is set up to let you decide what makes sense for a character. You have control of the details. If a super-tailor living in poverty makes sense for your campaign, then you can do that. If all super-tailors in your campaign live with Wealth, then the GM can require that of them. Don't ask the GURPS rules to make these decisions for you, because they won't.
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Old 03-08-2019, 10:15 AM   #8
Black Leviathan
 
Join Date: Sep 2018
Default Re: High Skill Levels

You can't bring a pot to a boil faster by watching it closer. Ultimately there are some limitations that can't be overcome by skill. You could multi-task to create very large batches of goods in drastically shorter time, but no amount of skill is going to let you boil a minute egg in 20 seconds. I'd say realistically unless a task involves a planning and organizing process the time-reduction should be capped at Level 21 or so. Above that and you can just work down penalties for poor tools or very large batches.
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Old 03-08-2019, 11:05 AM   #9
Andreas
 
Join Date: Mar 2014
Default Re: High Skill Levels

The time spent reduction rules are simple, but that comes at the expense of not making much sense in many situations even for tasks which could plausibly be done very fast.

There is a -5 penalty to do things twice as fast, but if you again want to halve the time taken, the penalty increase gets much less, until it is only -1 to go from -80% to -90%. It would probably make more sense for it to be the other way around, since you have likely already used all easy efficiency increases when you are at -80% time, so further decreases would be very difficult.
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Old 03-08-2019, 11:37 AM   #10
newton
 
Join Date: Oct 2018
Default Re: High Skill Levels

Quote:
Originally Posted by Black Leviathan View Post
You can't bring a pot to a boil faster by watching it closer. Ultimately there are some limitations that can't be overcome by skill. You could multi-task to create very large batches of goods in drastically shorter time, but no amount of skill is going to let you boil a minute egg in 20 seconds. I'd say realistically unless a task involves a planning and organizing process the time-reduction should be capped at Level 21 or so. Above that and you can just work down penalties for poor tools or very large batches.
i think even that depends on a campaign. it’s possible in some campaigns there’s a secret instant pot boiling technique passed down to only the most elite soup makers.
edit: i now see this is for realistic campaigns
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