GURPS Power-Ups 7: Wildcard Skills

[Refplace]

Originally Posted by dataweaver

• Styles! aren’t just for fighting. There’s the recent Pyramid article that defined Social Engineering Styles; and there’s a whole book of Magical Styles that could provide a different way to handle different flavors of magicians other than Colleges! Of special note is that Magical Styles often reorganize the prerequisite tree, changing what default penalty a given spell might have based on which Magical Style! you base it off of.

Yeah the Social Styles thing jumped out at me too. Especially with the Perk and Cultural familiarity benefit.
Hadnt thought about Magical Styles yet but your right its an obvious one.

• Basing Wildcard skills off of Talents or Talent-like Advantages: in 3e, Will was a Talent-like Advantage; in 4e, it’s (effectively) an Attribute. Likewise, I could see treating Talents and Talent-like Advantages as alternate bases for Wildcard Skills: that is, instead of having an IQ-based Wildcard Skill, you might base it on (10+Charisma) or (10+Voice) in situations where Charisma or Voice is a more appropriate factor to consider than IQ is.

Hmm Voice, now I'm thinking of a social or musical style with Kaia and Penetrating Voice...
The idea of the base 10 also works for some peoples desire to separate Magic from IQ.

• Template Wildcards and Template Building Blocks: love ’em! That said, I wonder about the feasibility of splitting the potential uses (e.g., component skills) of such a Wildcard Skill into two parts, Primary and Secondary, and applying, say, a -2 penalty to all secondary uses. The idea is similar to the “Average is Average” option, except that you’re assigning a modifier based on how central or peripheral the skill is to the Wildcard’s concept rather than on how difficult the skill is to learn.

Interesting idea. Could add complexity but something similar is already mentioned under Conditional I think. Deliberately building a Wildcard for it is something that I can see, though probably wont do.
Another thing I like is basically the catalog thing but the difference between this issue and say Perks or Talents is we have additional rules other then Basic, not just new Wildcards. Wildcard powers for example is listed here which I liked. This book really has plenty of crunch and ways to make Wildcards fit a variety of roles.

[Hero of Canton]

Started using this in my GURPS 4e Space: 1879 campaign this weekend and my players loved it! (It is a mix of GURPS Castle Falkenstein, GURPS Deadlands, and Space: 1889.)

One of my players is running a Huckster and is interested in developing the custom wildcard skill Huckster! built along the lines of Wizard! Any ideas as to what should be included? Gambling? Occultism: Demonology? Sleight of Hand?
Innate Attack? Cryptography?

Hero of Canton

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Hero of Canton

... developing the custom wildcard skill Huckster! built along the lines of Wizard! Any ideas as to what should be included? Gambling? Occultism: Demonology? Sleight of Hand?
Innate Attack? Cryptography?

Fast-Talk, Merchant, Law (local, for getting away with things), Acting (long-term cons), Gambling, Sleight of Hand, and Scrounging (for coming up with things to sell) look like a good start. After that, are you assuming hucksters have supernatural abilities?

[Christopher R. Rice]

Originally Posted by Hero of Canton

Started using this in my GURPS 4e Space: 1879 campaign this weekend and my players loved it! (It is a mix of GURPS Castle Falkenstein, GURPS Deadlands, and Space: 1889.)

One of my players is running a Huckster and is interested in developing the custom wildcard skill Huckster! built along the lines of Wizard! Any ideas as to what should be included? Gambling? Occultism: Demonology? Sleight of Hand?
Innate Attack? Cryptography?

Hero of Canton

Originally Posted by johndallman

Fast-Talk, Merchant, Law (local, for getting away with things), Acting (long-term cons), Gambling, Sleight of Hand, and Scrounging (for coming up with things to sell) look like a good start. After that, are you assuming hucksters have supernatural abilities?

I'd probably toss Filch, Pick Pocket, Detect Lies, Body Language, Smuggling, and maybe Streetwise in there too.

[Hero of Canton]

Originally Posted by johndallman

Fast-Talk, Merchant, Law (local, for getting away with things), Acting (long-term cons), Gambling, Sleight of Hand, and Scrounging (for coming up with things to sell) look like a good start. After that, are you assuming hucksters have supernatural abilities?

Up to a point. Hucksters (Hoyle excepted) do not strike me as serious practitioners of the art and craft of Magick, but rather as opportunists willing to risk their souls in order to wield a form of Magick that is very-high-risk/very-high-reward. I have Hucksters make a Fright Check before casting a "Hex" and a Fright Check+2 before casting a "Trick" to reflect how "out there" their Magick is.

Hero of Canton

[Hero of Canton]

Originally Posted by Ghostdancer

I'd probably toss Filch, Pick Pocket, Detect Lies, Body Language, Smuggling, and maybe Streetwise in there too.

Good ideas. Thanks.

HoC