07-05-2018, 12:18 AM | #41 |
Join Date: Aug 2004
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Re: Making Skills Matter More
In terms of Techniques, I think it very significant that they were originally conceived within the context of Styles. I don't think much would break if you said something like “for every 4 points you spend in a Style's primary skills, you get one free point to spend on the Style's Techniques”. This would simultaneously make both skills and techniques matter more — within the context of Styles, at least.
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07-05-2018, 12:33 AM | #42 | ||
Join Date: Aug 2004
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Re: Making Skills Matter More
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Talents would be another thing to look at, even if no points end up being spent on the Talents themselves: what's important is which skills are grouped together. In fact, I would not count points in a Talent when determining how many “Competence Points” to award each session. Last edited by dataweaver; 07-05-2018 at 12:36 AM. |
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07-05-2018, 12:48 AM | #43 |
Join Date: Feb 2016
Location: Melbourne, Australia (also known as zone Brisbane)
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Re: Making Skills Matter More
What I don't understand is why it matters if a player spends lots of points on attributes and not much on skills. Where is the harm in players optimising a little?
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07-05-2018, 01:09 AM | #44 |
Join Date: Aug 2004
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Re: Making Skills Matter More
One of my main gripes with point accounting systems is that it skews the results away from “what fits my concept” and toward “what's point-efficient”. In this case, the tendency is to skew toward character concepts with abnormally large amounts of innate potential (be it attributes like IQ or DX or advantages like Talents) over characters with abnormally large amounts of training. It just isn't point efficient to say “I'm not unusually smart or agile, not do I have any remarkable talents; I got to where I am through years of dedication and hard work.”
That's why the relative costs of skills vs. Talents and Attributes can be problematic. |
07-05-2018, 03:18 AM | #45 | |
Banned
Join Date: Jul 2006
Location: 100 hurricane swamp
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Re: Making Skills Matter More
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That's what prompted my initial decisions to temper Attributes, I had 'high IQ engineers and scientists' that were also socialites... when that wasn't their niche. Because when you can default to any (mental) skill and have that default be 15+, or worse, drop a single point in a skill and hit 18 or higher it sorely begins to undermine the social Character. |
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07-05-2018, 04:46 AM | #46 | |
Join Date: Jun 2017
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Re: Making Skills Matter More
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07-05-2018, 05:27 AM | #47 | |
Join Date: Feb 2016
Location: Melbourne, Australia (also known as zone Brisbane)
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Re: Making Skills Matter More
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I think the opposite. People often want to play the classic hero who starts unskilled and naive about the world but has stacks of potential and is destined to greatness. It is great that GURPS facilitates this so well.
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The stick you just can't throw away. |
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07-05-2018, 05:33 AM | #48 |
Join Date: Jun 2017
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Re: Making Skills Matter More
In that case, though, there might still be an arguement that while they can start out with high attributes and low skills the concept probably calls for raising skills rather than attributes. And part of the problem is others are saying the system doesn't push this well.
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07-05-2018, 06:31 AM | #49 | |
Join Date: Feb 2016
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Re: Making Skills Matter More
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Right now, a character who spends 60% of their point total on attributes and 20% of their point total on skills will almost always outperform a character who spends 60% of their point total on skills and 20% of their point total on attributes if both characters share the same theme. A 200 CP character with DX 16 and 40 CP of skills will be a much better overall character than one with DX 12 and 120 CP of skills, despite the latter representing decades of experience and training. Now, the latter can specialize to an absurd degree, but specialization is dangerous in GURPS, as the system rewards generalists over specialists. |
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07-05-2018, 06:35 AM | #50 | |
GURPS Line Editor
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Montréal, Québec
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Re: Making Skills Matter More
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Almost everybody raises DX and IQ lots, so "Agile Person" and "Smart Person" cease to be niches . . . or to be precise, they become weak niches defined by having +1 or +2 to DX or IQ relative to a uniformly high "heroic baseline." The strong niches end up being defined by skill profiles: "lots of DX and IQ plus a few points in each of dozens of combat skills" ("Fighter"), "lots of DX and IQ plus a few points in each of dozens of thieving skills" ("Rogue"), "lots of DX and IQ plus a few points in each of dozens of academic skills" ("Sage"), etc. Under those circumstances, niche protection becomes a matter of controlling access to training in new skills – not a question of limiting attribute improvement. A Rogue or Sage who wants to invade the Fighter niche has to find a Master of Defense, get a superior reaction, pay lots of money, and either set aside other plans between adventures or sit out an adventure. A Sage or Fighter who wants to invade the Rogue niche must succeed at a side-quest for the Thieves' Guild and once again invest time and cash. A Fighter or Rogue who wants to invade the Sage niche needs to petition for admission to a university and yet again commit to study and tuition. In practice, this makes crossing niches less attractive, and most people are happy to get by on their decent-enough DX- and IQ-based defaults. The exceptions are niches defined by ST and HT, actually, which are linked weakly if at all to skills. "Strong Person" and "Indestructible Person" are important niches and harder to protect, as it's trivial to justify ST increases and not difficult to explain at least modest HT increases – almost anybody could decide to lift weights, jog, swim, eat better, stay hydrated, cut down on alcohol, etc. Protecting those niches is when to think about tinkering with attribute costs . . . or asking the players to be respectful. I've always done the latter; players have been uniformly civilized about accepting, "Being the party's battering ram or meat shield is so-and-so's job, so I'll respect that and keep my ST and HT at the heroic baseline for this campaign." For reference purposes, I'm the sort of gamer who thinks it's justifiable for anybody in a 150-point action-adventure game to start with 12s across the board. Thus, it isn't as if asking the Rogue or the non-battering-ram Fighter to keep ST at 12-13 is dooming that person to feeble damage output, nor as if requesting that the Sage or non-meat-shield Fighter keep HT at 12-13 is handing out a death sentence. And of course once the designated ST or HT monster is way out at 16+, it isn't so invasive to let the others have a 14 or 15. To a certain extent, such logic applies to all attribute-intensive niches.
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Sean "Dr. Kromm" Punch <kromm@sjgames.com> GURPS Line Editor, Steve Jackson Games My DreamWidth [Just GURPS News] |
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