Improved Melee Defaults for Skilled Combatants

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by JulianLW

And, as I said, creating a Talent or saying that higher Attributes is the solution doesn't solve the problem with this character. It simply adds more costs to making him realistic. But training in one Melee Skill should logically give some improvement to other, untrained skills.

Note that there is absolutely nothing wrong with making it very expensive for a character to be realistic. Imposing a hard cap of Attribute +n on all melee weapon skills and requiring anybody who wants to improve beyond that to buy up DX instead of the skill does solve the problem as stated. With the DX-5 defaults, nobody is more than 5+n levels better with one melee weapon than any other, adjust n to taste for how big a difference you think it reasonable, and it comes with the added bonus that anybody with amazing weapon skills will also have at least enough DX to have a decent Dodge score. Yes it does make being really good with a melee weapon cost a bunch of points, but since it automatically comes with being pretty good with all of them, if the costs were initially fair, this should still be, right?

Though if I thought this was the way to go I'd probably allow a 10 point Melee Weapon Talent to be bought up instead of DX.

A similar approach that meshes with existing rules is to treat individual melee weapon skills as the analog of spells and a general Melee Weapons skill as the wildcard skill or base (core or college) skill in a Wildcard or Ritual Magic analog.

A third approach, and the one I'd go with myself, is to just case by case rule that nobody is *allowed* to be that incredibly specialized. That is you tell the PC submitting this character that it just isn't possible to spend 30 or 40 points on one combat skill without having to have picked up the basics in anything else, shave 4 or 8 points off that highest skill or 1 point off of DX and buy 2 or 4 or 10 other melee weapon skills up to DX level.

Since any melee weapon at DX is probably good enough to pass for reasonably proficient by "default" no matter how amazing your master skill is, especially as it such an amazing master would basically never have a DX to start with, requiring sufficiently skilled characters to drop 2 points in a handful of other common melee skills before they can spend more points on the master one really does give you almost all the realistic effect for basically zero rules changes. It just becomes part of vetting character proposals for realism in the same way you'd reject a character with Broadsword-30 [102] and DX 5 [-100]. It's not the *job* of the rules to enforce realistic character builds, after all

And in any case skill to skill defaults are so broken I personally would prefer to remove them from the game altogether. Trying to expand them into something even more complex that will inevitably be even more broken doesn't strike me as a worthwhile approach. If you want all melee fighters to have a "realistic" degree of breadth, just require it in the build rather than trying to force it with a rule change. I suppose it's much the same issue as with why I dislike Perk Limits as a rules rather than exercises in GM judgement. You're going to end up with a bunch of extra calculations and restrictions that will probably still allow unrealistic builds (or maybe worse forbid perfectly reasonable ones), just different ones you hadn't though of when imposing the rule, and now the munchkins can point to "but I followed the rule exactly" to if you try to say no.

[Donny Brook]

Originally Posted by JulianLW

Again, the character I'm proposing: DX 12, Two-Handed Sword at 15, Spear at default of 7 - is not only realistic in GURPS terms but likely extremely common. This character wins competitions with a Two-Handed Sword but has real difficulty poking the side of a barn with a spear.

Give this guy a quarterstaff and he'll hold it in the 2HS grip and whale on three mooks at a time. But give him a spear and he's liable to drop it if he tries anything except a straight poke at the torso - which he's almost certain to miss.

You don't see the problem there?

He could hit the side of a barn very easily (SM modifier, routine use modifier). What you're complaining about is that he can't hit a mobile, threatening opponent with a weapon he has no training with. So really, no, I don't see the problem.

[JulianLW]

Look at the Swashbuckler build in DF. The standard template can give Broadsword 20 and Spear at default 10. That doesn't seem logical to me at all. And that's as standard a build as you can get. I get that it's a fantasy genre, but this is a guy who is, according to the GURPS rules, one of the "best in the world" at skill 20. But he's going to get beat up by a teenager if you give him a spear. I'm not proposing unusual or "unrealistic" GURPS builds here. Those 20 points in Broadsword - or whatever - should count somehow when you pick up a spear.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by malloyd

Note that there is absolutely nothing wrong with making it very expensive for a character to be realistic.

So long as you're fine disincentivizing the creation of a realistic character, sure.

Originally Posted by JulianLW

Look at the Swashbuckler build in DF.

To be fair, DF is pretty far afield when it comes to realism, and unrealistic hyperspecialization can be very much in-genre there. I do agree with the sentiment, however - a character who is an unstoppable force with a sword, but largely useless in any other form of combat, seems more appropriate for an over-the-top silly campaign.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by JulianLW

Again, the character I'm proposing: DX 12, Two-Handed Sword at 15, Spear at default of 7 - is not only realistic in GURPS terms but likely extremely common. This character wins competitions with a Two-Handed Sword but has real difficulty poking the side of a barn with a spear.

It looks to me that the problem you are having isn't about skill to skill defaults, it's one of the DX defaults being too low for what you consider realistic. If this guy had Two Handed Sword-12 [2], he'd still be a decently competent graduate of his initial sword training with difficulty poking the side of a barn with a spear, which *still* doesn't seem reasonable. And it wouldn't be helped even if you let all melee skills default to each other at -5; he'd *still* be a competent sword academy graduate with Spear-7 default.

It's not the high skill case that's giving you the disconnect here, it's that defaults from reasonable levels of attributes or even skills are almost worthless. You may be trying to address the wrong end of the problem here. You can't really fix this with extra defaults or changing the penalties without breaking defaults at the other end of the attribute/skill spectrum (which even now end up needing fixes like the Rule of 20). There's a reason I consider the entire default system to be one of GURPS bigger mistakes. The current best RAW fix is probably the Dabbler perk. You might want to consider requiring a point or two of the first few points anybody puts into combat skills go into melee weapon Dabbler perks.

One or two points of instantly reconfigurable Modular Ability limited to the range of skills somebody is supposed to be good in is also workable. I use it occasionally for Jack of All Trades type builds, 10 or 20 points to have a huge range of skills at effectively DX or IQ with a second to switch actually feels like a pretty satisfying model for I'm good enough to figure this stuff out well enough to be moderately competent but haven't practiced any of it so much I can do it *reflexively*, I do have to think about it.

[JulianLW]

I actually don't think the weapon defaults, as is, are very problematic. I myself probably have a Spear default of 6. That sounds about right to me. The only way I'm going to hit anything about half the time is with a telegraphic attack. I think a default of 7 in Spear is fine. For a guy like me with no weapon training at all. But for the guy who is competing for world champion with the zweihander?

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Varyon

So long as you're fine disincentivizing the creation of a realistic character, sure.

This is a choice of zero value judgment. I can equally well call that charging a fair price for a realistic character. Nothing says being fantastic at combat should be cheap in reality. Expert fighters work pretty hard to get as good as they are, so it's perfectly defensible to argue that rules that don't force them to make them unrealistically cheap.

It's actually a long-standing difficulty in point build systems. "Johnny One-Spell" is an old problem in Hero/GURPS/Ars Magica. This is arguably just a milder form of a similar issue.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by malloyd

This is a choice of zero value judgment. I can equally well call that charging a fair price for a realistic character. Nothing says being fantastic at combat should be cheap in reality. Expert fighters work pretty hard to get as good as they are, so it's perfectly defensible to argue that rules that don't force them to make them unrealistically cheap.

If that's the case, it's similarly unrealistically cheap to be an expert biologist, physicist, chemist, surgeon, etc. You ultimately need to make a decision - are you happy with the skill system as-is (where being an expert combatant who isn't hyperspecialized is much more expensive than being an expert in many other fields), would you like to revamp the bulk of the skill system (to make being an expert at anything expensive, via a combination of branching out over-broad skills and enforcing minimum levels in related skills to reach a given level in one), or would you like to revamp combat skills to be a bit more broad. I think any of the approaches is valid, although the middle one requires a lot more work than the other two.

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by JulianLW

Thanks for the input, Eric. I've read quite a lot of your blog, so I respect your opinion on GURPS rules.

Thank you for the kind words.

How do you respond to the counterpoint that this solution ends up creating a 4/level talent for all Melee Skills?

I actually don't mind it that much.



"Talent by Default" doesn't create a situation quite analogous to actual talents. Because the base default is so low, A player has to sink a fair number of points into a combat skill before any other combat skills sees any returns in anything but the default scenario. This might be because I've never run games where multiple characters had multiple combat skills at 20 or higher, but in the 10-20 skill range, -5 default is a huge hindrance to making that sort of default meaningful as a cost saver.



Now, I've had players try to stick Physician at 23 and have a usable surgery, pharmacy, and so forth off of it, but that's a different situation, because surgery does something different than Physician. Spear just damages people a different way than a sword. The range of available outcomes is much more similar than something like surgery and physician.



Of course, my view on this is skewed, because I think that a 5 point talent just for melee combat (not ranged combat, grappling, and possibly not unarmed combat at all) is just fine.

[Donny Brook]

It seems to me that part of the issue here is defining weapons skills as if they produce a to-hit target roll in isolation. But there is more to weapons skill use. It includes not just a standing target number to hit; it incorporates the footwork, timing, distance, leverage, and situational awareness that all tie together to produce that target number in the context of a deadly confrontation. All of which are different with different weapons.

On the other hand, with the foregoing in mind, I do think that resistance to Feints or similar combat awareness tests should be based on your highest weapon skill.