Revisiting Talents for Combat

[Kelly Pedersen]

Originally Posted by aesir23

You misunderstand me, we're making the same point.

Whoops, sorry, you're quite correct. And it wasn't unclear or anything, I just failed a Reading Comprehension roll. :-)

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Polydamas

Also, most martial arts which cover several weapons forms encourage students to see similarities between them. More generous defaults would be good, as would be trimming the list of weapon skills, but I think a “Liechtenauer talent” (Two-Handed Sword, Broadsword, Spear, Polearm, Knife, Brawling, Judo and possibly Buckler and Wrestling) or “Wushu talent” could be balanced. But I bet this was considered and rejected during the Martial Arts playtest.

Talents aren't the only way to skin the cat. Wushu! would be a perfectly legal Wildcard! Skill.

This also has the useful feature of helping to get to the DX+2 threshold for damage boosts for unarmed combat and WM bonuses. Talents don't do this. They count as boosts to Attributes rather than Skill.

Now a Wildcard! at DX +2 might seem expensive but it breaks even with something like Karate, Acrobatics and 3 average weapon skills at the same level.

[Kelly Pedersen]

Originally Posted by Polydamas

I bet this was considered and rejected during the Martial Arts playtest.

I don't know about the playtest, but I proposed a similar idea soon after Martial Arts came out, and the general consensus was that it didn't make much sense, barring Kromm's suggestion of supernatural gifts with a style.

[Not another shrubbery]

Originally Posted by Icelander

But high levels of multiple related skills, especially skills that characters can't really use at the same time, are not balanced in terms of cost with anything else in GURPS.

Hasn't it ever occured to you that the skills might cost too much rather than everything else being off?

It has, but I have not done anything to look into alternative pricing methods. Maybe something like Fudge's system would work better... dunno. Talents just remind me too much of Hero's "Levels", which was another mechanic that I had issues with :p

[Arcanjo7Sagi]

I apologize for resurrecting the thread, but I'm drafting a feat aimed at medieval swordsmen here.

First of all, I saw a similar one posted elsewhere, quoted earlier here:

Originally Posted by Phantasm

Natural Swordsman: Broadsword, Force Saber, Force Sword, Knife, Main-Gauche, Rapier, Saber, Shortsword, Smallsword, Two-Handed Sword. Conditional bonus to Acrobatics when engaged in a sword fight. Reaction Bonus: Swordsmen, swashbucklers, swashbuckler wannabes, sword-fighting movie enthusiasts. 10 points per level.

I was thinking of something along those lines, but limited in scope. I started with something simple: Broadsword, Shortsword, Two-Handed Sword, and Art versions each, making it a simple feat of 5 per level. According to Power Ups 3, three criteria are suggested: limited in scope, that makes sense, and that includes some non-combat skill. I judged that the art versions of each would satisfy the latter criterion. The reaction bonus would probably be with other swordsmen.

Do you think it's valid? It would look more or less like this:

Natural Swordsman
5 points/level

Broadsword, Broadsword Art, Shortsword, Shortsword Art, Two-Handed Sword, Two-Handed Sword Art

Reaction Bonus: Other swordsmen
Alternative Benefit: +1/level to Intimidation somebody is at your mercy and it would be trivial to splatter him using a suitable weapon
Alternative Cost: 6 points/level
Source: The Voices In My Head

What do you guys think?

PS: Editing here to explain: I know there are Knife and other Fencing skills that could fit, but here I was thinking bigger, heavier swords like those covered by these three starting skills. Theoretically, I imagine that I could expand the concept to cover the others, but my idea initially is to be something more restricted and try to make sense with these three

[sir_pudding]

+1/level to what? Intimidation?

Personally I can't really see a talent that adds to cut-and-thrust backswords, but not rapiers, but YMMV.

[Anthony]

Honestly, I'm fine with Talent (melee weapons) [5].

That might be slightly cheap, but the reality is that melee weapon skills have a very large overlap in utility; being good with a bunch of weapons is better than being good with one weapon, but it's not massively better. There's less overlap with ranged weapons, or with grappling, but even there the overlap is non-negligible.

[Mark Skarr]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Honestly, I'm fine with Talent (melee weapons) [5].

That might be slightly cheap, but the reality is that melee weapon skills have a very large overlap in utility; being good with a bunch of weapons is better than being good with one weapon, but it's not massively better. There's less overlap with ranged weapons, or with grappling, but even there the overlap is non-negligible.

I'd probably err at [10] points, as I focus more with supers, and that's a wide spectrum there, but, I can see your point. [5] may be better for non-supers games.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Arcanjo7Sagi

I was thinking of something along those lines, but limited in scope. I started with something simple: Broadsword, Shortsword, Two-Handed Sword, and Art versions each, making it a simple feat of 5 per level.

Note that the sword skills (and sword combat arts if you treat them as skills) all default to each other anyway, so any optimized character who is good at a bunch of them probably has one main one and defaults everything else from it, which means he already improves them all by spending 4 points/level. I'm not convinced one bonus is worth that entire extra point, but adding a larger group of things that don't default (RAW anyway) - say Fast Draw, Acrobatics in a swordfight, Intimidation when you threaten somebody with a sword, Dancing (sword dances), and Connoisseur (fine swords) - to bring it up to 5, seems fine.

[corwyn]

Originally Posted by Rasputin

There is a slight mitigator here: if you were a real ninja, you'd never use the reaction bonus, because no one would ever see you.

Or, at least, no one would know you are a Ninja.