Skills, skills everywhere

[Anders]

Originally Posted by Trigonomicon

Hello sjg GURPS-forum. My username is Trigonomicon, and I'm a skill hoarder.
To be exact, I have problems choosing which skills to take, what skills are important, etc. I once made an airship mechanic with more skills than you can fit on a standard Character sheet. Recently, I tried building a questing knight and ended up with 30 skills, which feels rather excessive. Looking at the character templates available in Basic and Fantasy, few characters seems to have more than eight.

How many skills do your characters usually have, and how do you choose which to take?

My advice is that you build characters you want to play, and characters that don't clash too violently with the rest of the group and don't worry about the exact composition of said characters. Ultimately, the game is about having fun and following exact pre-planned recipes are rarely a way to fun.

[D10]

I dont think 30 skills is excessive, its all about what makes sense.

Last time I made a character that had less than 30 different skills was a viking warrior and he almost hit 30.

I guess this is probably because of the abolisment of the 1/2 point in 4e, making taking a skill a much more serious investment of ones character

[Captain Joy]

Originally Posted by Trigonomicon

I once made an airship mechanic with more skills than you can fit on a standard Character sheet.

Not unusual.

Originally Posted by Trigonomicon

Recently, I tried building a questing knight and ended up with 30 skills, which feels rather excessive.

It isn't.

Originally Posted by Trigonomicon

How many skills do your characters usually have, and how do you choose which to take?

Given 100-200 point characters, I usually have around 50+ skills. I general spend about 1/2 of my character point total on attributes, 1/2 on skills, and as many advantages points as disadvantage points. To help keep me from missing anything obvious, I make sure I look over relevant templates, lenses, and GURPS Skill Categories. I also read up on my advantages and disadvantages and pick skills that compliment them.

[JP42]

I'm definitely a skill-o-holic as well, and probably come in around 40 skills as a baseline, often supplemented with a level of Dabbler for some fractional skill goodness to go along with it.

[Vynticator]

The freedom to add a plethora of skills for all the reasons suggested above is one of the best things about GURPS. Getting away from the confines of class and level restrictions allows a much richer characterisation process. Go with it!

[Sunrunners_Fire]

Originally Posted by Trigonomicon

How many skills do your characters usually have,

My player's characters have a few dozen skills, usually; even when I'm allowing Wildcard skills in that campaign.

I encourage them to spend about two-thirds of their points in attributes and advantages, with the remaining one-third in perks and skills. (... in campaigns that have point budgets anywise.)

Originally Posted by Trigonomicon

and how do you choose which to take?

I give them a list of skills I expect everyone to be professionally competent at. They determine which skills their character needs to fulfill their core competencies, take those up to the campaign's suggested skill level and then spend the rest on fluff and background skills.

[Figleaf23]

Starting skill list from a junior early-medieval noble (150pts):

Area Know. (Welsh march)
Bow
Brawling
Broadsword
Diplomacy
Disguise
Fast-draw (sword)
Hidden Lore: Family history
Leadership
Knife
Naturalist
Riding: Equine
Savoir-faire
Shield
Spear
Stealth
Streetwise
Survival (Forests)
Tactics
Tracking
Hiking
Teaching
Knife Throwing
Scrounging
Strategy (Cavalry)
Animal Handling (Equine)
Observation
Intimidation


Starting skill list from a Traveller adventure face-man (200pts):

Acting
Performance
Disguise
Prof.skill (Vid production)
Merchant
Mimic (speech)
Savoir Faire
Body Language
Carousing
Area Kn.(Sylean Federation)
Observation
Diplomacy
Leadership
Propaganda
Dancing
Singing
Beam Weapon (Pistol)
Guns (Gyroc)
Fast-draw (pistol)
Stealth
First Aid
Tactics (Space)
Knife
Computer Operation
Photography
Prospecting
Autohypnosis
Karate
Breath Control


A professor/amateur mage in a monster hunters campaign (300cp):

Acrobatics
Acting
Area Know: Europe
Area Know: Languedoc
Brawling
Carousing
Climbing
Connoisseur (Film)
Current Affairs (Headline)/TL7
Current Affairs (Pop Culture)/TL7
Diplomacy
Expert Skill (Conspiracy)
Fast-Talk
Guns/TL7 (Pistol)
Hiking
History (Classical era Gaul)
History (Roman Catholicism)
Knife
Linguistics
Naturalist
Observation
Occultism
Propaganda
Public Speaking
Savoir-faire (High Society)
Semiotics
Sex Appeal
Sleight of Hand
Sociology
Stealth
Streetwise
Teaching
Throwing
Wrestling
Archaeology
Architecture/TL7
Artist (Drawing)
Computer Operation/TL7
Computer Programming/TL7
Sewing
Math (Applied)
First Aid
Intel Analysis
Literature
Musical Instr (Lute)
Philosophy
Psychology/TL7
Research/TL7
Swimming
Writing

[Xplo]

Yeah, 20-30 skills to start is pretty normal for me.

If you really want to cut down on skills for some reason, you can think "what are the MOST important or frequent things the PC should be able to do?" and narrow the list down to just those skills. Of course, if you do that, you'll be relying on defaults for everything else, which is hard to do unless you have a GM willing to hand out bonuses for easy tasks, taking extra time, having helpers, etc. You can get away with that more in larger groups, too, because someone will probably have the skill you don't.

[theothersarah]

Whenever I make a character, I go down the skill list in Characters and take down every single one that makes sense for the character concept and that I can justify the character having.

This strategy often does result in a character having a lot of skills, but I don't see anything wrong with that. Because the skill list is very big and many of the skills are fairly specific, I would expect characters to have many, unless they were meant to be young, inexperience, and/or particularly inept.

[Blind Mapmaker]

It might not be exceedingly realistic, but most of my characters at more than 200 points have at least 50-60 skills. Having said that, characters with more than 200 points aren't that realistic either, unless you're talking high society movers and shakers or special forces.

For my lower point characters it depends on the character concept, but I would consider 30 skills to be the floor for adventurer types. A focused gladiator or non-combatant citizen might get away with less, but both concepts mandate a special kind of campaign.

Even with really low-point characters the use of the Dabbler perk (or a less abusive version of 1/2-point skills) would see a skill list in the middle twenties at least. If you want to play ultra-realisically you might get away with a modern working drone with half a dozen actual skills and another six to eight in improved defaults from Dabbler, but where's the fun in that?