Skills, skills everywhere

[roguebfl]

Originally Posted by Trigonomicon

I see dabbler mentioned a lot in this thread, but it doesn't seem to be anywhere in my books, what is it/were can I read more?

It's perk the gives you a bonus on default use of a couple of skills.

[vierasmarius]

It's not in Basic Set. I'm not sure where it was first introduced, but it's included in Power-Ups 2, pg 16. I find it instrumental in creating believable low-point characters.

[Phantasm]

Originally Posted by vierasmarius

It's not in Basic Set. I'm not sure where it was first introduced, but it's included in Power-Ups 2, pg 16. I find it instrumental in creating believable low-point characters.

I'm pretty sure it was introduced in that book. At least half the perks in Power-Ups 2: Perks are original and not compiled from other sources.

[Anaximander]

Over the course of my campaign series I have trimmed the skill list down a great deal. My current skills chapter for my campaign sourcebook has only 98 skills listed in it, including all combat skills. Truth be told, I would like to see it trimmed down even further. As a GM, I have to create a lot of NPCs; and as an uptight, OCD weirdo, I tend to make complete characters. I rarely need to take more than 15 or so skills and still end up with pretty well-rounded characters. But I, like you, can often get carried away with the skill list and end up with 40+ skills.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Captain Joy

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.

Skill category browsing has always struck me as a good component of character creation strategy. That's one reason, probably the main one, that I was unhappy to see them removed in 4th Edition.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

Don't forget Dabbler! If most people are 25 point characters with no severe disadvantages, we probably don't actually have 30+ points in skills. Especially when you consider that most of us have one or two job related skills at professional levels.

Having worked a lot of different jobs while working myself through college, I interpret "professional" to mean "at least as good as a normal employee in a given field", which actually means awful* for any skill you're supposed to be able to perform under life-and-death stress.

Which fits a GURPS skill level of 11-12. That's not something movie main characters have in the skills that they use to respond to the plot-significant problems. No, when it comes to that, you generally need 16+ to apply.

The takeaway, I guess, is that most fictional heroes actually have reams of skills at high levels, regardless of their supposed backgrounds or informed attribute of being "normal people". A GURPS character with 30+ skills isn't a bloated monster of skill-inflation, he's a natural response to a system which has seperate skills for diving athletically through a window (Acrobatics), jumping over a table (Jumping) and rounding a corner efficiently (DX-based Running).

*My experience of people who started careers at shipyards, gas stations, convenience stores or similar fields instead of getting any degree beyond the mandatory education (which ends at 15 here) is that in game terms, their highest job skill is pretty low. As in, lower than the default others may get from some of their secondary skills.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by cosmicfish

I have always thought that this was a poorly worded section. It is a single paragraph, but it is an oversimplification that distorts the relative skills of PC's and NPC's alike. Realistically, your OTJ skill development is going to be tied to the occurrence of new situations or constraints, and after a while (a few months or a few years) those things realistically go away. From that point on, your improvement OJT essentially stops - you can try to improve, but there just may not be any real opportunities.

Yes. Learning-by-doing being 1/4 efficient as being taught by a skilled teacher is outrageously unrealistic. And on top of that, the benefits of learning-by-doing should depend on the degree of challenge you face while you're doing the doing part.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by tbrock1031

I'm pretty sure it was introduced in that book. At least half the perks in Power-Ups 2: Perks are original and not compiled from other sources.

I don't remember having seen the Dabbler Perk anywhere in a 4th Edition product, prior to Power Ups volume 2. The idea of splitting 1 CP into smaller fractions existed in 3rd Edition, but officially you could only split it in half, although I'm sure some GMs and some groups allowed 1/4 and 1/8 point skills.

[Witchking]

My current character is a mage (Order of the Blue Star by MZB in the Sanctuary anthology) so <in theory> he could live until the end of time...if he does not get killed and his secret remains so.

Even tho he works very well in the party environment, due to the nature of the order, he has extreme reluctance to be dependent on anyone. Basically he is trying to learn/master anything that will give him an edge against Primal Chaos in the (hopefully) distant future.

So thats the backround:

At Character Start (150 pts/-50 dis/-5 quirks) he had 35 pts in skills, 34 pts in spells <all were 1pt so numbers=pts> and 16 pts in languages (for 10 spoken/8 written all at at least accented).

He was basically a mage who had worked with a fantasy/low tech spec ops group for the last year or so during a war. (He covered mage/some ftr/pro soldier/pro mage skills/alchemy).

Now (2-3ish years later) he is at (238 pts) 50 skills (60 pts), 54 spells (56 pts) and 19 pts languages (12 spoken/9 written). (he has added physican/legal skills/face skills/spy skills/hidden lore skills and a number of contacts).

He is a whale of a lot of fun to play and is the most generalist character I've ever put together.

[The Benj]

For a given campaign, I usually mentally cut down the (massive!) skill list quite a lot, so it's probably only about a hundred for a specific setting. Even then, 30+ skills is not unusual for a given character.