Superior Experience

[JulianLW]

Something easier to play: make it a flat +1 bonus for the character with the higher number of CP in the skill for any contest.

Or you could say that each doubling of CP invested in a skill gives a corresponding penalty to an opponent in a Contest, i.e. the character with 4 CP in a skill imposes a -2 on an opponent with only 1 CP invested. The penalty would become -3 at 8 CP vs. 1 CP and -4 at 16 CP vs. 1 CP. It would be almost impossible to impose a -5 penalty against an opponent, as you'd need a training advantage of 32 to 1.

So the boost in training represented by any additional CP in a Contest-related skill - raising a skill to the 2 CP or 4 CP level - would be very important and would highlight the value of training over talent or high attributes.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by RyanW

The issue I have with ideas like this is that Broadsword DX+4 [16] is not necessarily twice as much experience as Broadsword DX+2 [8]. It's merely what +2 skill costs you, regardless of whether you've fought with a sword in you hand for years, intensely trained for months, or just discovered you were a natural with the sword. 200 hours is worth 1 CP, but 1 CP does not necessarily represent 200 hours.

Not only that, but a high DX is not necessarily from talent. It could be the result of thousands of hours training in DX-based skills, giving a broad competence in such things.

[Bengt]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

As the old saying says, "age and treachery will beat youth and luck every time", so superior experience should give better results than just superior talent. I have been developing rules to reflect that in GURPS, and I just wanted to share them and receive comments from the community.

CP in a skill doesn't automatically mean experience, it can be anything, e.g. if you are making a character that per your concept is talented in something but none of the Talent advantages fit and the GM doesn't want make another for whatever reason you'll have to dump CP in the relevant skill(s). So I don't think these rules do anything to reinforce the adage.

[AlexanderHowl]

Any GM can make Talents, they have plenty of guidelines for doing so, so the only reason that a character does not have a Talent is because a GM does not want them to. By shifting natural talent to attributes, secondary characteristics, advantages and experience to skills and techniques, we end up with a more logically consistent game. Every 1 CP in skills and techniques mean 200 hours of training, 400 hours of self-study, or 800 hours of experience.

As for attributes representing experience, that is only because it is more effective for players to increase their character's attributes over increasing multiple skills. Of course, characters could have unrealized potential, but I think that could be represented by interpreting increasing such traits after character creation as realizing their potential. I admit that it is a different idea than the standard interpretation though.

[Celjabba]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

Any GM can make Talents, they have plenty of guidelines for doing so, so the only reason that a character does not have a Talent is because a GM does not want them to. By shifting natural talent to attributes, secondary characteristics, advantages and experience to skills and techniques, we end up with a more logically consistent game. Every 1 CP in skills and techniques mean 200 hours of training, 400 hours of self-study, or 800 hours of experience.

You can, of course, rules that way in your games.

I like the flexibility of having 1 cp in a skill being "justified" in many ways, experience being only one of them.

[Bengt]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

Any GM can make Talents, they have plenty of guidelines for doing so, so the only reason that a character does not have a Talent is because a GM does not want them to.

And a character concept may not fit within those guidelines.

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

By shifting natural talent to attributes, secondary characteristics, advantages and experience to skills and techniques, we end up with a more logically consistent game.

IMO it just makes character creation more restrictive and closer to games with multiple currencies for character creation.

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

Every 1 CP in skills and techniques mean 200 hours of training, 400 hours of self-study, or 800 hours of experience.

No it doesn't. The "Improvement through study" rules are just another way to earn CP (in addition to CP awarded from regular sessions). The GURPS character engine makes no judgement of why your character has certain stats/skills/etc, it just says if you have these values it costs this many CP. E.g. if one player wants a grizzled veteran with Broadsword DX+5 and another player wants exceptionally talented newbie with Broadsword DX+5, the character creation is the same as far as the rules are concerned.

[Aldric]

I kinda like the idea of invested CPs representing time and effort spent improving a skill, with attributes and talents being general and more specific aptitude.

As for the veteran and newbie example, if they both have a skill at DX+5, there is really nothing telling them apart.
If you give the newbie higher DX or a talent but less CP and they end up with the same final value for the skill, you know at a glance which one is a natural, and which one has trained for years.

[Bengt]

Originally Posted by Aldric

If you give the newbie higher DX or a talent but less CP and they end up with the same final value for the skill, you know at a glance which one is a natural, and which one has trained for years.

That limits you to building characters that are good at a bunch of things, either all DX skills or everything in the talent packages, which isn't always your concept. If you are playing in a speculative fiction setting (which is pretty common) there are plenty of reason for a character to be really good at a few specific and unrelated things without having long training. So I really like that GURPS disconnects the why and the how of character creation.

[Celjabba]

A few characters where enforcing a 200/400/800 hours requirement for investing cp in skills wouldn't work :

-one skill wonder / natural prodigy at xxx : otherwise average / good, but extremely skilled in one or two skills (with a wider scope than hyper-proficiency perk) with little training time.

-a variant, with a low attribute but one very high skill based on that attribute. (the IQ 9 fighter with one or two IQ skill at expert level is a common exemple - or a character in one of my game who was a 22 years old couch potato academic with driving-22.)

-buying instant mastery in a skill justified by an UB or advantage : reawakened, weapon master, wild talent, patron(divine power)...

-emulating many fictionnal setting with children / young teenagers displaying adult/professionnal competency in several unrelated skills, but*not*exceptionnal DX/IQ.

-Quick "one-shot" characters where point balance isn't even a factor.

With few exception, I insist that all characters in my games have at least one talent, and a couple dabbler perks.
On the other hand, I split Will and Per away from IQ while keeping IQ cost at 20, and I enforce attributes limits (14 or 15 usually, but it varies across campaigns).
So, spending cp on skills is common.
Also, enforcing familiarities, and frequently floating skills to various attributes do make experience matter over attributes.

Each GM is different, and each campaign is different, and I find that one of the strenght of Gurps is that it doesn't enforce "logical consistency" in the characters.
Some build will be ineficient. Some will be illogical. Some will be both.
But for me, the fact that this is possible and allowed is a system strenght, not a weakness.

[Celjabba]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

Any GM can make Talents, they have plenty of guidelines for doing so, so the only reason that a character does not have a Talent is because a GM does not want them to. .

I would prefer giving the player more cp to spend rather than creating the "all the things the character is good at" talent.
I want and insist that players use talents, but I also appreciate when it force them to look at every skills involved in the talent, which the published talents are great for.