Would you like a Melee Fighting Talent?

[AlexanderHowl]

I generally think that talents should only be allowed if they cross multiple attributes. I think Allure is probably the best representation of such a talent, as it includes DX (Dancing and Erotic Art), IQ (Make-up) and HT (Sex Appeal and Singing) skills. If I was going to allow a martial talent, it would cover multiple attributes of skills and only one combat skill.

[Plane]

I just realized I overlooked something when designing price. Normally +1 DX benefits your Basic Speed by 0.25 which is worth 5 points, so "+1 to DX w/o increasing basic speed" should probably have a base cost of 15/level, and -20% Aspected, Combat would reduce that to 12/level which falls between the medium/large categories.

This wouldn't help with non-DX-based combat skills, of course.

Small (6 or fewer) is 5 per level, though 91 says "the GM ought to forbid Ninja Talent or Weapon Talent"

[OldSam]

Originally Posted by Plane

I just realized I overlooked something when designing price. Normally +1 DX benefits your Basic Speed by 0.25 ...

Actually I liked that ;) ...reason being that it covers active defense also that way (in case you come to a round number). Indeed I noticed that the lack of increased defenses is a weakness of the current pure talent based approach as the "generic ability to defend yourself" is a really important part of that generic fighting capability I was aiming for... - Ok, at least we got increased parry through skill.

[Plane]

You'd still get enhanced parries like normal, just not the enhanced dodge which comes from a higher basic speed. I'm not even sure if it would be right to apply a "Aspected, Combat" to Basic Speed, I can't think where when it would matter who attacked first or how well you dodged outside of combat, it would only be a drawback to the 1/4 of it which was Basic Move.

[AlexanderHowl]

As mentioned before, Enhanced Parry is an awful trait. Instead of spending 5 CP to get +1 Parry for one skill, you can spend 8 CP to gain +2 to attack and +1 to Parry. It actually makes less sense for cinematic characters to take Enhanced Parry than extra skill, as they have their special Rapid Strike rules.

[Plane]

"with bare hands" is a little broader since it helps all the unarmed skills, not just one, though as-written I guess would not benefit leg parries?

Spending 3 CP to get +2 to attack could also be done by putting points in a particular technique, but since combat skills also help with feints and ALL techniques, I agree with you it's much better.

Enhanced Parry probably benefits from the ability to apply limitations to advantages but not to skill, but you'd need a lot of that to make it price-competitive.

[Black Leviathan]

Originally Posted by Rupert

The problem with these talents, especially 'Reaper' is that they are very good examples of 'bad talents'.

Yeah, that's exactly the purpose of a talent. It would be more appropriate if the skills were more diverse, maybe a combat art or Savior Faire dojo? but those don't really make sense for what I view the talent as. And yeah the talent is specifically to explain someone having a very specific aptitude, a way to mechanically represent it without pumping up skills.

[tbone]

Some sort of melee talent sounds fine, but FWIW, I've always been attracted to the idea of a general melee skill. The sort of skill representing general knowledge of footwork, stances, position, distance, timing, feinting, reading foes, gauging incoming attacks, all that. The kind of thing that's independent of what specific weapon you're using – and thus something GURPS doesn't have. (As it is, you're a veteran soldier with Spear at DX+6... but by picking up a sword, your experience with footwork and reading foes and all that stuff disappears, leaving you to fight at a newbie's DX-5. Although I'll happily grant that Super Spear Guy should be built with better-than-newbie DX as one effect of his long training.)

I'm not here to stump for the idea, though; it just raises a lot of questions, which I haven't answered. Like, how would the game use that "Melee Combat" skill? You could, for example, say that effective weapon skill in actual combat (as opposed to skill for show-off moves) is the lower of Melee Combat and weapon skill – but that's forcing fighters to buy yet another skill, when a broad selection of melee weapon skills is arguably too expensive in GURPS to begin with.

So, you could let weapon skills generously default off of Melee Combat skill, really helping with cost... but to specialize in preferred weapons, you're back to buying up those skills, tossing you up against the problem that putting points into a default from a master skill quickly becomes inefficient.

Hmm... Okay, you could require a master Melee Combat skill, then have specific melee skills default from that, but also have them bought up like techniques, allowing specializations without overweight costs. Interesting... though a weird way of doing things, unless we switch to buying up all GURPS defaults from skills using the cost of techniques. Which itself is interesting, with (arguably) some good effects, but it's straying far from the existing game.

And then there are tougher questions. If you use a Melee Combat skill like the above, does it also cover unarmed skills, or would they need a separate Unarmed Melee Combat skill? And where do ranged weapon skills fit in?

And finally, to what degree is this sort of thing already covered by Tactics skill? Not at all, in terms of actual TH rolls, defense rolls, etc.; maybe Tactics should play a role in such things as a weapon-independent general melee combat skill?

So. With all those unanswered questions, I'm not pushing a general melee combat skill as some great idea. But for anyone interested in (or already playing around with) the idea, I wanted to point out two videos by Lindy Beige on this very topic: the first suggesting this sort of weapon-independent "skirmish skill" as a realistic ability, and the second saying that RPGs should have such a skill.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQQ-cUgJWds

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XMl...re=youtu.be&a=

Relevant to the thread, for anyone interested –

[AlexanderHowl]

While I do not agree that there should be a universal melee skill, I agree that Tactics is under utilized in GURPS. One possible solution would be to have any base combat skill in group combat equal to the (Combat Skill + Tactics)/2, rounded down, and any base defense in group combat be equal to (Tactics/2, rounded down, + Defense)/2, rounded down (this would be in addition to the normal benefits of Tactics). Group combat would be defined as involving one or more units with a recognized leader that has put a minimum of 1 CP in both Leadership and Tactics.

Combat characters without Tactics would be assassins, competitors, duelists, instructors, snipers, etc. Outside of group combat, Tactics would provide its normal benefits, but it would shine in group combat. The lethality of group combat to rookie soldiers would be represented by the fact that they are defaulting Tactics.