[HR] Making Techniques Viable (as more than "one-trick" specialists)

[Nosforontu]

Originally Posted by Refplace

Actualy what about a talent?
Talent: Boxing or whatever your style is?
That already is practically RAW. modified so it doesnt affect skills direct just techniques maybe? So no double dipping and only helps when you fight using techniques rather then generic moves.

Nice idea in theory, in practice though it might end up costing you points to purchase the talent rather than simply increasing your core skill. Improving the Karate skill for example by 1 level only costs 4 points and will also increase the value of all techniques based off of karate by 1 point as well.

[zylosan]

Isnt the whole point of techs. to simulate the specilized focus and training of a specific martial artist? A generalist just sinks points into the base skill and does not limit and specilize his training by not taking techs.

Random Idea.
If you want to encourage MA players to make use of a variety of techniques, create a varient Modular Ability that only applies to tecniques and has a preperation requirement of a couple of days dedicated training (or 4 hours if you want it to be more powerful.) This would represent the fighter practicing special moves and dedicated training to a specific set of moves.

[Ze'Manel Cunha]

Originally Posted by Dinadon

So someone with a high Knife skill could have many knife techniques, but wouldn't have any for that solitary point in Axe/Mace. It uses bonus points, and it always starts when you get the weapon skill to DX+1, so the relative level above DX would be used to calculate the number of bonus points. I haven't decided if it would be 2 or 3 points per level, but I did decide the a 1-3-6-10-... progression provided to few points at the low end, too many at the high end. In all, I expect one technique per two levels above DX with this scheme. I have to decide how it interacts with Styles though.

You could just have the Style add the bonus techniques based on skill.

In other words, if someone takes the Shortsword Fighting Style, then when they get to Brawling at DX+1, Judo at DX+1, and Shortsword at DX+1, they get a bonus style Technique for each of those skills, at DX+2 they get have two bonus Techniques per skill of the style, and so on.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by zylosan

Isnt the whole point of techs. to simulate the specilized focus and training of a specific martial artist? A generalist just sinks points into the base skill and does not limit and specilize his training by not taking techs.

That's the point of *buying up* techniques. But not the whole point of techniques, since many of them would still be interesting if you couldn't buy them up at all, simply as cool moves you can pull off at a penalty to skill.

It is clear that anybody with the skill can attempt any of its techniques at the listed default right? They aren't additional abilities - you don't have to buy anything other than the base skill to use them.

[DreadPirateLynx]

Originally Posted by Nosforontu

Nice idea in theory, in practice though it might end up costing you points to purchase the talent rather than simply increasing your core skill. Improving the Karate skill for example by 1 level only costs 4 points and will also increase the value of all techniques based off of karate by 1 point as well.

Style Technique Talents could be cost effective due to the fact that most style's techniques don't all default to the same base skill. Base the cost per level on both the number of skills techniques default to, and the number of techniques that default to each specific skill. My frist thought on how to handle this is 1 point for each skill that has only one technique, 2 points for any skill that has two or three techniques, and 3 points for any skill that has 4 or more techniques. A couple of examples follow (Cinematic Techniques have been left out of the equation):

Muay Thai
11 Techniques that default to Karate [3]
1 Technique that defaults to DX [1]
Total cost for Muay Thai Talent: [4]

Taijutsu
10 Techniques that default to Karate [3]
4 Techniques that default to Judo [3]
3 Techniques that default to Acrobatics [2]
Total cost for Taijutsu Talent: [8]

After doing these examples, I'm kind of inclined to say 1 point for skills with 1-2 techniques and 2 points for skills with 3 or more techniques. That would drop Muay Thai to 3 points per level, and drop Taijutsu to 6 points per level.

[Dinadon]

Originally Posted by malloyd

That's the point of *buying up* techniques. But not the whole point of techniques, since many of them would still be interesting if you couldn't buy them up at all, simply as cool moves you can pull off at a penalty to skill.

It is clear that anybody with the skill can attempt any of its techniques at the listed default right? They aren't additional abilities - you don't have to buy anything other than the base skill to use them.

Yeah, but the ability to say 'I'm at max level' for more than couple of techniques, especially (to me) at higher skill levels, feels like the cooler thing to say.

[Refplace]

Originally Posted by malloyd

That's the point of *buying up* techniques. But not the whole point of techniques, since many of them would still be interesting if you couldn't buy them up at all, simply as cool moves you can pull off at a penalty to skill.

It is clear that anybody with the skill can attempt any of its techniques at the listed default right? They aren't additional abilities - you don't have to buy anything other than the base skill to use them.

Actually that is really important and I think overlooked too often when people are wondering why they dont buy more techniques.
Just having the style or skill gets you more options then not having it.
Buying up the core skill gets you more depth with that skill and consequently the techniques based off it go up as well.
And even if you dont specialize in more then 1 technique you still have more options because you have them available to you.

So you have a more versatile fighter (or whatever else your using the the system for) at no real increase in cost unless the style includes perks for hidden techniques others wouldn't have access to.
The ways to encourage more techniques being bought up then becomes a number crunch or meta mechanic not a character one.

[Dinadon]

Originally Posted by Refplace

So you have a more versatile fighter (or whatever else your using the the system for) at no real increase in cost unless the style includes perks for hidden techniques others wouldn't have access to.
The ways to encourage more techniques being bought up then becomes a number crunch or meta mechanic not a character one.

Maybe, but then I'm trying not to add that many. My main contention is when you start getting a single weapon skill to a high enough level that your other weapon skills start defaulting from it.

For a single skill, you can at best have three techniques. At low 4-8 point investment in a few combat skills you can probably have 2 techniques per skill with little trouble. Yet hit 12-16 with one or two and those skills can start using each other for defaults. So not should you redistribute the points invested in skills into the primary to maximise your skill level, you'll also probably have 4+ techniques has well which you also might as well reinvest in the primary. Suddenly your diversity has dropped as now all the skills defaulting off your primary, plus the primary itself, can have three techniques between them before you hit points inefficiency.

[aesir23]

Originally Posted by aesir23

Personally, I think I'm just going to do the following in my next campaign: Style Familiarity increases all the Techniques in that style by 1.

For the record what I ended up doing during my character creation session last night was giving people a 50% discount on Techniques in your style. It didn't make a big difference, people bought between 1 and 4 techniques per skill, based on what they thought was cool and what they were likely to use.

Didn't make a huge impact point wise (generally characters saved 6 or so points from paying full price.)

[arnej]

A loooooong time ago, in a 3e discussion far, far away, someone proposed that a PC could get "Technique Points" equal to the points put in the base skill. This had the effect of making low-stat high-skill characters feel very different than high-stat high-skill characters. The low-stat ones had tons of techniques that they could use (reflecting better their years of experience) where the high-stat types got the benefits of high stats, but had few techniques. So two Broadsword-16 fighters could feel way different.

arnej