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Old 03-30-2020, 03:56 PM   #1
Not
 
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Default 16 v. 17

Thinking weapon-wise, is there any practical difference between an effective skill of 16 v. 17?
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Old 03-30-2020, 04:08 PM   #2
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Default Re: 16 v. 17

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Originally Posted by Not View Post

Thinking weapon-wise, is there any practical difference between an effective skill of 16 v. 17?
Absorbing penalties, mainly. You won't notice much of a difference just striking at the torso under optimal conditions, but it'll start to matter when targeting the skull (-7), knocked down (-4) at the edge of the party's light circle (-3), etc.
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Old 03-30-2020, 04:44 PM   #3
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Default Re: 16 v. 17

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Originally Posted by Kromm View Post
Absorbing penalties, mainly. You won't notice much of a difference just striking at the torso under optimal conditions, but it'll start to matter when targeting the skull (-7), knocked down (-4) at the edge of the party's light circle (-3), etc.
Or, my favorite, Deceptive Attack (Exploits, p. 38). Mathematically, if your effective skill is 14 or higher it is pretty much always advantageous to take a deceptive attack to buy your effective skill level down to 12-13 to give your opponent the defense penalty.

In addition to absorbing penalties high skill is also useful for Feinting.
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Old 03-31-2020, 02:54 PM   #4
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Default Re: 16 v. 17

When you talk about effective skill, I assume you mean after modifiers as detailed on page 7 of Exploits. Kromm and Eric gave excellent responses to why a high base skill is great. A few things I would add after playing for many years in Peter Dell'Orto's Felltower campaign (dungeonfantastic.blogspot.com):

1. Having a effective skill of 16 or higher affects critical failures, as you probably know--a 17 is not a critical fail if the net skill is 16, while it is if the net skill is 15. Hjalmarr Holgerson (RIP) knew this well...

2. Having a really high base skill (say 24) allows you to do lots of great stuff, e.g., Rapid Strike twice to the neck (two 16s as your target, because -3 for Rapid Strike and -5 for the neck), or a single strike to the neck at deceptive -2 (-4 to skill) for a net 17, as two simple examples. As Kromm and Eric explained, there's lots of reasons to increase base skill.

But:

3. Having an effective skill of 17 v. an effective skill of 16 really only matters to Swashbucklers who can get the 15-point advantage "Every One's a Critical," which allows critical hits on a roll of 7 or less if net skill is 17 or higher. Otherwise it makes sense to apply as much as you can via deceptive attack to get down to 16. This is a good explanation by Doug Cole from Gaming Ballistic.

I think there's a big difference between an effective skill of 15 and 16, but not much difference between 16 and 17 (or anything higher than 16). If you can, get it down to 16, do it, because anything above it is surplus. Going below 15 is fine, but there are ramifications (less crit-fishing, more chances of critical failure).

Last edited by InexplicableVic; 04-30-2020 at 06:58 AM. Reason: Changed "who have the 15-point advantage" to "who can get the 15-point advantage" in numbered list item #3.
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