The Fantasy Trip

[Skarg]

Originally Posted by tbeard1999

In my various mods, if I fiddled with talents, I generally went with what you suggest - competent, expert and master levels. Generally, expert level reduced the success roll by 1 die and master by 2 dice. I always thought that this was a reasonable compromise between a binary “either you have it or you don’t” system and a system that rates each skill level individually.

Another approach would be the TFT inspired skill system of Mercenaries, Spies and Private Eyes. Generally, skills cost a certain amount of IQ points and required minimum IQ levels. Additional levels in the skill generally cost less than the base skill (usually 1 point) and added a +1 to the applicable roll. Not exactly a Runequest-style skill system, but perhaps a proto-GURPS system?

It seems to me that when there are talents that give entire +1 die adjustments (especially to something not otherwise available, like making yourself difficult to hit), that yeah you get distinct tiers of ability like David suggested, but that also becomes a clear "everyone at this tier is in a different class from everyone in that tier" effect. It's a bit like if you could only buy up DX in increments of 3.5 points, not 1.

Since TFT (especially Melee) is supposed to be interesting even at the level of one fighter facing one other fighter, I'd think we'd probably want more precision and variety than having four clear tiers like basic, pro, expert, genius, and more gradual transitions as characters improve.