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Old 01-14-2015, 07:23 PM   #31
Flyndaran
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Default Re: Cost of HT.

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Originally Posted by Nereidalbel View Post
They're also at a higher TL. What our first-year college students learn today would have been reserved for the most gifted of students 400 years ago, after all.
You can't cram calculus into a normal 12 year old head no matter how amazing your teaching techniques.
One difference is that moderns are more likely to allow specializations rather than push hard for "Renaissance men". Math prodigies, for example, can let other subjects lag to attain higher ability with math alone.
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Old 01-14-2015, 07:28 PM   #32
Flyndaran
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Default Re: Cost of HT.

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Originally Posted by Anaraxes View Post
Not "to be omnicapable"; just to be capable at their particular niches.

GURPS leans heavily toward the omnicapable polymath as the build for just about every concept. Very rarely do I see more than 4 points in a skill. "Highly trained" people just have great stats (unless of course you add rules just to force the builds to cost more CP with stat caps or separate attribute/skill pools or whatnot).
That's why GMs should impose soft or even hard limits on abilities/traits/etc. to maintain the style they want.

But reality prefers the polymath as most problems can only be solved by certain skills no matter how awesome you are at X.
The issue then becomes one of adventure settings as full of ever changing problems as reality.
If you want certain skills to be worth major point investment, then make them come up more often game.
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Old 01-14-2015, 08:01 PM   #33
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Default Re: Cost of HT.

The real issue with health is you can sell back the traits. Consider the new meta trait HT! This is [HT+1 -1 FP, -.25 basic speed, +1 Easy to Kill] HT! costs a grand total of 0 cp per level and 3 books being thrown at your head. IQ OTOH, doesn't allow you to sell back Engineering. Anyway if someone has easy to kill, -FP, and and -basic speed glare at them. Or enforce a disadvantage limit.
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Old 01-14-2015, 10:07 PM   #34
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Default Re: Cost of HT.

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Originally Posted by Flyndaran View Post
You can't cram calculus into a normal 12 year old head no matter how amazing your teaching techniques.
Actually, basic calculus isn't all that hard; it's not something for an average 12 year old, but it's realistically achievable.
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Old 01-15-2015, 01:03 AM   #35
Flyndaran
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Default Re: Cost of HT.

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Actually, basic calculus isn't all that hard; it's not something for an average 12 year old, but it's realistically achievable.
Notice how I said normal, not realistically achievable for SOME children.
SOME real children wrote symphonies at 5.

Star Trek kids are all prodigies compared to very smart real world kids.

(Basic calculus was far easier than I ever thought. But that's only after having learned basic algebra, trigonometry, cyphering, etc. I remember reading that people can't think in pure abstract manner until around 12 anyway.)
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Old 01-15-2015, 01:42 PM   #36
Peter Knutsen
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Default Re: Cost of HT.

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It would be nice if the prodigious novice and the grizzled veteran with equal skill levels had the same CP cost, which would also also entail more or less equivalent other benefits. (The prodigy gets better attribute rolls, faster advancement given a 1/2/4 skill progression, and so on, while the highly-trained average-stat character doesn't get much, although 4e threw him the bone of skills floating to other attributes.) But I don't know how such a system would work while keeping reasonable expectations of what those attributes and skills mean.
An idea came to me, for how to modify GURPS to achieve something a bit like that, and I've started a new thread about it, here.
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Old 01-15-2015, 01:47 PM   #37
David Johnston2
 
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Default Re: Cost of HT.

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Originally Posted by Anaraxes View Post
Not "to be omnicapable"; just to be capable at their particular niches.

GURPS leans heavily toward the omnicapable polymath as the build for just about every concept. Very rarely do I see more than 4 points in a skill. .
Because very rarely do you see players who just want to be good at some useful specialty. I mean one could easily design an optimized courtier who is good at manners and dueling and has low stats and a heavy investment in advantages, but that's not a character a lot of players want to play.
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Old 01-15-2015, 02:12 PM   #38
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Because very rarely do you see players who just want to be good at some useful specialty.
The problem there is '2 major attributes. More than 2 PCs'. It would be okay if GURPS skills were split across 4-6 attributes.
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Old 01-15-2015, 02:14 PM   #39
Peter Knutsen
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Default Re: Cost of HT.

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Because very rarely do you see players who just want to be good at some useful specialty. I mean one could easily design an optimized courtier who is good at manners and dueling and has low stats and a heavy investment in advantages, but that's not a character a lot of players want to play.
Some players do want to play a Star Trek type omnidisciplinary engineer. Some (fewer, but still) want to play an omnidisciplinary physician.

And GURPS offers a way to do that. A stack of Talent; by RAW you may buy it up to 4 high, but some GMs may allow more, and in a high-point total (e.g. MH-grade 400 points) it certainly makes sense to allow six levels.

I happen to think Talents are stillborn due to the horrible precedent set in the core books, but they're there for those who can tolerate them.
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Old 01-15-2015, 02:24 PM   #40
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Default Re: Cost of HT.

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Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen View Post
I happen to think Talents are stillborn due to the horrible precedent set in the core books, but they're there for those who can tolerate them.
Stillborn? How do you mean? Are you referring to the fact that the examples published in the core books are full of skills that are A. useless in adventuring or B. overlap so much they seem like a waste of points?

Personally, 5-pt Talents seem like a really good deal. If you want to be great at two skills that appear in a talent together, it's much better than raising them individually past the third point, ditto 10-pt Talents for 3+ skills or even 15-pt talents for 4+ skills. Sure, it's not as many skills as DX/IQ, but it's cheaper and the other perks aren't worthless.
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