New Technique family of the week: Focussed

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by RogerBW

This seems like about the same level of specialisation as One-Task Wonder (PU2: Perks p. 17), and a future writeup might perhaps usefully mention those rules as an alternative way of achieving a similar thing. I could quite readily see allowing that guy in the furniture factory to learn OTW: Carpentry (Dovetail Joints) with his first at-work experience point, giving him an effective skill of IQ; then the second one would let him buy base Carpentry (= IQ) and the point from the perk could be converted to this technique (= IQ+1). This breaks even for an Average skill, where the second point allows the non-focussed elements to be brought up to stat-1, but not for a Hard skill, where you'd need to keep the OTW until you had a third point to put into the technique or skill.

Agreed. I made most of those points in my introductory posting for this series, which seems to have fallen off the front page before anyone commented.

I think it's worth keeping this explicitly distinct from normal Optional Specialties, which are rather broader.

Absolutely, although I've just had the idea of Techniques specific to particular Optional Specialties.

Originally Posted by Dalillama

Presumably this would apply to workers in munitions factories as well.

Yes.

[Icelander]

I like these. I've always allowed taking Optional Specialisation and adding a Technique on top of that for extremely narrow fields of specialisation that may be useful from time to time (thus, not Hyper-Specialisation), but which don't really imply a broad ability in all aspects of the skill.

[Prince Charon]

Originally Posted by johndallman

Focussed: Average, default Prerequisite, cannot exceed prerequisite +4. This is a large family of Techniques, allowing buying up a skill with a narrow focus. Many of them will not be very useful to adventurers, but they allow ordinary people to become quite skilled at something specialised. Examples include:

Flush <poison> (Body Control). This lets you buy off the skill penalties for a specific poison. This is mostly useful as a demonstration of skill, unless you are liable to get poisoned the same way a lot.

'Flush Alcohol' seems like it would be a very useful technique for many characters. It could even be useful for Intimidation.

Also, looking at these makes me wonder how big a limitation 'Focused Techniques Only' would be on Modular Abilities or Wild Talent (probably a greater limitation for Wild Talent than for MA), because if you're in a game where that would be allowed, it would be pretty useful.

[Flyndaran]

Flush toxin sounds really useful for an assassin that wants to avoid the accidental self-poisoning/envenomation that eventually happens to even the best of them.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Dalillama

Snake handlers, maybe.

Originally Posted by Prince Charon

'Flush Alcohol' seems like it would be a very useful technique for many characters. It could even be useful for Intimidation.

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Flush toxin sounds really useful for an assassin that wants to avoid the accidental self-poisoning/envenomation that eventually happens to even the best of them.

Flush <Poison> is based on Body Control, which has a prerequisite of Trained by a Master, plus Breath Control and Meditation. It's just fine for Drunken Masters, but few snake handlers or assassins will have the training.

[dcarson]

Might also allow it by method of application. In one of the Modesty Blaise books she has been captured and is being injected with a sedative. She tenses the muscles in that arm to slow blood flow and as soon as the guy turns away ripples them to squeeze out some of it. So instead os a 12 hour dose she got a 6-7 hour dose.*Several unwatched hours because they thought she was sedated is plenty to escape.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by johndallman

Flush <Poison> is based on Body Control, which has a prerequisite of Trained by a Master, plus Breath Control and Meditation. It's just fine for Drunken Masters, but few snake handlers or assassins will have the training.

Well, they'd need Unusual Training [1] instead.

[Dalillama]

Originally Posted by johndallman

Flush <Poison> is based on Body Control, which has a prerequisite of Trained by a Master, plus Breath Control and Meditation. It's just fine for Drunken Masters, but few snake handlers or assassins will have the training.

Eh, plenty of more cinematic assassins are likely to have TBaM. Look at any character coded as a 'ninja', e.g.. Or the lot from Assassin's Creed. Or a lot of stories about te Hashishin. Or...

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by johndallman

... although I've just had the idea of Techniques specific to particular Optional Specialties.

I've concluded that a couple of the techniques I posted are too broad for Focussed, and marked them as such in the original post.

[Kelly Pedersen]

Originally Posted by johndallman

I've concluded that a couple of the techniques I posted are too broad for Focussed, and marked them as such in the original post.

I agree that Survival (specific terrain type) is too broad for a technique, and should be an optional speciality. What I'd suggest making the technique, instead, would be a combination of (specific terrain type, specific season). So you could take a technique in Survival for (Woodlands in autumn), or (plains in winter) or so forth.