Skills and Techniques are too expensive

[ErhnamDJ]

Originally Posted by Brandy

I think there's a part of your argument that hinges on "I want my character to be amazing at surfing and at broadswording and those two things shouldn't cost the same".

The thing is: they don't, at least in the games I run (well, the hypothetical games I might run where surfing is a thing).

No, just spending eight points on Broadsword or Guns or Stealth or Diplomacy or any of the other good skills provides a much greater return than spending those points on the mediocre or bad skills. It's not only better in comparison to the worst skills. It's much better than even the somewhat useful ones.

Taking a random character who doesn't have any adventurer useful skills and swapping out eight points of their stuff for eight points of a useful skill makes them a much, much more powerful character.

[AlexanderHowl]

Spending 8 CP on Broadsword is a modern campaign is questionable and it is probably a bad idea in an ultratech setting. Of course, modern and ultratech games tend to focus on very quick and very lethal ranged combat, so Broadsword just becomes an anachronism (honestly, it is almost better to invest in Bow rather than Broadsword, as bow hunting is actually a useful modern expression of the skill). Now, 8 CP in Knife would be useful...

[evileeyore]

Originally Posted by ErhnamDJ

I'm confused. Are you saying you think skills are priced based on some objective measure right now?

No. I'm saying I like where they're at, but if they were to change I'd prefer it be based on an objective standard rather than a subjective one.

Which is most games.

Is it?

I'lll grant I tend to run 'fantasy' and 'post-apoc' more than 'Surf Beach High', but I suspect that whswhs might actually surprise you with how often non-combat skills are more important in his games than combat skills are.

And I've run campaigns where combat was very, very rare.

As such, I'm fine the cost of skills. Even the non-combat ones in DFRPG.

There will be games where Speak Underwater turns out to be worth more, somehow, but that doesn't mean they should both cost the same.

So, you want subjective pricing, but you don't want subjective pricing? You'd feel ripped off if you spent more on Speak Underwater than the Player who got Unkillable 3, even if there was never the threat of any Character death ever, and being the only person who could communicate with the undersea gods meant you got all their favors?

Shooting your argument in the foot aren't you?

Universal pricing causes a lot of problems.

No it doesn't. The problem is allowing Characters to be built with whatever and not warning the Player that those purchases might not be useful, say DR 5 in a TL 13^ game.

But if the Player wants it, and can articulate good reasons, then let them make the Character they want.

If I want to play a combat robot as my character, do you really think I'm getting 450 points worth out of DR 150 (Cannot Wear Armor, -40%) [450] at TL12?

If everyone has access to that as equipment, of course not. Why are you buying it? Your GM is doing you a disservice to not warn you, so...

By charging the same price for the traits in each game, regardless of how much it's actually worth in that game you create terrible incentives.

I disagree.

For instance, I'm not going to play a combat robot and spend 450 points on ineffectual DR. I'm just not going to do it, no matter how much I want to play a combat robot. I'm instead going to choose to play something else--

Right. A combat bot with 150 DR as equipable armor. If it's the right flavor of campaign, you can even have the Accessory Perk so it's built in armor. Look at those point savings...

This is an argument for all traits costing the same amount.

Nope. This is a "If the Player is the sort to feel like they've 'wasted' points on a high Surfing skill, I'll try to throw them a Surfing challenge here or there".

If the Player is like me, they won't care that they put X points into Surfing and never use it, it's serving it's purpose just fine unrolled.

If I ever had to pay 150 points for Speak Underwater, I would feel ripped off...

Even if the GM said it was the most important Advantage in the game? Are you sure you really want subjective pricing? Is it that you want things to cost what you want them to cost, not what another might subjectively price them at (hint, they've already been subjectively priced)?

If not subjective utility, how do you think the prices of advantages should be determined?

Objectively. Sure, at some point something must be 'subjective'. But from there I'd like pricing to work forward.

For instance Enhanced Defenses are priced pretty objectively against skills and attributes. Where as Combat Reflexes is underpriced to 'incentivize' it's purchase.

Take Enhanced Parry at 5 points. On one hand you can spend 8 points to increase your skill by 2 and your Parry by 1, or 5 points and just your Parry. I've watched Players build PCs with Enhanced Parry 3, this was not a bad choice.

Originally Posted by ErhnamDJ

If Speak Underwater was [150] and Unkillable 3 was [15], would you think that's wrong?

If there was minimal risk of Character death, Unkillable 3 at 15 might be spot on. It might actually be overpriced.

And i those games I'd just either recommend the Player not take it, or do as I've done in other instances, and lower the price.

No, I'm not dead against subjective pricing. I do it in my games, occasionally.

I'm against it coming down from on high (except where it makes sense*).

* IE where I agree with it (Signature Gear being changed in AtE), or don't care (Elves getting Unaging for free in DFRPG).

Assuming you find something wrong with that, I don't know how you would go on to think that Surfing and Guns being the same price is correct.

There is a vast, vast gulf between Speak Underwater at 5 and Unkillable 3 at 150, versus Surfing at DX Average and Guns at DX Easy.

Vast gulf.

If you're saying that players wouldn't purchase those constituent parts if they were priced as Enhanced Defenses, I would agree--because Enhanced Defenses is overpriced.

They aren't overpriced, compared to increasing Attributes or Skills to get the same effect.

What they are is expensive. The same way Trained by a Master and Weapon Master are expensive, so they're only taken in games where enough points are handed out to make those purchases affordable.

I see Enhanced Defenses quite often. Enhanced Dodge (the most expensive of the bunch) is a favorite in games I've run.

If you priced out its constituent parts in such a way that they all added up to twenty or thirty points, I think you would see them purchased quite often.

30 points? Congrats, you've just covered the Enhanced Defenses portion of Combat Reflexes. You've about another 20 points to go...

Once you get into the forty or fifty point range, it becomes overpriced.

Actually, 50 points is probably spot on for all it covers. Combat Reflexes is ludicrously underpriced, in the same way ST at 1 point per level would be ludicrously underpriced.

It's just one of the sacred cows of GURPS. It's one of the 'subjectively priced' things I've railed against in the past.

Surfing is overpriced at four points per level...

Surfing isn't '4 points per level'. It's 4 per level above DX +1.

Explain why you really need Surfing above DX +1 and therefore think it should be reduced. What other skills are you taking that could be dropped to afford your PC being the 'World's Best Surfer"? Is there a reason your PC needs to be the world champ*? Does it need to be DX+5? Would settling for DX +2 be okay?

* Are you taking the Reputation that goes along with this? Other Sports skills? Swimming? Is Surfing at DX+5 being taken in a vacuum?


That's the conversation that should be happening when your Players dump a ludicrous number of points into a 'non-core' skill for your game.

Originally Posted by ErhnamDJ

No, just spending eight points on Broadsword or Guns or Stealth or Diplomacy or any of the other good skills...

What makes them "good" skills?

That's somewhat subjective, eh? What if (as a Player) I don't think they are 'good' skills? Do you lower them for me?

Taking a random character who doesn't have any adventurer useful skills and swapping out eight points of their stuff for eight points of a useful skill makes them a much, much more powerful character.

Again subjective. I've a DF Character with 23 points in skills.

I suspect you'd think only 7 of those points are in 'good' skills (Staff, Hiking, Climbing, Stealth, Traps).

The rest are in 'useless' skills like Alchemy, Occultism, Thaumatology, Hidden Lore (Elder Beings), Diagnosis, Esoteric Medicine (Alchemical), First Aid, Pharmacy (Herbal), Physiology (Elven), Poisons, Surgery, Cartography, Linguistics, Speed-Reading, Ritual Magic... and then 8 more points in 40 some odd other skills via Dabbler Perks...

And yet, I enjoy playing him and he pulls his weight... because his 'lore and knowledge' skills are very, very useful, not because he's a fighter or even a good 'adventurer'. he's what happens when you drag a Sage into a dungeon... and it's fun.

Should I have gotten (effectively) even more points so he's even better at what he does? Despite being able to pull his own weight without any 'good adventuring' skills?

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by evileeyore

It's just one of the sacred cows of GURPS. It's one of the 'subjectively priced' things I've railed against in the past.

The issue with Combat Reflexes is not "subjective pricing". It is priced that way because it's fine if every single character gets it in a combat oriented game and thats the maximum price that makes it feasible to earn it in play.

[ErhnamDJ]

Originally Posted by evileeyore

No, I'm not dead against subjective pricing. I do it in my games, occasionally.

I'm against it coming down from on high (except where it makes sense*).

* IE where I agree with it (Signature Gear being changed in AtE), or don't care (Elves getting Unaging for free in DFRPG).

How do you think the designers should have determined the trait prices, if not based on some subjective sense of utility?

If you don't think they should have said, "Unkillable 3 feels way more useful to me than Speak Underwater, so I'm going to make it cost way more," then how do you think they should have determined the relative prices of those two traits?

If you were designing the game, and you had a list of traits with no prices, what method would you use to determine the prices? How would you go about figuring out which of Unkillable 3 or Speak Underwater would cost more, or if they should have the same price?

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by ErhnamDJ

How do you think the designers should have determined the trait prices, if not based on some subjective sense of utility?

I can't give you a formal algorithm for this. But I can tell you that I've made up a number of new traits for GURPS, in a long succession of books going back to GURPS Steampunk, and it's never been down to simply "I can assign it any point cost I feel like." There have always been ways to compare a new trait with existing traits as a way of assigning a plausible range of values. And a number of times, I've had discussions with Kromm in which he presented such analyses as a basis for revising my proposed values—which have not turned simply on "Because I'm Kromm and I say so."

[ErhnamDJ]

Originally Posted by whswhs

it's never been down to simply "I can assign it any point cost I feel like." There have always been ways to compare a new trait with existing traits as a way of assigning a plausible range of values.

I'm sure once you have some prices, it looks more obvious what some of the traits should cost relative to other traits. Some prices feel wrong. The possibilities narrow substantially.

But my question was about a hypothetical situation in which there were traits, but no prices. If you were faced with a situation in which there were no prices at all, and you were tasked with assigning them, what method would the poster suggest for determining the relative prices of the traits? That was my question.

[evileeyore]

Originally Posted by ErhnamDJ

If you were faced with a situation in which there were no prices at all, and you were tasked with assigning them, what method would the poster suggest for determining the relative prices of the traits?

You start assigning prices to traits you want or expect to see purchased frequently, like Attributes and Skills, and move along from there as whswhs outlined. Comparing things, playtesting, etc, till you found a range of prices that suit the needs of the game.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by ErhnamDJ

But my question was about a hypothetical situation in which there were traits, but no prices. If you were faced with a situation in which there were no prices at all, and you were tasked with assigning them, what method would the poster suggest for determining the relative prices of the traits? That was my question.

Traits have no actual existence; they exist only in an imagined reality. So you could assign any value you liked to any one trait, and it could not be said to be "right" or "wrong."

A value can be judged relative to another value, and once we have assigned that first point value, we can reasonably ask if the value we assign to a second trait makes sense relative to the first. But it's all relative values.

Of course, there are pragmatic considerations. We're going to be playing a game that involves rolling dice; so we probably want numbers that are likely to come up on some reasonable number of dice—7 on 2d6, 10 on 3d6, 50 on d100, for example. Or, your example, cost of skills relative to stats: If a skill costs 1, 2, or 4 points per level, and you object to its being cheaper to buy +1 to a stat than to buy +1 to five high-level skills, then you are asking to have a stat cost more than 20 points per level. But if, say, you double it, you are by implication doubling the point budget that characters should start out with, and that implies doubling the number of skills they might buy; instead of trading off +1 IQ for up to 20 IQ-based skills, you're trading it off for up to 40 IQ-based skills. That means either splitting skills up more narrowly and fussily (with more arguments over "Do you use Streetwise or Urban Survival to do X?"), or having characters able to start with twice as many skills, which will give you more overlap in skill sets and make it harder to have distinctive niches.

There ain't no such thing as a free game mechanic.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by evileeyore

You start assigning prices to traits you want or expect to see purchased frequently, like Attributes and Skills, and move along from there as whswhs outlined. Comparing things, playtesting, etc, till you found a range of prices that suit the needs of the game.

Let me give an example. I made up Independent Income for GURPS Steampunk, after observing that a lot of Age of Steam people didn't "work" or have "jobs" in the usual sense, or (sometimes) had income that supplemented their earnings; they had regular installments coming in from various sources, from a retired sergeant's shillin' a day to a wealthy gentleman's ten thousand (pounds) a year. Given the variation, I thought the income out to be proportional to starting wealth. But I figured that for a Comfortable character, it ought to provide enough to mean they didn't have to show up at a job, or make job rolls, but could maintain their normal standard of living out of their unearned income. And that seemed like a moderately significant convenience, so I made it cost 5 points.

Then, in 4/e, Kromm and Pulver generalized it; since I had set the earning rate at 5% of starting wealth, they made 1 point pay for 1% of starting wealth, and also provided Debt, which meant having to pay 1% of starting wealth to another person per -1 point.

There were certainly some judgment calls in this. But it was never just arbitrary. It was always possible to say, "Okay, that's too extreme a value and will lead to unreasonable outcomes in play." But that's the sort of thing that is best guided not by some set of mathematical axioms, but by experience in running games and the judgment acquired from doing so.