Introducing Skill Points and Technique Points

[AlexanderHowl]

So, I propose the introduction of Skill Points (SP) and Technique Points (TP). Characters could purchase 4 Skill Points for 1 Character Point (banking unspent Skill Points until required) and could purchase 4 Technique Points for 1 Skill Point (banking unspent Technique Points until required). The cost for Skills would be in SP rather than CP while the costs for Techniques would be in TP rather than in CP. Training times would change to 400 hours per CP, 100 hours per SP, and 25 hours per TP.

I think that the change would balance the GURPS system. Attributes, Secondary Characteristics, Advantages, Perks, Disadvantages, and Quirks would still use CP, but Skills would require SP and Techniques would require TP. In essence, +1 DX or +1 IQ would cost as much as +1 to 20 Skills rather than +1 to 5 Skills or +1 to 320 Techniques rather than +1 to 20 Techniques.

So, how do you think that such a system would change GURPS. Do you think that it would be a positive change or a negative change? Would you want to explore using such a system?

[Brandy]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

So, how do you think that such a system would change GURPS. Do you think that it would be a positive change or a negative change? Would you want to explore using such a system?

I wouldn't be interested; I think it is a negative change. It adds a layer of complexity that isn't needed IMO. I don't find points for skills vs attributes vs talents to be the same problem that you do, but I also tend to game at lower power levels where attributes aren't uniformly high.

I don't disagree that pricing for techniques could be tweaked a bit in a game where it was desirable for characters to be distinguished from one another by the techniques that they specialize in; even this hasn't been necessary for my own games.

[AlexanderHowl]

I forgot to add that Wildcard Skills would be purchased with CP rather than SP, as they have enormous utility.

[talonthehand]

This seems kind of overly byzantine. Do you see your players neglecting skills that much to make this worth the extra time?

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by Brandy

I don't disagree that pricing for techniques could be tweaked a bit in a game where it was desirable for characters to be distinguished from one another by the techniques that they specialize in; even this hasn't been necessary for my own games.

Having techniques cost less than they do now will quite possibly reduce diversity in them. As it stands, a character 'should' only have 1-2 techniques (perhaps three if 1-2 of them are Average in cost), so as long as none give too much bang for the buck (so all PC take them) characters with techniques will stand out. If they are cheap (and in the OP's suggestion they are four times as cheap, so ~8 techniques make sense) then PCs will have more of them, and for more skills, resulting in more overlap between characters and less diversity.

As for the OP's suggestion, it makes high levels of skill insanely cheap. A campaign using this rule would need a strongly enforced skill cap. Zombie-50 for 8.5 points. That's as many zombies as you have time to make at 1 minute each.

Also, it likely devalues plain attributes so much that rather than the current situation where some report that buying attributes up and the secondaries that come off them down is desirable, the reverse will be the case.

[khorboth]

I'm curious what the goal is.

I would expect character sheets to quickly become unmanageably large with so many skills and techniques that it's hard to keep track of. This is occasionally a problem with high-point games already.

I would expect some extremely high specialized attacks, especially if you are following Martial Arts options.

I would expect spending character points to become a chore that is dreaded rather than looked forward to especially by players who care more about fluff than crunch.

I would also expect to see generally higher skills and techniques as well as more of both.

[AlexanderHowl]

The goal is to encourage people to take a diverse array of skills and techniques rather than just attributes and advantages. Right now, characters start suffering from inefficiencies if they have more than four DX skills at 4+CP, more than three IQ skills at 4+ CP, and more than one HT, Per, or Will skill each at 4+ CP. In addition characters start suffering from inefficiencies if they have more than two techniques in a skill.

With the stated changes, the inefficiencies are minimized, though I agree that there may have to be a hard limit on skills to avoid abuses. I think that a maximum of 80 SP in each skill and 80 TP in the techniques of each skill would be acceptable. That would mean that a character would require IQ plus Magery of 31 to achieve Zombie-50 (which would cost a minimum of 326 CP, by the way, with 80 SP in Zombie costing 20 CP).

[Apollonian]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

The goal is to encourage people to take a diverse array of skills and techniques rather than just attributes and advantages. Right now, characters start suffering from inefficiencies if they have more than four DX skills at 4+CP, more than three IQ skills at 4+ CP, and more than one HT, Per, or Will skill each at 4+ CP. In addition characters start suffering from inefficiencies if they have more than two techniques in a skill.

With the stated changes, the inefficiencies are minimized, though I agree that there may have to be a hard limit on skills to avoid abuses. I think that a maximum of 80 SP in each skill and 80 TP in the techniques of each skill would be acceptable. That would mean that a character would require IQ plus Magery of 31 to achieve Zombie-50 (which would cost a minimum of 326 CP, by the way, with 80 SP in Zombie costing 20 CP).

I've found the easiest way to do this is to abandon character points all together. You might actually have to talk to your players to get decent characters in your game, but you should probably do that anyway.

[pestigor]

There came a certain point in my Gurps gaming that character generation stopped being a game in itself. Squeezing every ounce of efficiency out of every half character point (this was back in 3rd edition) was a meta game for us.

It got old so we now just talk about what we want to do as a group and all the players (the GM is considered a player in our groups) collectively makes the characters. It helps that no one is trying too hard to do anything other then build towards everyone's enjoyment.

[dataweaver]

I have experimented with Technique Points before, either by handing some out for free along with investment of character points into the primary skills of a Style, or at a 5:1 exchange rate with the points that get spent on skills. I also said that Technique Points could only be used when buying off penalties; Techniques that raise your capability above whatever you're defaulting off of must be paid for with the usual currency for purchasing skills.

The reason for the 5:1 exchange rate is that it places techniques precisely between skills and familiarities: it takes 8 hours to remove a familiarity penalty, and it takes 200 hours to add the equivalent of one character point to a skill. That's a 25:1 ratio. Making five Technique Points equal one “skill point” means that it would take 40 hours of training to earn one Technique Point. This means that not only is there a 5:1 ratio between skills and techniques, but there's also a 5:1 ratio between techniques and familiarities.

The reason why you can't spend Technique Points to improve a technique above whatever it defaults from is because those techniques tend not to be capped, and are frequently things that a player would be tempted to buy up to absurd levels in order to turn them into “I win buttons”.

Ultimately, I scrapped the exchange rate idea: I can get the same overall effect more simply by turning techniques into perks in much the same way that Martial Arts turned the Off-Hand Weapon Training technique into a perk: for one point, you raise the former technique from its minimum level to its maximum level. This usually translates to simple negating the default penalty; but there are a few cases, such as Targeted Attack, where there's still a penalty at the maximum. There are also techniques that don't have a cap. These become leveled perks: if there's a default penalty, the first level removes it; after that, each level adds a +1 bonus.

I have kept the “free points for Styles” idea, though, with one caveat: it replaces the cap on Style Perks (which is how I categorizes “Technique Perks”): instead of being limited to one Style Perk for every ten points spent on the style, you get a free Style Perk for every ten points spent on the Style.