Another idea for the old skill VS Attribute conundrum

[gilbertocarlos]

Originally Posted by Kromm

Floating skills is indeed the Great Overlooked. Not to toot my own horn, but I don't think GURPS content is to blame for this . . . the published oeuvre is chock-a-block with examples. Rather, it's mostly due to a mixture of rules-lawyer players insisting on "getting their points' worth" by always using the skill based on its nominal controlling attribute, and GMs either giving in to that pressure or being uncomfortable about making judgment calls.

Mostly though, is because most rolls are based on the same attribute.

For 5 years I GMed for a player with the alchemy skill, and it's always an IQ based test(or, at most, a Per based test, with in most cases is the same thing).

In the same group, there is a swordsman, he rolled sword through DX hundreds of time, but only once against IQ(to appraise a sword value).

Originally Posted by Kromm

Perhaps interestingly, my initial vision of GURPS Fourth Edition had skills bought and recorded strictly as relative levels: -3, -2, -1, 0, +1, +2, etc. It left attribute selection to the GM, guided by examples. However, other people felt that not listing ready-to-roll-against levels was a bad idea, and that requiring the GM to pick an attribute for each use was an even worse idea. Thus, we settled on the current system.

That would be a problem, people don't tend to like to do math while playing, and doing that every time you roll a skill would be overkill.