Skills, skills everywhere

[Gollum]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

Don't forget Dabbler!

I don't know that perk. I begin to understand how it works (thanks to this thread) but, as far as I understand it, it doesn't sound to be a miraculous solution: how many skills are involved when you take it?

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

If most people are 25 point characters with no severe disadvantages, we probably don't actually have 30+ points in skills. Especially when you consider that most of us have one or two job related skills at professional levels.

Did you ever try to stat yourself as a GURPS character?

For myself, it's impossible to do it with only 25 points. I'm not at all a superman, neither a hero, but I learned a lot of different things. So, I have a lot of skills and not just at the default level...

The "problem" of GURPS 4th edition (which is not really a problem, since it is a game mainly design for adventures) is that there is not anymore the half-point of the third edition. This half point was interesting to create ordinary people who know a lot of things at a low level.

Another "problem" (which is neither a true problem) is that GURPS skills are very specialized. Take Games, for instance, or Sports. If you know well enough 3 of them, you have to take 3 different skills.

I can play chess, checkers, several card games, several wargames and game master at minimum 5 different role playing games. Add to that the fact that my karate style requires two different skills (Judo and Karate), and a dozen of different techniques (if I use Martial Arts) and you will quickly understand that my character sheet will have more than 10 different skills just for my leisure activities!

The 25 points are made to design an average NPC or very quickly made PC for games where they die often (like an horror one shot adventure): a job, only one leisure activity, and a couple of other skills to customize it.

But a soon as you want to create a detailed realistic character, you need more than that.

[Gollum]

Originally Posted by Refplace

Yeah but when the eternal driving thread came up most of us agreed that the average commutter is probably operating at default too.

I contributed a lot to these eternal driving threads and, in my humble opinion, most of us agreed on the fact that the default level is not sufficient for someone who drive for many years.

The default level is just fine as soon as there is no danger... But we all meet a danger from time to time (bad weather, ice, road hog...). And then, the default level is not anymore sufficient to avoid a disaster.

So, drivers who drive for many years, especially in areas with bad weather conditions, surely have 1 or 2 points in the Driving skill.

[Gollum]

Originally Posted by Kenneth Latrans

Cooking, as most people use it, is covered by the -3 default from Housekeeping (which in turn is usually known only at the 1-point level, except by professional housekeepers, stay-at-home wives, and the like).

Yes, you're right. And that's even what I wrote in the previous pages of this thread...

Having said that, there are many little skills that don't default to each other, as Games (role playing games), Games (chess) and Games (poker) for instance and that a lot of people know well without being professional for all that...

[ErhnamDJ]

Real people usually have a lot of skills in the range that GURPS doesn't handle very well. If someone lazy ekes out a PhD, then going by the physician skill levels thread, then they have skill 11.

And since a normal use of a skill gives between +4 and +10, with equipment bonuses for a lot of the things modern people do, that means most normal people are operating in the skill 7, 8, 9, and 10 range with their skills. And those are the levels that are jumped over all at once--with the levels in-between ignored--when you put a single point into a skill.

Another thing is that once you raise an attribute a level or two, say IQ to 11 or 12, then you can't get those lower skill levels at all anymore once you put a point into the skill.

This is sort of solved by the Dabbler perk, but I think it would be better to have some way to purchase those lower skill levels. I do that in my games with fractional points.

I agree that the learning rules are much too generous with the on the job training stuff. I wouldn't allow those for anything other than removing a familiarity penalty (which I would also apply to defaults). That would explain how people improve a little at their jobs and then hit a brick wall. If you can only improve your skills from deliberate practice, then most people are only going to do enough to reach the bare minimum.

There's also the issue of human learning not being in relation at all to any kind of attribute. There aren't people out there who learn skills at multiple times the rate of other normal people (though the inverse of that isn't true; there really are people with learning disabilities).

If you wanted to have realistic characters, their sheets would probably be littered with skills in the 7 and 8 range, with the rare 9s and 10s. To regularly handle those skill levels like we do in real life, I think we would need to more fully integrate the task difficulty modifiers. I often find myself playing with GMs who have very different ideas about what TDM different tasks should have. This encourages taking higher skill levels.

[simply Nathan]

Originally Posted by Gollum

how many skills are involved when you take it?

What it does is rather than a single point going into a single skill and giving what is usually +4 to default, you divide it into eight smaller units; each 1/8th of a point gives +1 to a default, 1/4 of a point gives +2 to the default, and 1/2 point gives +3 to default. And there is no realistic limit on the number of times you could take this Perk, just a gamist limit on the number of Perks to take before your character sheet is too cluttered to play with.

Did you ever try to stat yourself as a GURPS character?

Many times, vastly overestimating my competency. Now that I know about Dabbler and the meaning of default skill values, I wouldn't give myself IQ 12-13 and a point total around 100 anymore; I don't actually have many skills at a workable level

For myself, it's impossible to do it with only 25 points.

Same here, but this is because I have a decent attribute spread, very few Disadvantages, and several of those minor 5-point Advantages like Resistant to Poison, Resistant to Disease, and Eidetic Memory. I'm a person in the 50-75 range.

I'm not at all a superman, neither a hero, but I learned a lot of different things. So, I have a lot of skills and not just at the default level...

You very likely don't qualify for a full point in more than one dozen skills, but if you really are well-read and have a broad education you might have as many Dabbler perks as needed to have better-than-usual defaults in a few areas.

I can play chess, checkers, several card games, several wargames and game master at minimum 5 different role playing games.

Checkers gets a decent default from chess from what I can tell, and is a fairly simple game. Being able to play it doesn't even indicate much if any more familiarity than default. And as for RPGs, I'd say that's a single skill of Games(Role-Playing) with Techniques for different rulesets, since the basic principles are shared between systems for the most part.

The 25 points are made to design an average NPC or very quickly made PC for games where they die often (like an horror one shot adventure): a job, only one leisure activity, and a couple of other skills to customize it.

But a soon as you want to create a detailed realistic character, you need more than that.

25 is the low end of "normal person", the range is 25-50. That's plenty of points to give someone 20 points' worth in a dozen or so skills, which covers detailed and realistic people just fine.

[Figleaf23]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

Driving is supposedly a default for most people according to Kromm (but he lives in Montreal and not say Yucca Valley California so maybe he's talking about urban Canadians).

An ironic phenomenon is that the proponents of 'typical drivers use default' probably let PCs increase their Drive skill for doing something once in an adventure that many typical RW people do repeatedly throughout their life.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Figleaf23

An ironic phenomenon is that the proponents of 'typical drivers use default' probably let PCs increase their Drive skill for doing something once in an adventure that many typical RW people do repeatedly throughout their life.

CP expenditure and hours-of-training don't match nicely anyway.

[Gollum]

Originally Posted by Kenneth Latrans

What it does is rather than a single point going into a single skill and giving what is usually +4 to default, you divide it into eight smaller units; each 1/8th of a point gives +1 to a default, 1/4 of a point gives +2 to the default, and 1/2 point gives +3 to default. And there is no realistic limit on the number of times you could take this Perk, just a gamist limit on the number of Perks to take before your character sheet is too cluttered to play with.

This rule is very interesting! Exactly what is missing to my games... Indeed, as perfectly said by ErhnamDJ, what was missing in GURPS 4 without it was precisely that: something between the default level and 1 point.

I'm not a very good driver, for instance, not even a good amateur one: I never took part in amateur races or other "sportive" training with cars; I just content myself with driving for ordinary travels. But I like driving, do it almost every day for more than 25 years, so I've certainly not only 5 or 6 in my driving skill! I sometimes avoid hazards like a little girl suddenly crossing the street just in front of my car (last year) which would not be possible in GURPS rules with such a low base skill.

Originally Posted by Kenneth Latrans

Many times, vastly overestimating my competency. Now that I know about Dabbler and the meaning of default skill values, I wouldn't give myself IQ 12-13 and a point total around 100 anymore; I don't actually have many skills at a workable level

I wouldn't either. My basic attributes are surely in the 10 to 11 range. But I have a lot of different skills. As a school teacher, I learn a lot, in a lot of different fields of knowledge. This is part of my job, and I love that. People who know me usually say that I'm very cultivated.

That is why default levels are not sufficient. I these skills, I know more than ordinary people... But not as much as people who learned these skill and have a diploma.

So the Dabbler perk is really a great help here.

Originally Posted by Kenneth Latrans

Checkers gets a decent default from chess from what I can tell, and is a fairly simple game. Being able to play it doesn't even indicate much if any more familiarity than default. And as for RPGs, I'd say that's a single skill of Games(Role-Playing) with Techniques for different rulesets, since the basic principles are shared between systems for the most part.

The problem of the default level is that it doesn't make any difference between a beginner, who just learned the rules the day before, and someone who play for leisure, like I do. I'm not very good. A skill level of 10-11 would be to high for me. But a beginner would still have no chance to beat me (unless being much smarter than I am, of course).

Originally Posted by Kenneth Latrans

25 is the low end of "normal person", the range is 25-50. That's plenty of points to give someone 20 points' worth in a dozen or so skills, which covers detailed and realistic people just fine.

I fully do agree. I was just answering to Sir Pudding post who meant that 30 skills was impossible for most average people. Average people are designed with 25-50 points, indeed, and may have a lot of different skills if they learned a lot of different things rather than focusing on fewer ones at higher levels.

[Figleaf23]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

CP expenditure and hours-of-training don't match nicely anyway.

However, I was not talking about hours of training.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Figleaf23

However, I was not talking about hours of training.

Then what are you comparing? Skill-ups by CP expenditure only happen on adventures, not with mooks like us.