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Old 03-27-2014, 08:55 AM   #11
Fred Brackin
 
Join Date: Aug 2007
Default Re: Talents & Martial Arts

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Originally Posted by Infornific View Post
My goal here in part was to allow the creation of characters like Selmy Barristan from A Game of Thrones. He's very good at knightly skills because he's been practicing for a very long time, not because of superb reflexes and coordination. Given his age, raw speed is probably limited anyway It doesn't follow (to me) that he should also be talented at climbing or stealth. A version where he has DX of 12 or 13 but knightly combat skills around 16-18 feels right to me but isn't very practical in GURPS..
What's wrong with giving him Skills at DX +4 or +5? It's a lot simpler and he doesn't really need all that many. He'd want DX+2 for Weapon Master effects anyway.

There's not a lot of durable reason to acquire multiple melee weapon skills anyway. Get a Fine Broadsword and you don't need a merely Good Axe and that's doubly true if you've got WM:Broadsword but not WM:Alll Knightly Weapons.

Who's Who made a perfectly good Wiliiam Marshall long before Talents were created. This looks like a solution in search of a problem to me.
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Old 03-27-2014, 09:01 AM   #12
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Default Re: Talents & Martial Arts

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Originally Posted by Fred Brackin View Post
There's not a lot of durable reason to acquire multiple melee weapon skills anyway. Get a Fine Broadsword and you don't need a merely Good Axe and that's doubly true if you've got WM:Broadsword but not WM:Alll Knightly Weapons.

Who's Who made a perfectly good Wiliiam Marshall long before Talents were created. This looks like a solution in search of a problem to me.
Isn't that the problem this solution is supposed to address? That is it's expensive to build a character with high levels of a lot of weapon skills, but that there is not a lot of benefit to it, making those wasted points even though the character concept may call for it.
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Old 03-27-2014, 09:54 AM   #13
Fred Brackin
 
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Default Re: Talents & Martial Arts

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Isn't that the problem this solution is supposed to address? That is it's expensive to build a character with high levels of a lot of weapon skills, but that there is not a lot of benefit to it, making those wasted points even though the character concept may call for it.
Why is wasting pts on a Talent superior to wasting pts on raw Skills or Attributes?
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Old 03-27-2014, 09:58 AM   #14
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Default Re: Talents & Martial Arts

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Originally Posted by Fred Brackin View Post
Why is wasting pts on a Talent superior to wasting pts on raw Skills or Attributes?
Attributes may be inappropriate for the concept, such as by making the putative veteran warrior incomparably graceful and masterful at all DX-skills, not just those actually related to his long experience and warlike training.

Talents, meanwhile, are a more point-efficient way to give characters high levels of multiple skills than raising every single individual skill in it.
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Old 03-27-2014, 10:11 AM   #15
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Default Re: Talents & Martial Arts

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You need to look at some of the martial arts templates.
By talent (all martial arts) I mean Brawling, Boxing, Judo, Karate, Sumo, and Wrestling. That's even a a rules-legal talent.
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You need to bump those up at least 5 points, just on the basis of number of skills covered. Let alone general utility - considered as limited DX, there is no way only for melee weapons is a -75% limitation, even -50% is pretty generous.
DX (no basic speed -25%, no noncombat skills -25%) looks totally reasonable. The additional -25% for only a certain category of combat skills is iffy, but there's granularity issues with talents.
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Old 03-27-2014, 10:18 AM   #16
Fred Brackin
 
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Default Re: Talents & Martial Arts

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Attributes may be inappropriate for the concept, such as by making the putative veteran warrior incomparably graceful and masterful at all DX-skills, not just those actually related to his long experience and warlike training.
.
Don't buy any DX Skills he's not supposed to be good at and take Quirk: Stomps around like he's clumsy. Incompetence: Dancing even.
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Old 03-27-2014, 10:27 AM   #17
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Default Re: Talents & Martial Arts

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Originally Posted by Infornific View Post
My goal here in part was to allow the creation of characters like Selmy Barristan from A Game of Thrones. He's very good at knightly skills because he's been practicing for a very long time, not because of superb reflexes and coordination. Given his age, raw speed is probably limited anyway It doesn't follow (to me) that he should also be talented at climbing or stealth. A version where he has DX of 12 or 13 but knightly combat skills around 16-18 feels right to me but isn't very practical in GURPS. Allowing a 10 point (or perhaps 15) Talent to represent his focused training and experience seems a better way of simulating the character.
Just curious, but how many points do you think Barristan Selmy should be? The way the books describe him, he was basically the top swordsman in Westeros in his day (and can still hold his own) and, admittedly, they do seem to indicate he was talented, not just skilled, but it may not be impractical to make him a DX 12 character who uses the skills from the Knightly Mounted Combat (High Medieval) style in Martial Arts, whose top skill is sword at ~18 (~20 in his youth).
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Old 03-27-2014, 10:43 AM   #18
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Default Re: Talents & Martial Arts

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Originally Posted by Fred Brackin View Post
Why is wasting pts on a Talent superior to wasting pts on raw Skills or Attributes?
I could see something like this for say a Buffy the Vampire Slayer Talent group that covers all melee/ and muscle powered missile weapon/thrown weapons for Slayers in addition to a high DX. While slayers typically either fight unarmed or with a stake, they also pick up skill mastery with new weapons with tremendous speed and relatively minimal training which hints at fast training times in combat skills.
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Old 03-27-2014, 10:49 AM   #19
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Default Re: Talents & Martial Arts

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Don't buy any DX Skills he's not supposed to be good at and take Quirk: Stomps around like he's clumsy. Incompetence: Dancing even.
Why?!?!?

That's a cludgy and inaccurate design.

Also, what do you do about DX-based skills he's clearly trained in, but not supposed to be as good at as he is at fighting?

He knows how to swim and climb, but he's not a world-famous climber and swimmer. He is, however, world famous as a lancer and swordsman, and he can evidently use axes, maces, staves and daggers at or close to 'best in the world' too.

I realise that you could model this by putting 24+ points into each and every individual combat skill, but that's monstrously inefficient. When you have a combat skill, adding 'back-up' ones has a much reduced utility.

For Advantages, this can be dealt with using Alternate Abilities costs. For skills, that rule in unusable, but Talents and Job Training offer another method to achieve the same thing.

Why is that a bad thing?
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Old 03-27-2014, 12:27 PM   #20
Fred Brackin
 
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Also, what do you do about DX-based skills he's clearly trained in, but not supposed to be as good at as he is at fighting?
He's going to want his best combat skills at DX+2 or more. Just one pt in other DX-based skills might well be enough. If that's still too much use Dabbler.

As to why custom Talents are bad it's not so much that they're "bad" as they are _whiny_. "I want a character who's good at a lot of DX-based Skills without having a high DX and I want it to be cheap too! So change the rules until I can get what I want!" irritates me.

There's usually a better, simpler answer elsewhere in the rules.
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