GER (general efficiency rating)

[draxdeveloper]

I was thinking about CER and i thought that maybe (and just maybe) it's possible to make something to evaluate things in a more general way, creating a ER to different archetypes (combat, social, survival, explore, etc).
The GER would have subsets for different flavors if it's needed. The main one is the SGER (simplified GER). The CER is a approach that the GER would take to combat because is focused on DF. so the CER = "SCER".
The idea is to start with "great archetypes" and then take some of then and create "minor archetypes", the combat archetype is one of that can have minor archetypes.
Note: In SGER there is not great and minor archetypes, the only ones is: combat,survival,social,criminal(thief or any other name),explore,merchant(or loot, includes selling skills, crafting skills and skills used to evaluate price of the loot).
Things i now so far:
1) a ER is compared to a normal human, so a lot of times a item in a ER will be "take the skill level and subtract 10" with specif details if needed
2) there is some archetypes in BS, the other ones can be crated based on the rules (like the survival one)
3) with the exception of SGER, i don't pretend to create the flavors ones. But anyone can suggest then
4) not alll archetypes in BS are good ones to create a GER archetype. The exotic one is a example. Others is harder to make but i can think about two that i have a starting solution
4a)jack of all trades: With this we want to know how much skills the character have in a reasonable level, so i would say to take each skill with 12+ or more, subtract 12 of then and then sum then all. generalist talent give +2 per level
4b)specialist is the opposite of jack of all trades, you could do the same with jack of all trades(but change 12 to 18), but i don't think this is a good idea. Instead take the top 3 skills in the character (with talents, gear and anything that can give a bonus to it) and subtract 10, sum them all and then you have your SER (specialist efficient rating). The idea is to check how good you are in the best things you have
5)i know this is hard, i know that maybe it will just don't work, i know that i will have a lot of reading
6)Even if i can create this, i don't pretend to create an article because my english is not really good. So if someone want to create and article or anything else, be my guest.

[Captain Joy]

I like the idea of this. My only concern is that it might be a lot of work and not end up being much more useful than saying something like "150 point merchant” or "100 point con man".

[ericthered]

I have miss givings that anything other than a skill rating will be important for most activities. Combat is by far the most complex mini-game in gurps, including damage, HP, active defenses, DR, to hit skill, and whatever advantages get included. Compare this with say, investigation, which is pretty much just skill levels and a few advantages.

[Captain Joy]

Originally Posted by ericthered

I have miss givings that anything other than a skill rating will be important for most activities. Combat is by far the most complex mini-game in gurps, including damage, HP, active defenses, DR, to hit skill, and whatever advantages get included. Compare this with say, investigation, which is pretty much just skill levels and a few advantages.

Agreed. Although, it does imply that non-combat ER's would be trivial to calculate.

I once considered a double-indicator so both breadth and depth were tracked. E.g. an 5-16 social rating might mean five different social skills, with the highest skill level being 16.

[draxdeveloper]

Originally Posted by Captain Joy

Agreed. Although, it does imply that non-combat ER's would be trivial to calculate.

I once considered a double-indicator so both breadth and depth were tracked. E.g. an 5-16 social rating might mean five different social skills, with the highest skill level being 16.

It's something like this. But a social rating would include charisma and other advantages as well

[Captain Joy]

Originally Posted by draxdeveloper

It's something like this. But a social rating would include charisma and other advantages as well

Indeed, but generally, most of a character's interactions within the game-world are done via skills; and advantages tend to give bonuses to skills. So, I'm not sure advantages need to be directly tracked, anymore than attributes do.

If you wanted, to no. of skills-highest level, you might add no. of advantages-no. of points spent. Maybe a three-number rating: no. of advantages and skills-highest skill level-total points spent. E.g. Social 5-16-44.

[Andreas]

Originally Posted by ericthered

I have miss givings that anything other than a skill rating will be important for most activities. Combat is by far the most complex mini-game in gurps, including damage, HP, active defenses, DR, to hit skill, and whatever advantages get included. Compare this with say, investigation, which is pretty much just skill levels and a few advantages.

The number of information gathering advantages is quite large even if you don't consider those which just give bonuses to skills and Perception. Many different vision enhancements, Detect, Precognition, Scanning Sense, Oracle etc.