Limiting skills available

[foxanik]

Hello!
I just cut down skill limits specifically for my campaign (very similar to Warhammer 2ed) but it's still big list (maybe like 180 skills). And I thought about making something similar like in D&D where skills available to take are reduced by your INT.

Let's say you can choose skills in number equal to IQ+X.
But what should be X? Maybe change IQ to something else?

I do it mostly because I see how players make characters nowadays in my group - they take ~40 skills from list and later can't use all of them.

What do you think about this idea?

[Mailanka]

Originally Posted by foxanik

Hello!
I just cut down skill limits specifically for my campaign (very similar to Warhammer 2ed) but it's still big list (maybe like 180 skills). And I thought about making something similar like in D&D where skills available to take are reduced by your INT.

Let's say you can choose skills in number equal to IQ+X.
But what should be X? Maybe change IQ to something else?

I do it mostly because I see how players make characters nowadays in my group - they take ~40 skills from list and later can't use all of them.

What do you think about this idea?

I do think it's wise to limit skills. Letting players select from a list of appropriate skills makes more sense than forcing them to pick through all the skills, many of which aren't relevant (Beam Weapons (Rifle) in a fantasy game, for example).

But I wouldn't limit skills based on someones IQ. For one thing, IQ doesn't measure someone's learning capacity, but their innate talent for primarily non-physical skills. For example, you can have IQ 20 and the disadvantage "Cannot Learn." That's the sort of thing you might see with a highly capable robot that can only perform feats that it currently has the skill-software to run. For another thing, skills are a little all over the board when it comes to how much ground they cover. For example, "melee weapons" get subdivided to the point where we differentiate between broadswords, short swords and two-handed swords, while all the disciplines of physics gets lumped into "physics." Thus X number of skills may represent completely different amounts of information, depending on what people take.

A better way to "limit" skills might be to create templates. The scattering of capability might come from players trying to cover all their bases. If they have to pick a template, and that template focuses their capability down to fewer skills, then it's still mission accomplished.

(Though 40 skills doesn't sound that strange to me)

(EDIT: I just checked some of the PCs in my games and they tend to have between 25-31 skills, so perhaps 40 is indeed high)

[Icelander]

I would avoid doing either, as it seems to me neither particularly realistic nor likely to produce characters suitable to your campaigns. I'd suggest guiding the players to suitable skills during the character creation process, defining 'suitable' as those skills you think will be important during the campaign. If they want other skills than that, warn them that these won't be likely to come up in play, but if they maintain that it is important to the concept, see if you can't come to some arrangment between you, where you agree to have that skill be relevant in some way (perhaps only as a colour detail, perhaps as a vital piece of knowledge).

I would also specifically avoid having IQ govern whether or not you could take certain skills. That's not what GURPS IQ represents. Real life people who are thought smart or who have a very high tested IQ (real-world, not GURPS) will not necessarily have high GURPS IQ. A genius physicist with a sky-high IQ in real-life might be modelled in GURPS with IQ 10, a couple of level of Talent relevant to his field and a high level of whatever Physics speciality he studies.

Having very high GURPS IQ is reserved for people who are good at defaults and at skills they haven't had much time to study. Thus, it's usually not cost-effective to take it for characters unless they are meant to be capable over a wide range of different tasks, ranging from academic to social to political to administrative and more. High IQ characters in GURPS don't have access to any skills not available to low or average IQ ones, they just need less time to become proficient at them.

[gilbertocarlos]

Don't go through all the list finding skills, instead, take a few templates that fit the character, and take some skills similar to the character concept.

[ericthered]

I think limiting the overall number of skills that can be taken is a good idea, but I'd put the number somewhere between 20 and 30. Just pick a number and stay with it. You may want to discount skills bought from default, charging only half of a "skill slot" for them.

please note this wrecks havoc with spells, and shouldn't be used.

[starslayer]

I don't want to point fingers, but- what type of game are you running where your players FEEL they need 40 skills?

This might be more of a player/GM relationship thing rather then a player bad at designing PCs thing.

With my own players I generally specify that you need:
1- Some way to talk through things
2- some way to fight through things
3- some way to get from A-B
4- The ability to spot stuff
5- the ability to hide from stuff
6- the ability to get through things

I generally accept any reasonable skill in any given situation (intimidation to get a police officer to not give you a ticket, sure; but the consequences for failure would be problematic, forced entry for every lock you ever encounter, whatever, forced entry to disable security systems, I guess it would be covered roll at -4)

this generally results in between 6-15 skills.

If you are being oddly specific about the skill required for a given situation, or your players think you are, then this can result in 'overskilling'

[foxanik]

Originally Posted by gilbertocarlos

Don't go through all the list finding skills, instead, take a few templates that fit the character, and take some skills similar to the character concept.

Well, that's the problem with my players, they go through whole list that I've already cut down for them and take whatever they find useful and later I find out that medieval-type soldier has enormous list of skills but he has only 10 in Brawling, where my thief had 12.

It's just probably bad idea to give out them whole lists, because they suddenly forgets about character concept.

[Frost]

I am with starslayer on this one, much of the problem seems to be communication. You don't have to keep looking over the players shoulder the whole time but it can be useful to provide some level of guidence. While I won't recomend templates (I have never liked them, for reasons I am not going to repeat here) it can be useful to use an old (3e) idea and provide a setting or genera dependent list of typical occupations with minimum nessecary skills advantages etc.

Also get your players talking about what the campaign needs and even better get them in the same place when generating characters. I often find that people will be content to leave off taking skills that they feel are useful but either don't realy fit their concept or act as a point sink if somebody else has got it covered*.

Lastly if all else fails you might try something of a brute force approach and, at least as a one off excercise, try to drop the ammount of points that you are giving them forcing them to specialise more.

*There may be a downside to this approach, while it usualy acts to counter point spread I was a member of a group that having become accustomed to this practice developed the concept of a list of 'adventuring skills' that every character needed at a fairly high minimum level in every campaign. Taking these was then enforced through this sort of discussion.

[NightHawk]

I am also of the opinion that limiting the skills characters can pick from is a very bad idea. When you limit people they get easily discouraged and just can't be bothered to play.

I am in the same opinion as a few others in this thread that guidance is probable they best approach, helping your group make more well rounded characters showing them that specialization in a few skills is much more effective then being a jack of all trades is your best bet.

Many players love to be jack of all trades and honestly if they want to do it I say let them... it won't be long before they realize that having so many skills is not really advantageous in a good campaign.

Even come up with suggestions of skills that might be more appropriate to the style of campaign you are running. If they stray from this then that is fine, this should come out in your game play as the campaign will quickly show them that they have a lot of useless skills.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by foxanik

Well, that's the problem with my players, they go through whole list that I've already cut down for them and take whatever they find useful ...

A possible solution for this is to create some wildcard skills that cover the skills needed for a character concept. Monster Hunters 1, p28-31, has some examples of this, for that genre.