Re-balancing skill costs vs attribute costs

[Curmudgeon]

As has already been pointed out, putting skills over to a 1 point/level cost without a cap is likely to encourage one trick pony characters. I would suggest that there are a few possible approaches to the problem but they are changes to the core rules about character creation and would probably require waiting for a 5th edition of GURPS.

Key to solving the problem is seeing how it arose in the first place. The cost pattern for skills is based on that used in 3rd Edition. The primary differences are that all skills now top out at a cost of 4 points/level whereas some skills topped out at 2 points/level and others at 8 points/level in 3rd Edition. Combat skills were particularly likely to end up in the 8 point cost group.

The other primary difference was that attribute cost was graduated in 3rd Edition, rather than flat as in 4th Edition. From a base of 10, each increase cost 10 points up to 13, 15 points each to 15, 20 points each to 17 and 25 points each thereafter. All attribute increase costs doubled after character creation. Consequently, one needed to have a significant number of skills based off the same attribute before increasing the attribute became cost effective and it required either the purchase of additional skills based off that attribute or increasing the skills individually from time to time, to keep it cost effective.

For example, if one has 10 DX-based skills at 1 point each, it's not cost effective to raise DX from 10 to 11 after character creation because it will cost you 20 points and you can raise each skill by 1 individually for 10 points. The break-even point for raising the attribute is 20 points up to DX 12. If your DX is 13; it'll cost 30 piints to raise it to 14. Even when it is cost effective to raise the attribute, it may be preferable to spend the points raising the skills individually as at least some skills will benefit immediately rather than keeping all skills at the lower level while waiting to accumulate the points to raise the attribute. If no new DX-based skills are added, one needs to raise at least some skills individually to reach the break-even point when the cost jumps from 20 points to 30 points.

Returning to a 3rd Edition cost progression for attributes, and possibly skills as well, would be my preference. Giving HT and ST a cost break to half price while keeping DX and IQ at full price to reflect that far more skills are dependent on the latter two attributes than the former would likely be acceptable to most players.

As another approach, Hero Games, at least as late as their 4th Edition, used a 1 (or for more powerful skills, 2) point/level cost. They got around the one trick pony problem by using a different base level than GURPS. Instead of tying the default directly to the attribute, they used a formula: Base skill level = 8 + (attribute/5) and for general skills which had no attribute, the base was a flat 11-. As can be seen, a Hero-like approach keeps the initial skill between 9 and 12 and attributes influence one's ability when first learning the skill but tend to level out in effectiveness after 4 or 5 points have been spent raising the skill. While this is a workable solution, it isn't likely to appeal to long-time GURPS players as it is a significant deviation in character design philosophy.

[Figleaf23]

Originally Posted by sgt.sargent

... We are now charging a flat 1 point per skill level and charging 25 points per level of IQ or DX, but limiting points in a single skill to half the governing attribute. For example, if a character had 12 IQ, they would only be able to put 6 points in an IQ-based skill.

Its working well for us, giving us more rounded characters and players who are more satisfied with the system as a whole. Even things like Techniques work, as previously people would either not take them or take 1 and treat that as a narrow skill they focused on. Now Techniques allow us to bypass the point cap for a subset of a skill, so they're at least as useful and we've given more consideration to taking more than one Technique for a single skill. Talents are used about as often as they ever were, along with secondary attributes. Even buying up skills from default is improved, at least in our eyes.

This sounds like a very interesting experiment. I particularly like the idea of having a cap on learning be proportional to the level of the attribute.

On the other hand, the high cost of attributes may constrain certain types of character build -- acrobats and geniuses. I may try a test run of your method but tweak the numbers to lower the attribute cost and require a higher price initial buy-in for the first level of skills, in proportion to their difficulty.

How are you handling IQ! and DX! in your system?

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Dr. Whom

Yes let your starting attributes be more fixed. Say, they can't be increased more than 2-3 levels from where they started at. This way not every pencil neck will become a Heman, and every muscle bound freak can't out do Einstein. Think of it as your genetic potential.

But what if some of those raises occured prior to gamestart?

It sounds to me as if you are assuming with 100% certainty that none of the PCs have ever had any attribute training before gamestart, and it's bad game design to have one set of rules for what happens prior to gamestart but then slightly different rules for later.

I do Attributes Are Your Genes in Sagatafl, and have attribute values affect the speed and cost of skill learning, in a multiplicative fashion, instead of adding additively to effective skill. It works well. It means more calculations must be performed, but the gain is well worth it.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by trooper6

I suppose I just don't have too much trouble because of utilizing other rules.

But do you only utilize rules?

Or is there another tool in your GM's toolkit too, that you use to get your playes to do what you want?

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by BaHalus

I like 3ed scheme with iq skills costing half and dx skills costing double. the low cost of iq skills make more interesting to investing in mental skills without raising Iq a lot. And the high cost of dx skills make it harder to over specialize in one single weapon, making it interesting to invest in techniques and to buy skills from default.

Returning to 3 ed values would solve both problems.

3rd Edition was stupid that way, because the sky-high cost of physcial skills and the low cost of mental skills revealed that GURPS 3rd Edition was a system obsessively focused on combat and other physical action, whereas 4th Edition takes a broader and more intelligent view of the issue of conflict.

[Figleaf23]

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

3rd Edition was stupid that way, because the sky-high cost of physcial skills and the low cost of mental skills revealed that GURPS 3rd Edition was a system obsessively focused on combat and other physical action, whereas 4th Edition takes a broader and more intelligent view of the issue of conflict.

I'm not sure I'd agree with that analysis. Frequently it seems to me that 4e has an obsessession with controlling the combat effectiveness of, for example, Advantages, at substantial cost to non-combat playability. (The change from a 1 hour activation time per 'use' in 3e to the 1 minute activation time in 4e, for example.)

[samd6]

There is a problem with placing skills into narrower price bands than they already are. If a player knows what they are doing, or in the right campaign, knot-tying will be much more useful than diplomacy.

BESM priced skills indivudally per adventure, but this lead to problems where Pilot Mecha was three times as expensive as Ride Dragon, and both dragon rider and mech jockey were valid concepts in the campaign. In BESM, the advantages "I have a Mech" and "I have a Dragon" were equivilently priced. This ment that it was cheaper to play a dragon rider than a mech jockey in a high-tech campaign.

[Azrael]

Originally Posted by BaHalus

For the cost fatigue thing, I was thinking... how about 10% for the first level and 5% for the other levels

This is similar what I have settled on doing. I had decided that requiring a ready/concentrate maneuver to activate had a cost of -5%. This seemed balanced compared to requires ready/concentrate from Powers (which requires continued ready/concentrate maneuvers to keep the ability active). Basically, I halved the value and rounded to the nearest increment of 5%. Also, it seemed balanced compared to a trigger which activated the ability which is -5% at the lowest level. The maneuver is simply a trigger. Finally, I reasoned that the limitation wasn't something that RAW gives you points for at all so it shouldn't be a huge discount. With -5% being the lowest reasonable limitation value I went with it.

So I just add this to the first level of Costs Fatigue if activation is required (and it wasn't before) for a net of -10% on the first level, and -5% for further levels. With this system it is also easy to build abilities that cost fatigue but don't require activation.

I should note that it may be advantageous for a particular ability to require activation. For example not having claws all the time might be advantageous in social situations. In this case the switchable enhancement makes more sense than requires ready/concentrate (activation only). In this case Costs Fatigue can be useful in cancelling out the cost of the enhancement. Note that by RAW you can't combine Costs Fatigue and Switchable. This is because by RAW Costs Fatigue already makes it switchable.

[ErhnamDJ]

Originally Posted by samd6

There is a problem with placing skills into narrower price bands than they already are. If a player knows what they are doing, or in the right campaign, knot-tying will be much more useful than diplomacy.

But that's a problem with any pricing, not just skills. In certain campaigns Mind Control will be worth significantly less than Luck, yet we still charge more than double for it.

If we assume we're pricing skills the same way we are pricing Mind Control and Luck, then how much more should Broadsword cost than Knot-Tying? Double? Triple? Quadruple? Octuple?

Advantage and Attribute pricing is already something I have a problem with. How much Charisma is Altered Time Rate really worth? Is it really twenty? How would we ever come up with that number? What is that even supposed to represent?

And we're trying to do that with every single trait that has a price. How many Haircut spells (or their meager equivalents) at skill 20 is Broadsword at 16 worth, or vice versa?

In the end, all pricing is arbitrary. The goal of pricing is to create this incentive structure, like with the example of the dragon versus the mecha. Prices serve to guide the players' choices. If you want them to ride dragons, then price them cheaper. But then it doesn't make much sense to have a universal pricing. My space pirates game doesn't need the same incentives as any other games, like DF or Action or Monster Hunters or supers or a detectives game or a Cthulhu game, or any other game that I can think of for that matter. So, I don't think it really makes very much sense to try to come up with universal player incentives. But that's what we're trying to do with setting these prices.

What I've been trying to do is make these things as modular as possible, to make it easier to change for each individual game. The way I've been trying to price skills--with each going into a separately priced tier--is easy to change for any particular game. In some games, Broadsword might be a Tier 1 skill, costing 10 times (or more!) the price of Knot-Tying, whereas in other games (none that I can imagine), those might be reversed. I think this also makes the most sense for a universal price, since it's at least priced based on utility somewhere. In what game is Biology with the listed price? None that I can imagine. In what game is Guns not undercosted? It's pretty rare for a game to have firearms where they're not worth the few points it takes to be proficient in them.

[sgt.sargent]

Originally Posted by Figleaf23

How are you handling IQ! and DX! in your system?

The only change in that regard is the higher cost of DX and IQ without tweaking secondary attributes. This leaves DX!, for example, at 20 points per level. And of course, lowered secondary attributes still count as Disadvantages.

On the subject of the cap, one of the things I like about it that I failed to mention before is the effect on the world class athlete. With the base system, if you want an Olympic level fencer the most efficient way to build him is with points in the fencing sport. Lowering DX helps you get there at lower point levels... With this option, an Olympic fencer has to be fairly Dexterous and is more likely to have a Technique or even two as a "signature moves", since now they allow him to bypass the cap.