11-09-2018, 10:37 PM | #91 | |
Join Date: Aug 2009
Location: OK
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Re: Skills and Techniques are too expensive
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Taking a random character who doesn't have any adventurer useful skills and swapping out eight points of their stuff for eight points of a useful skill makes them a much, much more powerful character.
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"For the rays, to speak properly, are not colored. In them there is nothing else than a certain power and disposition to stir up a sensation of this or that color." —Isaac Newton, Optics My blog. Last edited by ErhnamDJ; 11-09-2018 at 10:43 PM. |
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11-09-2018, 10:57 PM | #92 |
Join Date: Feb 2016
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Re: Skills and Techniques are too expensive
Spending 8 CP on Broadsword is a modern campaign is questionable and it is probably a bad idea in an ultratech setting. Of course, modern and ultratech games tend to focus on very quick and very lethal ranged combat, so Broadsword just becomes an anachronism (honestly, it is almost better to invest in Bow rather than Broadsword, as bow hunting is actually a useful modern expression of the skill). Now, 8 CP in Knife would be useful...
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11-10-2018, 02:05 AM | #93 | ||||||||||||||||||
Banned
Join Date: Jul 2006
Location: 100 hurricane swamp
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Re: Skills and Techniques are too expensive
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I'lll grant I tend to run 'fantasy' and 'post-apoc' more than 'Surf Beach High', but I suspect that whswhs might actually surprise you with how often non-combat skills are more important in his games than combat skills are. And I've run campaigns where combat was very, very rare. As such, I'm fine the cost of skills. Even the non-combat ones in DFRPG. Quote:
Shooting your argument in the foot aren't you? Quote:
But if the Player wants it, and can articulate good reasons, then let them make the Character they want. Quote:
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If the Player is like me, they won't care that they put X points into Surfing and never use it, it's serving it's purpose just fine unrolled. Quote:
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For instance Enhanced Defenses are priced pretty objectively against skills and attributes. Where as Combat Reflexes is underpriced to 'incentivize' it's purchase. Take Enhanced Parry at 5 points. On one hand you can spend 8 points to increase your skill by 2 and your Parry by 1, or 5 points and just your Parry. I've watched Players build PCs with Enhanced Parry 3, this was not a bad choice. Quote:
And i those games I'd just either recommend the Player not take it, or do as I've done in other instances, and lower the price. No, I'm not dead against subjective pricing. I do it in my games, occasionally. I'm against it coming down from on high (except where it makes sense*). * IE where I agree with it (Signature Gear being changed in AtE), or don't care (Elves getting Unaging for free in DFRPG). Quote:
Vast gulf. Quote:
What they are is expensive. The same way Trained by a Master and Weapon Master are expensive, so they're only taken in games where enough points are handed out to make those purchases affordable. I see Enhanced Defenses quite often. Enhanced Dodge (the most expensive of the bunch) is a favorite in games I've run. Quote:
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It's just one of the sacred cows of GURPS. It's one of the 'subjectively priced' things I've railed against in the past. Quote:
Explain why you really need Surfing above DX +1 and therefore think it should be reduced. What other skills are you taking that could be dropped to afford your PC being the 'World's Best Surfer"? Is there a reason your PC needs to be the world champ*? Does it need to be DX+5? Would settling for DX +2 be okay? * Are you taking the Reputation that goes along with this? Other Sports skills? Swimming? Is Surfing at DX+5 being taken in a vacuum? That's the conversation that should be happening when your Players dump a ludicrous number of points into a 'non-core' skill for your game. Quote:
That's somewhat subjective, eh? What if (as a Player) I don't think they are 'good' skills? Do you lower them for me? Quote:
I suspect you'd think only 7 of those points are in 'good' skills (Staff, Hiking, Climbing, Stealth, Traps). The rest are in 'useless' skills like Alchemy, Occultism, Thaumatology, Hidden Lore (Elder Beings), Diagnosis, Esoteric Medicine (Alchemical), First Aid, Pharmacy (Herbal), Physiology (Elven), Poisons, Surgery, Cartography, Linguistics, Speed-Reading, Ritual Magic... and then 8 more points in 40 some odd other skills via Dabbler Perks... And yet, I enjoy playing him and he pulls his weight... because his 'lore and knowledge' skills are very, very useful, not because he's a fighter or even a good 'adventurer'. he's what happens when you drag a Sage into a dungeon... and it's fun. Should I have gotten (effectively) even more points so he's even better at what he does? Despite being able to pull his own weight without any 'good adventuring' skills? |
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11-10-2018, 11:08 AM | #94 |
Join Date: Dec 2007
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Re: Skills and Techniques are too expensive
The issue with Combat Reflexes is not "subjective pricing". It is priced that way because it's fine if every single character gets it in a combat oriented game and thats the maximum price that makes it feasible to earn it in play.
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11-10-2018, 11:39 AM | #95 | |
Join Date: Aug 2009
Location: OK
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Re: Skills and Techniques are too expensive
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If you don't think they should have said, "Unkillable 3 feels way more useful to me than Speak Underwater, so I'm going to make it cost way more," then how do you think they should have determined the relative prices of those two traits? If you were designing the game, and you had a list of traits with no prices, what method would you use to determine the prices? How would you go about figuring out which of Unkillable 3 or Speak Underwater would cost more, or if they should have the same price?
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"For the rays, to speak properly, are not colored. In them there is nothing else than a certain power and disposition to stir up a sensation of this or that color." —Isaac Newton, Optics My blog. |
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11-10-2018, 12:14 PM | #96 |
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
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Re: Skills and Techniques are too expensive
I can't give you a formal algorithm for this. But I can tell you that I've made up a number of new traits for GURPS, in a long succession of books going back to GURPS Steampunk, and it's never been down to simply "I can assign it any point cost I feel like." There have always been ways to compare a new trait with existing traits as a way of assigning a plausible range of values. And a number of times, I've had discussions with Kromm in which he presented such analyses as a basis for revising my proposed values—which have not turned simply on "Because I'm Kromm and I say so."
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Bill Stoddard I don't think we're in Oz any more. |
11-10-2018, 12:20 PM | #97 | |
Join Date: Aug 2009
Location: OK
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Re: Skills and Techniques are too expensive
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But my question was about a hypothetical situation in which there were traits, but no prices. If you were faced with a situation in which there were no prices at all, and you were tasked with assigning them, what method would the poster suggest for determining the relative prices of the traits? That was my question.
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"For the rays, to speak properly, are not colored. In them there is nothing else than a certain power and disposition to stir up a sensation of this or that color." —Isaac Newton, Optics My blog. |
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11-10-2018, 12:54 PM | #98 |
Banned
Join Date: Jul 2006
Location: 100 hurricane swamp
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Re: Skills and Techniques are too expensive
You start assigning prices to traits you want or expect to see purchased frequently, like Attributes and Skills, and move along from there as whswhs outlined. Comparing things, playtesting, etc, till you found a range of prices that suit the needs of the game.
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11-10-2018, 01:04 PM | #99 | |
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
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Re: Skills and Techniques are too expensive
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A value can be judged relative to another value, and once we have assigned that first point value, we can reasonably ask if the value we assign to a second trait makes sense relative to the first. But it's all relative values. Of course, there are pragmatic considerations. We're going to be playing a game that involves rolling dice; so we probably want numbers that are likely to come up on some reasonable number of dice—7 on 2d6, 10 on 3d6, 50 on d100, for example. Or, your example, cost of skills relative to stats: If a skill costs 1, 2, or 4 points per level, and you object to its being cheaper to buy +1 to a stat than to buy +1 to five high-level skills, then you are asking to have a stat cost more than 20 points per level. But if, say, you double it, you are by implication doubling the point budget that characters should start out with, and that implies doubling the number of skills they might buy; instead of trading off +1 IQ for up to 20 IQ-based skills, you're trading it off for up to 40 IQ-based skills. That means either splitting skills up more narrowly and fussily (with more arguments over "Do you use Streetwise or Urban Survival to do X?"), or having characters able to start with twice as many skills, which will give you more overlap in skill sets and make it harder to have distinctive niches. There ain't no such thing as a free game mechanic.
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Bill Stoddard I don't think we're in Oz any more. |
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11-10-2018, 01:22 PM | #100 | |
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
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Re: Skills and Techniques are too expensive
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Then, in 4/e, Kromm and Pulver generalized it; since I had set the earning rate at 5% of starting wealth, they made 1 point pay for 1% of starting wealth, and also provided Debt, which meant having to pay 1% of starting wealth to another person per -1 point. There were certainly some judgment calls in this. But it was never just arbitrary. It was always possible to say, "Okay, that's too extreme a value and will lead to unreasonable outcomes in play." But that's the sort of thing that is best guided not by some set of mathematical axioms, but by experience in running games and the judgment acquired from doing so.
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Bill Stoddard I don't think we're in Oz any more. |
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