What's the highest skill level you've ever had for a PC or NPC?

[maximara]

Originally Posted by Boomerang

Oh no, they have appropriate advantages in addition to the numbers I have quoted above, making their effective skill even higher!

Having ridiculously high base skills does make sense in the context of the campaign world. Overmind for example is a genius with near instant access to the sum total of all human knowledge up until the mid 21st century.

Going back over the meaning of skills levels section I think these high skills levels are the result of a misunderstanding of what skill levels represent.

"Your unmodified skill level is called your base skill. It measures your odds of success at an “average” task under adventuring conditions – in other words, in a stressful situation where the consequences of failure are significant." This mean the skill level does not measure the depth of knowledge in that skill. Heck, you have have Science!-10 and know every science skill in the game but even though it is a wildcard skill you still relatively suck at using that skill under adventuring conditions (only 60% of the time).

The only advantage Skill-16+ grants is the ability to have a decent effective skill level with regards to a task that has penalties. Since Task Difficulty penalities effectively maxes out at -10 effectively implying -11 or higher penalties are "impossible" regardless of what the adjusted skill level says (Basic Set pg 171) it make little sense to go over Skill-26.

Even with the special wildcard abilities, per the suggested cap of 7, anything above 17 is not all that useful and even if the old cap of 10 is used 20+ is not all that useful except with regards to Task Difficulty penalties.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by maximara

The only advantage Skill-16+ grants is the ability to have a decent effective skill level with regards to a task that has penalties. Since Task Difficulty penalities effectively maxes out at -10 effectively implying -11 or higher penalties are "impossible" regardless of what the adjusted skill level says (Basic Set pg 171) it make little sense to go over Skill-26.

Even with the special wildcard abilities, per the suggested cap of 7, anything above 17 is not all that useful and even if the old cap of 10 is used 20+ is not all that useful except with regards to Task Difficulty penalties.

Just not true. Range penalties go up to -16 at a thousand yards and the longest sniper shots made in reality are at a -19 range penalty, with the several second flight time adding a further penalty of several levels on average.

'Impossible' isn't meant literally or to imply that no harder task could exist. It just means that an ordinary person couldn't do it. Experts with specialized tools, extreme natural talents and a lot of practice absolutely do and might even do it routinely.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by Icelander

Just not true. Range penalties go up to -16 at a thousand yards and the longest sniper shots made in reality are at a -19 range penalty, with the several second flight time adding a further penalty of several levels on average.

A firefight in the dark is probably starting at a -6 to -9 penalty, with up to say a -4 for range (larger if people have very high Vision checks and can thus see people further away), a -2 or more for crouching or cover, and quite possibly another -2 or more for bad ground (and a lot of ground is 'bad' when you can barely see). That's an easy -14 to -17, and my players really like the option of vitals and skull shots at all times, so they'd really like to be able to soak about -20 in penalties. None of them can do this and keep a 16- effective skill (the best can almost do so), but I'm sure they'd like to be able to.

Oh yes - they also like to hit with most or all of their shots, and with a RoF10 laser that means they want an effective skill of at least 20-, and the RoF bonus is only +2. Recently they've decided that they like doing all this without aiming (probably at least in part because I've nerfed the Acc of most hand-held beam weapons somewhat).

Yes, my players are greedy. Nevertheless, they certainly have use for massive skill levels.

[SolemnGolem]

In an early build, I was statting up a Ravenloft lich lord who could raise very large numbers of undead as a trivial action. Azalin can animate undead in a 2-mile radius (Roots of Evil) as a free action (say it's 1 second).

Accordingly, I think I had to boost the lich's "Mass Zombie" spell skill to ridiculous levels.

I don't have that early build anymore (I just used the "Army of Undead" and "Aura of Death" powers from Pyramid 25 at page 5), but a back of the envelope calculation would be:

Mass Zombie: requires 1 minute per yard of radius.

2 miles is 3,520 yards. The spell should take 211,200 seconds to cast (i.e. 3,520 radius times 60 seconds in a minute).

To get this down to 1 second, we'd need to halve it 17 times or so. (There might be some inaccuracies due to rounding, but since you round down, this is an upper conservative limit.) The first "halving effect" of casting time occurs at skill level 20, and each additional 5 skill levels gives you an additional halving effect.

Thus it would be 20 + (16 x 5) skill levels.

Azalin would have a conservative estimate minimum of 100 skill levels in Mass Zombie to do this. Obviously there are much more points-efficient ways, as I later learned.

Edit: the energy cost of casting this spell is also very significant, and if we want to wrestle this down to something manageable, it would require even more levels, since energy cost reductions are arithmetic (unlike casting time reductions, which are geometric). The base cost to cast Mass Zombie at a 2 mile radius is 7 x 3,520 = 24,640. Each full multiple of five skill levels above 10 gives you a 1 FP discount to the spell cost.

At spell skill level 100, you get a discount of 19 points of energy cost, which is a not-very-feasible 24,621 FP.

To reduce the energy cost to 1 FP, the caster would need to lower the cost by 24,639, and thus must know the spell at skill level (10 + (5 x 24,639)), which would be skill level 123,205.

This would be a few thousand points shy of 500,000 character points to buy, depending on IQ and Magery.

I guess I'll go with the advantage build instead.

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by Icelander

With ranged combat skills, a darkness penalty of -5 or more is pretty routine and unless the encounter takes place at melee distances, a range penalty of -7 or more is also fairly usual. So -12 or more in penalties isn't a contrived, unbelievable situation, it's pretty much expected for a firefight that the PCs expect to win (because they have awesome skills and the opposition hopefully doesn't).

Wait, you're routinely having people shooting across the full length of warehouses with the lights out and hitting a different mook each second? without the benefit of gunslinger?

That's a crazy game. I'm kind of dumbfounded.

I'll admit weapon skills do tend to have more meaning at sky high levels than other skills.

[awesomenessofme1]

Originally Posted by ericthered

Wait, you're routinely having people shooting across the full length of warehouses with the lights out and hitting a different mook each second? without the benefit of gunslinger?

That's a crazy game. I'm kind of dumbfounded.

I'll admit weapon skills do tend to have more meaning at sky high levels than other skills.

That's not too much of an exaggeration of the kind of thing that happens frequently in action movies.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by ericthered

Wait, you're routinely having people shooting across the full length of warehouses with the lights out and hitting a different mook each second? without the benefit of gunslinger?

That's a crazy game. I'm kind of dumbfounded.

I'll admit weapon skills do tend to have more meaning at sky high levels than other skills.

Absent the skill levels to do that, PCs don't really have any business getting into combat encounters at the rate typical action-adventure protagonists do. Statistically, you need either massive advantages in tactical ability, training and equipment or near-magical levels of luck to survive dozens of gunfights with any reliability.

Note that if the very skilled PCs are rolling against 6 to 8 for suppressive fire, there is at least a chance that the (usually more numerous) NPCs are not hitting even if they do manage to Aim.

[Boge]

Originally Posted by ericthered

Broadsword -24-ish can be really fun to see in the hands of someone who knows what they're doing, but I suspect it would get stale quickly. Its nice to have targeting chinks while taking a deceptive attack penalty be an option.

I agree with you that it COULD be more fun with the right situation. Knowing I could do a rapid strike stab to the eyes of two different foes and still succeed on my rolls can be enjoyable.

The problem I found was that the GM just made his NPCs better too. So in order to hit them, I HAD to do deceptive strikes, or they would just parry with their 12-14 defenses. And on the flip side, with a defense of 14-16 yourself, there isn't much tension knowing that you have an 85% chance to defend. And if you don't, they have to roll high enough to bypass your armor. And if that actually does enough, you still have your health roll, which is another 75% chance of success. And if that fails too, you still have your friends to pick you up.

But in the end, it basically just added more math to our combat experience.

[David Johnston2]

30. The highest skill level I've ever used is 30. If I accidentally generated a skill higher than based on nothing more than modifiers, I'd probably rethink my modifiers.

[awesomenessofme1]

Here's a random specific example: An AK-47 or M-16 (mid-range weapons in terms of size) has a Bulk of -5. That means to Move and Attack while using an AK will reach penalties of -10 or more quickly even at relatively short ranges. That's an incredibly common thing to happen in action fiction. And there are man-portable weapons with Bulk ratings double that or higher.