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Old 03-30-2014, 12:40 PM   #61
Peter V. Dell'Orto
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Default Re: Talents & Martial Arts

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Originally Posted by DangerousThing View Post
Martial Arts has a solution for adding a martial arts talent: Wildcard Styles. If a wildcard for all skills in the style is 12 points in all skills in a style is fair (debatable, but I like it) then a talent that covers every skill in a style should cost about this or more if the talent has other advantages.
The thing with pricing a martial arts talent is you have to decide how it applies, and what it applies to. Does it apply to all the parts of the style (and thus its techniques), just the physical skills, etc. Does it fold in some of the perks - turning Style Familiarity into a free feature of the talent at its first level, say. Or come with additional benefits?

A Wildcard is pretty broad, and comes with its own pros and cons that won't suit all games.

You might not want to have both in a campaign. Or be able to usefully benefit from both, if they are both in a campaign.

I can see Talents as fitting into a niche that neither raw skill nor Style! covers, but it's a hard niche to have if you are trying to balance them all together. That's probably not a great idea - Style! makes zero attempt to price styles as anything other than a single skill, no matter how narrow or broad the martial arts style is. Talents would price out depending on the contents of the styles.

I do like the idea of style talents, but I'm still pretty unsure of how I'd want to implement them if I used them myself.
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Old 03-30-2014, 12:40 PM   #62
Peter Knutsen
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Default Re: Talents & Martial Arts

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Originally Posted by Anthony View Post
Eh, being good at all martial arts is not substantially better than being good at only one -- mostly, it gets you the ability to do both grappling and striking. I don't see a real balance problem with allowing 5 point talents with 'all melee weapons' or 'all unarmed combat' or 'all ranged weapons', or a 10 point talent that covers all three categories.
I'm not too adverse to it either. One must always keep in mind that the alternative to the player buying the broad Talent he wants is that he'll just buy up his DX or IQ instead.

Furthermore, even GMs who find such broad Talents unreasonable have no legitimate objection to such Talents posited as supernatural Powers, defined and flavoured with appropriate Limitations, e.g. as divine gifts (something proposed in GURPS Fantasy, but AFAIK sadly never touched upon again since then).
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Old 03-30-2014, 12:41 PM   #63
Peter Knutsen
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Default Re: Talents & Martial Arts

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Originally Posted by Icelander View Post
Since having higher levels of Experienced in my game allows the buying of supernatural warrior-esque gifts like Injury Tolerance: Damage Reduction, warriors will aim to have whatever DX suits their characterisation and otherwise rely on Experienced.
Does your setting have other similar Talents, for other character concepts? Or is Experienced a unique thing?
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Old 03-30-2014, 12:43 PM   #64
Peter Knutsen
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Default Re: Talents & Martial Arts

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Originally Posted by malloyd View Post
You need to bump those up at least 5 points, just on the basis of number of skills covered. Let alone general utility - considered as limited DX, there is no way only for melee weapons is a -75% limitation, even -50% is pretty generous.
While I like much of the Icelander's thinking, I agree with this. All Combat skills is clearly 15 CP/lvl.

But sub-dividing the DX that GURPS has chosen to employ is a tricky business, and one that I'm glad not to have to be involved in.
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Old 03-30-2014, 12:46 PM   #65
Peter Knutsen
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Default Re: Talents & Martial Arts

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Originally Posted by Peter V. Dell'Orto View Post
You've got a point there. Still, a talent for all combat skills would run at most 15 points (since DX is 20), so you wouldn't want any single style to cost more than 10 or it's really too expensive for what you get.

You can also limit it to the physical skills in a style, to avoid Artist (Cartooning) getting covered. Heh.
I think limiting it to physical is a good idea, yes. That does rule out Camouflage from a ninjitsu martial art... Sorry, dude, you're just gonna have to buy that up from your IQ, regular way.

My own "least bad" fix, for the mess that is GURPS, is to raise the cost of DX and IQ to 25/lvl, and to have not three but four breadths of Talent, costing 6, 9, 12 and 15 CP, instead of 5, 10 and 15.

And in fact there should perhaps be a 5th bread, 18 CP/lvl for ultra-broad Talents, in my scheme. Either way, the intent is for the narrowest Talent grade to be used sparingly.
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Old 03-30-2014, 12:48 PM   #66
Peter Knutsen
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Default Re: Talents & Martial Arts

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Originally Posted by Fred Brackin View Post
Why is wasting pts on a Talent superior to wasting pts on raw Skills or Attributes?
I don't think anybody is saying it is a waste to buy Attributes, but yes, many seem to agree with me that spending a lot of points on Skill is an unattractive choice for the player.
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Old 03-30-2014, 12:49 PM   #67
Peter Knutsen
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Default Re: Talents & Martial Arts

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Originally Posted by Anthony View Post
By talent (all martial arts) I mean Brawling, Boxing, Judo, Karate, Sumo, and Wrestling. That's even a a rules-legal talent.
It is, however, contrary to GURPS' terminology usage, in which "martial" does not mean "exclusively unarmed" nor "exclusively Eastern".

If you want to posit a Talent to all Unarmed skills, then call it Unarmed Talent, not Martial Arts Talent.
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Old 03-30-2014, 12:55 PM   #68
Peter Knutsen
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Default Re: Talents & Martial Arts

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Originally Posted by malloyd View Post
and bump the Talent to the next category if you are going with pentaphilic granularity on Talents, combat skills feel a little too useful for pushing right up to the edge of the jump with 6.
The agony of not wanting to go over the threshold of 6 skills in the Talent, is exactly why my proposed "least bad" solution does not have the next-higher breadth of Talent cost 100% more than the lowest one, but only 50% more.
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Old 03-30-2014, 01:00 PM   #69
Peter Knutsen
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Default Re: Talents & Martial Arts

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Originally Posted by Fred Brackin View Post
Perhaps you could sell me on a "Knight" Talent with Broadsword, Lance, Shield, Riding, Games (Tournament Law) and Savoir Faire but not a 5pt "Master of all weapons I want to carry around". A Talent should have a theme and not a cp advantage scheme.
I'd like for all Talents to have the "theme" of an underlying raw function that the character is innately well suited for, but GURPS Characters violates that concept already in the core book.
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Old 03-30-2014, 01:00 PM   #70
Peter Knutsen
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Default Re: Talents & Martial Arts

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Originally Posted by Ghostdancer View Post
You know, you could just use Job Training. The warrior template from Martial Arts (p. 41) includes points for a specific style in the template which should let you get the effect you want - for a Selmy-type anyways. That said, I'm going to blog about this I think, it's an excellent topic.
Can you post a link to your blog entry, in here, when it's written, please?
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