Changing techniques to just 1pt leveled perks

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

That will move the breakpoint up to seven Techniques, since the alternative is now buying +2 to skill for 8 points.

Which directly addresses the problem of only 3 Techniques before hitting the breakpoint.

What is your goal? No break-point? I don't think that's achievable when you have a system with whole number increments for success modifiers.

[Unwashed Mass]

Just a crazy thought and probably completely unbalanced:

What about getting extra pseudo points to spend on techniques equal to the points already spent on the skill?

Spend 16 points in Karate? Spend 16 points in techniques.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Donny Brook

A Technique is a particular application of an existing skill. If you have the skill you can do a technique at some penalty. This is not the case for a Perk, which usually cannot be attempted at any default.

Depends on the perk. Notice that there's a list of perks whose primary or only purpose is to provide a bonus to a roll that anyone can do already.

Originally Posted by Unwashed Mass

Just a crazy thought and probably completely unbalanced:

What about getting extra pseudo points to spend on techniques equal to the points already spent on the skill?

Spend 16 points in Karate? Spend 16 points in techniques.

Actually nice. Will cause headaches because now people have to decide what Techniques they want for all the skills, but generally very good balance-wise, as long as Techniques themselves are balanced amongst each other . . . which not all of them are.

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

Will cause headaches because now people have to decide what Techniques they want for all the skills, but generally very good balance-wise, as long as Techniques themselves are balanced amongst each other . . . which not all of them are.

That being a problem that already exists in the RAW and in every other proposal so far, I wouldn't cite it as a problem with this suggestion. That's a problem with some wonky techniques, not with the system for buying techniques.

[mlangsdorf]

Originally Posted by Unwashed Mass

Just a crazy thought and probably completely unbalanced:

What about getting extra pseudo points to spend on techniques equal to the points already spent on the skill?

Spend 16 points in Karate? Spend 16 points in techniques.

I've played with this idea repeatedly, and it's a point accounting nightmare in GCA. It also forces the GM to come up with Techniques for mental skills that normally wouldn't have techniques, which can be a mixed benefit. Other than that, it's a good solution.

[Daigoro]

Originally Posted by mlangsdorf

I've played with this idea repeatedly, and it's a point accounting nightmare in GCA. It also forces the GM to come up with Techniques for mental skills that normally wouldn't have techniques, which can be a mixed benefit. Other than that, it's a good solution.

Being a fan of GCA, I also look at this sort of suggestion in the light of whether GCA can easily implement it. But for this, can GCA handle "Buckets of Points" from the Power Ups supplement? Would that allow a workaround?

BTW- I think 1 CP in Techniques for each 1 CP in the Skill might be high, maybe go at a 50% rate.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Bruno

That being a problem that already exists in the RAW and in every other proposal so far, I wouldn't cite it as a problem with this suggestion. That's a problem with some wonky techniques, not with the system for buying techniques.

I disagree. The proposed house rule that characters automagically get a number of points worth of Techniques equal to the pounts put into the actual skill will cause a lot of extra work, for players making characters (let alone GMs making many dozens of NPCs!), and leaves no way out for players who prefer to keep things simple and just dump X points into Staff or Brawling or whatever.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by mlangsdorf

I've played with this idea repeatedly, and it's a point accounting nightmare in GCA. It also forces the GM to come up with Techniques for mental skills that normally wouldn't have techniques, which can be a mixed benefit. Other than that, it's a good solution.

There is some merit to the increased use of Techniques for mental skills.

Often you can just go with sub-specializations. But yes, it's a bunch of extra work for the GM, since there's almost no precedent to be inspired from. And in general, I don't like the whole idea of characters frequently having multiple sub-skills for their skills. Even just having one sub-skill that can be much better than the parent skill (instead of it being a binary thing), is a bit of a book-keeping problem, although when GURPS mostly confines it to combat it tends to look more manageable.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Bruno

That being a problem that already exists in the RAW and in every other proposal so far, I wouldn't cite it as a problem with this suggestion. That's a problem with some wonky techniques, not with the system for buying techniques.

Balance of Techniques against other Techniques isn't the issue I'm focusing on. Coming up with enough Technique that are open-ended enough that, say, an IQ+10 skill level still has places to spend Technique Points is an issue, though. It's a good thing to have such things to spend on, but they must be written by someone first.

[SRoach]

Another way you could do it, if you're wanting to use Techniques to differentiate characters with the same base skill, would be to pick two techniques. Have one be a +1 and the other be a -1 off the base skill.

Take Karate again. You could choose to pump Kicking up to +1, but with -1 to Elbow Strike. Both are techniques available to Karate, (and I think they're both Average). If you indended to maintain this discrepancy, you could just indicate it "kicking+1/elbow strike-1" on the same line as Karate on the sheet.

It might be appropriate to not allow such tweaking at the lower end of the skill.