Re: Skills, skills everywhere
 

It's perk the gives you a bonus on default use of a couple of skills.

Re: Skills, skills everywhere
 

It's not in Basic Set. I'm not sure where it was first introduced, but it's included in Power-Ups 2, pg 16. I find it instrumental in creating believable low-point characters.

Re: Skills, skills everywhere
 

I'm pretty sure it was introduced in that book. At least half the perks in Power-Ups 2: Perks are original and not compiled from other sources.

Re: Skills, skills everywhere
 

Over the course of my campaign series I have trimmed the skill list down a great deal. My current skills chapter for my campaign sourcebook has only 98 skills listed in it, including all combat skills. Truth be told, I would like to see it trimmed down even further. As a GM, I have to create a lot of NPCs; and as an uptight, OCD weirdo, I tend to make complete characters. I rarely need to take more than 15 or so skills and still end up with pretty well-rounded characters. But I, like you, can often get carried away with the skill list and end up with 40+ skills.

Re: Skills, skills everywhere
 

Skill category browsing has always struck me as a good component of character creation strategy. That's one reason, probably the main one, that I was unhappy to see them removed in 4th Edition.

Re: Skills, skills everywhere
 

Having worked a lot of different jobs while working myself through college, I interpret "professional" to mean "at least as good as a normal employee in a given field", which actually means awful* for any skill you're supposed to be able to perform under life-and-death stress.

Which fits a GURPS skill level of 11-12. That's not something movie main characters have in the skills that they use to respond to the plot-significant problems. No, when it comes to that, you generally need 16+ to apply.

The takeaway, I guess, is that most fictional heroes actually have reams of skills at high levels, regardless of their supposed backgrounds or informed attribute of being "normal people". A GURPS character with 30+ skills isn't a bloated monster of skill-inflation, he's a natural response to a system which has seperate skills for diving athletically through a window (Acrobatics), jumping over a table (Jumping) and rounding a corner efficiently (DX-based Running).

*My experience of people who started careers at shipyards, gas stations, convenience stores or similar fields instead of getting any degree beyond the mandatory education (which ends at 15 here) is that in game terms, their highest job skill is pretty low. As in, lower than the default others may get from some of their secondary skills.

Re: Skills, skills everywhere
 

Yes. Learning-by-doing being 1/4 efficient as being taught by a skilled teacher is outrageously unrealistic. And on top of that, the benefits of learning-by-doing should depend on the degree of challenge you face while you're doing the doing part.

Re: Skills, skills everywhere
 

I don't remember having seen the Dabbler Perk anywhere in a 4th Edition product, prior to Power Ups volume 2. The idea of splitting 1 CP into smaller fractions existed in 3rd Edition, but officially you could only split it in half, although I'm sure some GMs and some groups allowed 1/4 and 1/8 point skills.

Re: Skills, skills everywhere
 

My current character is a mage (Order of the Blue Star by MZB in the Sanctuary anthology) so <in theory> he could live until the end of time...if he does not get killed and his secret remains so.

Even tho he works very well in the party environment, due to the nature of the order, he has extreme reluctance to be dependent on anyone. Basically he is trying to learn/master anything that will give him an edge against Primal Chaos in the (hopefully) distant future.

So thats the backround:

At Character Start (150 pts/-50 dis/-5 quirks) he had 35 pts in skills, 34 pts in spells <all were 1pt so numbers=pts> and 16 pts in languages (for 10 spoken/8 written all at at least accented).

He was basically a mage who had worked with a fantasy/low tech spec ops group for the last year or so during a war. (He covered mage/some ftr/pro soldier/pro mage skills/alchemy).

Now (2-3ish years later) he is at (238 pts) 50 skills (60 pts), 54 spells (56 pts) and 19 pts languages (12 spoken/9 written). (he has added physican/legal skills/face skills/spy skills/hidden lore skills and a number of contacts).

He is a whale of a lot of fun to play and is the most generalist character I've ever put together.

Re: Skills, skills everywhere
 

For a given campaign, I usually mentally cut down the (massive!) skill list quite a lot, so it's probably only about a hundred for a specific setting. Even then, 30+ skills is not unusual for a given character.