Talents & Martial Arts
 

I got Power Ups 3: Talents a little while ago and found the take on combat skills in Talents interesting but a bit odd.

First, the idea that a small Talent with combat skills was ok but a large Talent with combat skills was unbalancing. That strikes me as a little odd - a big Talent isn't a whole lot cheaper than DX so a 15 point Talent with all melee combat skills doesn't seem too unbalancing in practice.

Second, the argument against any Talent for a martial arts Talent followed by the Job Training advantage, which in practice sounds awfully similar to a Talent for a martial art - you get a bonus to a bunch of skills for a specific occupation.

So it occurred to me you could create a quasi-Talent for a martial art. The idea is to make it more practical to create characters who are skilled at a style of fighting without having a high DX and consequent talent at all physical skills. Otherwise under the rules as written if you want a character who is skilled at more than a couple of physical skills you're best off buying up DX and just putting a few points into skills.

Here's how it would work.

The Martial Artist Advantage costs one point for each skill included per level, with a minimum cost of 5 points per level. It adds to the skills just like a regular Talent but can be learned after character creation.

It has the following restrictions:

1. The character must be trained in the martial arts style including style familiarity and all skills. As with Job Training, he must put at least one point in every skill in the Advantage before buying the Advantage.
2. The character must buy a Special Training (Martial Artist) perk for every level of the Advantage.
3. The Talent only applies to Techniques and sub-skills used in the relevant martial art. For example, if the style includes Karate but does not generally teach the Jump Kick technique, the skill bonus from Martial Artist does not apply to that Technique.
4. The fighting style is more easily identified – observers have a bonus equal to the level of the advantage to recognize the style used.

The rationalization is that you're learning these skills as part of a single system so there is some synergy. The point cost and limitations came from playing with the idea of Enhancements and Limitations on a Talent:

Cosmic (can be learned) (+50%)
Limitation: Character must be trained in the martial arts style. (-10%)
Limitation: Signature - fighting style is more easily identified (-10%)
Limitation: Only applies to Techniques and subskills used in the relevant martial art (-10%)

Net Modifier would be +20%. For a 5 point Talent that would be a net cost of 6 points - which matches paying for a Perk to have access to the Talent.

Just playing around with ideas here. In practice this could create a reverse problem where it's too cheap to buy up skills but I'm trying to get away from the model where character sink points in only one or two skills.

Re: Talents & Martial Arts
 

I haven't tried them, yet, but I agree - I don't think a big weapon talent is a problem. I used to, but I came around to thinking it's fine.

It's not a bad idea at all.

I don't have my books handy, but . . .

I'm not sure you need Cosmic. A learnable talent doesn't have to cost more IMO.

I'd probably just straight-up make it a talent, without sticking the limitations you listed on it. Make it 5/level for any one martial art, maybe 10/level for 2-3 martial arts styles, 15/level for all martial arts. Applies only if you have the right Style Familiarity. Applies to all primary and optional skills, and therefore to any techniques built off of them. At first glance, that doesn't seem unbalanced. Reaction bonus is to fellow stylists, no alternate benefit. It would make styles more attractive, too.

Re: Talents & Martial Arts
 

Partly it's a factor of the alternate pricing - with the 1 point per skill option, it's less difficult to generate unbalanced talents. But no, a 15 point talent with one class of weapon skills isn't unbalanced. The unbalanced cases are mostly small talents that cover just the weapons I want (equivalent really to what you seem to want here, a talent that covers just the skills found in a particular martial art and no others), and a talent that includes weapon skills from several different categories (for example a 5 point talent with Karate, Shortsword, Spear, Spear Throwing and Guns (Rifle) is fairly obviously a bad idea).

And yes, I do have reservations about Job Training. It's *purpose* is to be unbalancing in a particular way - effectively a method of creating a character class niche.

Having to already have a trait to buy another is not a limitation, it's a prerequisite. Requiring a prerequisite doesn't provide a discount.

Limitations have to be actual drawbacks. So what's the disadvantage of somebody identifying your fighting style?

Applying only to subskills in the martial art, maybe, but it's going to be hard to draw the line. For example this means the talent doesn't apply to a *standard attack* with the skills covered, since that's not improvable and hence not going to be listed. And if you do allow that, well, all other techniques are just a standard attack at a penalty, and the bonus adds to that....

On the other hand, I don't see why you need Cosmic for a talent to be learnable. Which advantages can be learned is a setting decision.

Re: Talents & Martial Arts
 

That was done mostly in response to the warnings in Power Ups 3 against allowing Talents to be learned. Personally, I think allowing a character to learn a level or two of a Talent is a good way to simulate experience in a field (e.g., Healer for nurses and doctors.)

That would make things simpler though I'd probably rely heavily on skill count - there are a few styles with a lot of skills, especially if you count optional skills. A Talent for Master of Defense should run 10 points. On the other hand, putting the primary skills for all the styles of Karate gives a grand total of six skills - and that's if you count Karate Art and Karate Sport as separate from Karate. Seems unfair to charge more than 5 points a level.

It adds complication but I like the idea of limiting the bonus to techniques appropriate for the style. Might be too much of a pain to keep track of.


To be honest, I think Job Training was mostly to allow for more realistic Special Forces characters. In GURPS the practical way to create such characters often involves DX and IQ of 14 or 15. Do that and you have characters who are a little too omni-competent. Don't do that and it's very hard to buy up skills to appropriate levels while being cost effective.

The more I think about it the more I think that refinement is more trouble than it's worth.

My goal here in part was to allow the creation of characters like Selmy Barristan from A Game of Thrones. He's very good at knightly skills because he's been practicing for a very long time, not because of superb reflexes and coordination. Given his age, raw speed is probably limited anyway It doesn't follow (to me) that he should also be talented at climbing or stealth. A version where he has DX of 12 or 13 but knightly combat skills around 16-18 feels right to me but isn't very practical in GURPS. Allowing a 10 point (or perhaps 15) Talent to represent his focused training and experience seems a better way of simulating the character.

Also I admit it helps make sure fighter types outlcass high DX thieves in combat skill.

Re: Talents & Martial Arts
 

A talent for "all martial arts" makes me very nervous. Given that a martial art template might include just about anything, you could arguably claim that bonus to any skill whatsoever - just because there isn't a template in Martial Arts for something that includes Artist (Cartooning) or Mechanics (Light Airplane) doesn't mean there isn't a martial art that does *somewhere*.

But a Talent that includes a bunch of skills that occur in a lot of arts seems pretty reasonable to me. It has a clear theme, lots of fictional martial artists seem to be pretty good at lots of them or at related physical stuff not specifically included in their supposed art, and there might even be some realistic logic to it as a subset of DX. Certainly that's as good a justification as a lot of Talents. Call it Acrobatics, Boxing, Brawling, Dancing, Escape, Feats of Strength, Judo, Jumping, Karate, Sumo and Wrestling, 10 points/level, and throw in their Sport forms for free.

Re: Talents & Martial Arts
 

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.

Re: Talents & Martial Arts
 

Not unless you're getting into different styles being better at fighting against particular other styles, no.

Re: Talents & Martial Arts
 

Agreed. Ser Barristan Selmy would use something similar to the Experienced Talent I use in my fantasy game, where warriors can raise a Talent for every combat skill for 15/level.

There is that.

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.

Rogues will often try for the highest DX they can.*

*But I add an Unusual Background cost for buying Attributes at 16+, so finding a Talent that suits their particular roguish archetype can be beneficial for them too.

Re: Talents & Martial Arts
 

You need to look at some of the martial arts templates. They can have skills that aren't armed or unarmed combat skills, and the printed ones are not exhaustive. A bonus for any skill that could be part of a martial art somewhere is a bonus to any skill at all. That's not a 15 point talent (let alone 10), it's more like 40 points.

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.

Re: Talents & Martial Arts
 

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.

Re: Talents & Martial Arts
 

What's wrong with giving him Skills at DX +4 or +5? It's a lot simpler and he doesn't really need all that many. He'd want DX+2 for Weapon Master effects anyway.

There's not a lot of durable reason to acquire multiple melee weapon skills anyway. Get a Fine Broadsword and you don't need a merely Good Axe and that's doubly true if you've got WM:Broadsword but not WM:Alll Knightly Weapons.

Who's Who made a perfectly good Wiliiam Marshall long before Talents were created. This looks like a solution in search of a problem to me.

Re: Talents & Martial Arts
 

Isn't that the problem this solution is supposed to address? That is it's expensive to build a character with high levels of a lot of weapon skills, but that there is not a lot of benefit to it, making those wasted points even though the character concept may call for it.

Re: Talents & Martial Arts
 

Why is wasting pts on a Talent superior to wasting pts on raw Skills or Attributes?

Re: Talents & Martial Arts
 

Attributes may be inappropriate for the concept, such as by making the putative veteran warrior incomparably graceful and masterful at all DX-skills, not just those actually related to his long experience and warlike training.

Talents, meanwhile, are a more point-efficient way to give characters high levels of multiple skills than raising every single individual skill in it.

Re: Talents & Martial Arts
 

By talent (all martial arts) I mean Brawling, Boxing, Judo, Karate, Sumo, and Wrestling. That's even a a rules-legal talent.
DX (no basic speed -25%, no noncombat skills -25%) looks totally reasonable. The additional -25% for only a certain category of combat skills is iffy, but there's granularity issues with talents.

Re: Talents & Martial Arts
 

Don't buy any DX Skills he's not supposed to be good at and take Quirk: Stomps around like he's clumsy. Incompetence: Dancing even.

Re: Talents & Martial Arts
 

Just curious, but how many points do you think Barristan Selmy should be? The way the books describe him, he was basically the top swordsman in Westeros in his day (and can still hold his own) and, admittedly, they do seem to indicate he was talented, not just skilled, but it may not be impractical to make him a DX 12 character who uses the skills from the Knightly Mounted Combat (High Medieval) style in Martial Arts, whose top skill is sword at ~18 (~20 in his youth).

Re: Talents & Martial Arts
 

I could see something like this for say a Buffy the Vampire Slayer Talent group that covers all melee/ and muscle powered missile weapon/thrown weapons for Slayers in addition to a high DX. While slayers typically either fight unarmed or with a stake, they also pick up skill mastery with new weapons with tremendous speed and relatively minimal training which hints at fast training times in combat skills.

Re: Talents & Martial Arts
 

Why?!?!?

That's a cludgy and inaccurate design.

Also, what do you do about DX-based skills he's clearly trained in, but not supposed to be as good at as he is at fighting?

He knows how to swim and climb, but he's not a world-famous climber and swimmer. He is, however, world famous as a lancer and swordsman, and he can evidently use axes, maces, staves and daggers at or close to 'best in the world' too.

I realise that you could model this by putting 24+ points into each and every individual combat skill, but that's monstrously inefficient. When you have a combat skill, adding 'back-up' ones has a much reduced utility.

For Advantages, this can be dealt with using Alternate Abilities costs. For skills, that rule in unusable, but Talents and Job Training offer another method to achieve the same thing.

Why is that a bad thing?

Re: Talents & Martial Arts
 

He's going to want his best combat skills at DX+2 or more. Just one pt in other DX-based skills might well be enough. If that's still too much use Dabbler.

As to why custom Talents are bad it's not so much that they're "bad" as they are _whiny_. "I want a character who's good at a lot of DX-based Skills without having a high DX and I want it to be cheap too! So change the rules until I can get what I want!" irritates me.

There's usually a better, simpler answer elsewhere in the rules.

Re: Talents & Martial Arts
 

Those look more or less OK, though calling no noncombat skills -25% is a little generous (accessibility 1/3 of the time is -25%, and combat skill rolls are probably more than 1/3 of the DX based rolls a character makes, particularly a character who is going to be taking a Martial Arts Talent) and I would add a couple other skills in (the Sport forms for sure) 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.

But either way, I think we're mostly quibbling over which way to round to get an even multiple of 5. A +1 bonus to just unarmed combat skills is somewhere between 5 and 10 points. It's when you start adding all the other skills that are listed under individual martial arts that you are unambiguously over 10 and maybe over 15.

And just to quash one point pre-emptively, yes if you take a Talent for both unarmed and armed skills, it will undoubtably cost more than DX. That's normal for stacking talents. I've always been perfectly happy to let you degrade anything you want to fit your character concept though, so just buy up the attribute with only for (whatever list of skills based on that attribute you like) -0% if that bothers you. No it doesn't save you any points, but so what?

Re: Talents & Martial Arts
 

Personally a Style isn't possibly less than a Wildcard Skill. Fist! is less versatile than that style because as far as I know it doesn't include grappling. If it does, my bad.

Re: Talents & Martial Arts
 

Replaces Boxing, Brawling, Judo, Karate, Parry Missile Weapons, Sumo Wrestling, and Wrestling as well as "eastern" weapons AND esoteric martial arts skills with TBaM or WM.

Re: Talents & Martial Arts
 

Aah right, so mundane versions are equally versatile. I still don't think I'd do a talent.

Re: Talents & Martial Arts
 

So a character, such as the aforementioned Barristan Selmy, who has a reputation (which he can back up) as being one heck of a swordsman (and not too shabby at other weapons) has his best weapon skill at DX+2? What DX stat would you give him? 12? 16?

Re: Talents & Martial Arts
 

Perhaps DX 12 and Skill+4 as a minimum. Even Skill-16 can have dramatic effects. It doubles your chances of crit success and halves your chances of crit fails even compared to just Skill-15

The +2 is just to reap the full benefits of Weapon Master and you would have to buy that much even if some Talent was involved. Talent is treated as adding to the Attribute rather than the Skill. Base Skill at DX and 4 levels of Talent gets you nothing from WM.

As to final levels that depends on how good the people he is compared to are. If most armsmen in the setting are Skill-12 (at best) then a 16 beats the crap out of them.

Skill over 16 is for absorbing Hit Location penalties and Deceptive Attacks. The need for this can be reduced through Techniques such as Targeted Attack and Counterattack. Also Balanced Weapons, Weapon Bonds and of course, magic.

All these desirable things would also have to come in addition to any Talent.

So Talent by itself would not be enough and might even be not truly on target. It's not really likely that Ax/Mace needs to be at the same level as Broadsword. It probably doesn't need more than token presence. Not much more than that for other supplementary weapons either.

Now you would need to buy up Riding to a high level for a classical Knight character but that wouldn't be in a weapon-only Talent. Other things like Savoir Faire too.

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.

Re: Talents & Martial Arts
 

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.

Re: Talents & Martial Arts
 

Well, depends on your scale for 'beats the crap out of'. If we assume combat reflexes, hit probability for skill 12 vs parry 12 is 20.6%. Hit probability for skill 16 vs 9 parry is 67.7 (with deceptive attack 1). A better than 3:1 advantage is quite substantial, but that's still pretty likely to get unlucky and lose. You want more in the range of skill 20 (parry 14; hit probabilities 9.6% vs 83%) to really seem unstoppable.

Re: Talents & Martial Arts
 

Personally I think adding in esoteric skills makes it a little over-powered (and I rarely say this about Wildcard skills) but it's a good skill to easily represent "guy who's trained in a wide range of martial arts" while keeping things simple. Don't forget it includes limited Acrobatic and Jumping abilities.

Re: Talents & Martial Arts
 

At a minimum, DX 12 and skills in the 16-18 range. Selmy upon being retired from the King's Guard declares he could cut down all the men facing him if he wanted - boasting but there was a sense he could back it up. I'd use High Medieval Knightly Combat as his main Martial Art with Quarterstaff added in. You're looking at easily a ten point Talent which sounds about right. A high DX would be the most efficient way to buy appropriate skills if you don't use Talents - DX 16 would be appropriate there. But the sense in the books is that Selmy is highly skilled with many arms because he trained a lot.

As a side note, for GoT, I would use the Guard template from DF: Henchmen to represent combat skills of merely competent knights, the Squire template from DF: Henchmen for skilled knights and start with the Knight template from DF: Adventurers for the top knights of Westeros. This is before counting in various Social Advantages.

Re: Talents & Martial Arts
 

In canon, we already have hard and soft chi to cover those TBAM skills.

Re: Talents & Martial Arts
 

Talents are in the rules. Technically, we're not talking about custom Talents, we're talking about Talents linked to established Martial Arts styles. And frankly official Talents include some fairly munchkiny examples.

In this case we're talking 5 points for a narrow range of (mostly combat skills) - a focused style. A broad range like knightly combat or such will be more like 10 points. A very broad one will be 15, as much as DX! and about as valuable. Remember, combat skills like a lot of GURPS abilities get less valuable as they become more redundant. So the costs seem fair.

This is not "I want a character whose good at DX based skills without buying DX" - it's "I want a character really good at a particular fighting system without being really good at all other DX related skills." Yes you can build William Marshal using the normal rules but no one would ever build a player character that way.

Realistically, knights and many other warriors trained from an early age. They should have high levels for their combat skills without necessarily a high DX that allows them to become quickly competent at other physical skills. Talents can be a useful game mechanic to represent this. There's plenty of fictional and even real world precedent for people highly competent at just about everything (high DX and IQ.) But there should be a way to build characters with a more narrow focus.

Re: Talents & Martial Arts
 

Yes, but why would we use Dabbler to represent a skill that the character canonically has trained in and is adequate at, even when using it Per-based and IQ-based?

Ser Barristan Selmy is described as someone with a gift for swordsmanship (and all other fighting, apparently) and he has trained it for all his life, but he still has other skills. His DX isn't just the basis for his fighting skills, so it makes little sense to artificially inflate it just because they are really high.

Talents are official and in the rules. Asking for a character that mechanically conforms to the description given does not strike me as 'whiny', it strikes me as what players are supposed to do with the character creation system.

Only if one is willing to represent someone really good at a given niche with something else than the canonical rules artifact to represent such characters.

Re: Talents & Martial Arts
 

He boasted he could defeat five seasoned knights like carving through a cake. Not only seasoned knights, the other knights of the Kingsguard, which even though standards had fallen down from the time when they truly where the best warriors out of a population of many, many millions, still included only fairly high skill fighters.

Given how GURPS makes it very hard to fight multiple foes, if he could even half-way back that boast up, we're not talking skill 16-18. We're talking enough skill to cut through multiple men with skill 14-16 like carving a cake.

At his best, he was a painter. A painter who only used red. If not using Weapon Master (which is probably unsuitable for games set in G.R.R. Martin's world), he needs skill in the middle-20s.

Re: Talents & Martial Arts
 

Preferably also in Intimidation, because that's totally what's going on there.

Re: Talents & Martial Arts
 

Why would we use a Talent? Sounds to me like a character who has lots and lots of points in the actual skills.

Re: Talents & Martial Arts
 

Sure, he does.

But the marginal utility of raising weapon skill #2, #3, #4, #5, etc. is nowhere near the same as that of the primary weapon skill.

Rather than enforce that all characters have only one high weapon skill, I'd rather have the option of being good at more than one available at a more reasonable character point cost.

The Job Training trait is meant to address a similar concern. One way of modelling a knight like Ser Barristan Selmy is to give him decent Attributes, high Talent for the things that make him remarkable in-universe, Job Training for his job skills and a solid level of skill bought with points as well.

After all, he's presented as far above the elite who are themselves a cut or two above the 'ordinary' knight, which in-setting means a man of superior educational and nutritional opportunities, born and bred to a certain profession and trained since he was five years old.

Re: Talents & Martial Arts
 

Or the man had consumed a little too much "liquid courage".

Re: Talents & Martial Arts
 

He was sober in the scene, both in the books and the show. And he wasn't even trying to intimidate them for any purpose, he just did it to make the point that they weren't fit to fill his shoes, even in his old age.

The character isn't all that boastful. As far as one can judge from the books and show, he really could have posed a serious threat to the other knights of the Kingsguard, even five against one.

A Song of Ice and Fire is usually fairly cynical in tone and a lone hero against several ordinary men generally loses.

The most 'cinematic' aspect of the books is that characters exist which are very competent and many of those are point of view characters.

On the other hand, skill at arms isn't confined to point of view characters and some 'random' sellswords demonstrate what I'd estimate to be skill 18+ in GURPS terms. It's just that for every one that gets to that point, dozens, maybe hundreds, of levies and men-at-arms die of disease, wounds or other dangers of warfare.

Re: Talents & Martial Arts
 

That's why you8 don't do it at all rather than demanding a talent that lets you do it at a major pt discount. These duplicative weapon skills usually aren't worth the space they take up on a character sheet much less the pts you spent on them.

Re: Talents & Martial Arts
 

If you don't do it at all, what happens when the master of sword and lance has to use a staff?

In any reasonable world, he's still good with the staff, because he's trained with all knightly weapons and extremely good at footwork, keeping time, distance and proportion and that sort of thing.

If we don't raise any other weapon skills than his two primary ones, however, he has DX-5 with the Staff, because it doesn't default off Lance or Broadsword at all.

Re: Talents & Martial Arts
 

But this limits several legitimate character concepts, as well as making it sub-optimal to emulate the skills and abilities of real historical warriors, who often were trained in 4 or more weapons skills.

Re: Talents & Martial Arts
 

Evidently, Fred dislikes Talents enough so that it's better to forgo actually modeling certain character concepts or historical characters than it is to allow such a 'whiny' trait as a Talent that reflects a character concept.

Re: Talents & Martial Arts
 

Gee, thanks for putting your words in my mouth. I'd never have been able to do it without you.

I do not dislike talents so much as I believe they don't work very well regardless of how others think they either should or do work. I try and guide people to avoid rules I believe do not work well.

Re: Talents & Martial Arts
 

What do you perceive as the problem with Talents?

Since you think that raising multiple weapon skills is not worth the points it costs; I can hardly imagine that you think that a cheaper alternative exists is a problem in itself.

What then? What are the flaws with modelling such a character with a Talent for combat skills?

Re: Talents & Martial Arts
 

High levels of talent don't scale well against low levels. If you've got a Talent that is pts efficient at 4 levels it may not be pts efficient at 1 or 2 levels. It certainty won't be as efficient. Thus the norm seems to be always to buy the
Talent at maximum ;levels.

I believe this distorts character creation and given the choice of seeing DX16 v. DX12+ Talent 4 I'd take the DX-monster just for the greater simplicity.

Talents also tend to produce clusters of all the Skills in the Talent at equally high levels whether that actually fits the character concept or not. Should all Outdoorsmen be as good at Fishing as they are at Survival? For practical catching of things to eat I would have the character use Survival anyway. Angling is a peculiar Hobby Skill.

There's the general issue of total complexity of the game too. I haven't actually seen the problem of Gurps being too simplistic in the way it handles this sort of thing. Talents are just 0one more thing I would have to explain to new players "No, you probably don't want to get into Gurps at this level of complexity. Your character isn't badly designed f he doesn't have a talent.".

So Talents appear generally counterproductive to me.

Re: Talents & Martial Arts
 

That has not been my experience. I've seen about equal numbers of Talent levels from 1-4, all depending on how significant natural talent in that field was to the character concept.

Whereas I greatly favour a device which can produce two character with similar primary capabilities, but very different characterisation and back that up with mechanics as they relate to secondary and tertiary capabilities.

If the character isn't equally good at all the skills included in a given Talent, he probably should take lower level of that Talent and a level of two of a specific Talent that includes only those skills he's meant to excel at.

Don't take a Talent that actually doesn't entirely fit the concept. The listed Talents are only examples and it's assumed that modelling many characters will require taking a Talent for the specific niche they excel at.

Other than that, I agree that many outdoorsmen won't have Fishing skill. In which case they'll have Survival at 4-6 levels higher than Fishing, which sounds fine to me.

If a character spends 100+ points on a capability worth around 50, maybe it is badly designed. That's why I generally ask players for concepts, not characters, and then assist them in designing such concepts as accurately and efficiently as possible, using the full GURPS rules.

Only if the goal is simplicity at the cost of the ability to accurately model any desired character. Which is not why I play GURPS.

Re: Talents & Martial Arts
 

Not my experience. My experience is that talents are either terrible (and you don't buy them at all) or overpowered (and you buy them at 4), but that's not a function of scaling.

My big problems with talents are:

• Character creation only.
• The reaction bonus is a hideous abomination. If I want a reaction bonus with a specific group, that's what Reputation is for.
• The training time modifier ranges from irrelevant to broken depending on how big a role training time plays in your game. Cleaner to leave it off, you already learn a given skill level faster because, well, you have a bonus.
• The pricing is extremely dubious -- 5 point talents are usually overpowered, 15 point talents are usually terrible unless they apply to skills under more than one stat and sometimes even then, 10 point talents are highly variable.

My preference would be a generic '+1 to X different skills' ability, with cost depending on number of skills and whether the skills are under different stats.

Re: Talents & Martial Arts
 

I greatly prefer Talents alternate benefits from the Power Ups: Talents supplement to the reactions bonuses.

Pricing isn't so bad if you have stat caps for genres. Then even the dreaded 15 point talents for mental skills makes sense. (I simply can't approach the disadvantage limit for any character below 150 points total. So no pooh-poohing IQ!.)

Re: Talents & Martial Arts
 

But that might not be fair to The Mechanicsburg Mime Brigade! (And if they don't exist, I'll have to suggest it to the Phoglios.). :)

Re: Talents & Martial Arts
 

Yeah, it does mean you can't have a Talent for Shaolin-Style Comics Illustration or Kurumashurisurujutsu, which is a major flaw . . .but I think for the rest of the styles, focused on physical combat skills, it might be okay. :)

Re: Talents & Martial Arts
 

Since there are a few styles with noncombat skills (Spanish Fencing, some kinds of Karate) I think it might be interesting to include the non-combat skills there. At least it makes it more practical for a character to excel at both Breath Control and Karate. I like the idea of a martial arts master whose manners (Savoir Faire (Dojo)) are as precise and accurate as his fighting skills.

But yes, while a 15 point Talent for all combat skills might be reasonable, including ALL martial arts skills could conceivably include everything.

Re: Talents & Martial Arts
 

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.

Re: Talents & Martial Arts
 

If you can get a Wildcard Skill, why would you want a Talent instead? You can't beat Wildcards for simplicity.

Re: Talents & Martial Arts
 

The problem is that styles vary a lot in breadth of skill. A wildcard skill in Master of Defense or Knightly Combat/High Medieval is much more useful than the various kinds of Karate. Talents allow tweaking the cost a little more finely. I also don't really like the who massive bonus to techniques element of Martial Arts wild card skills since again value changes a lot with style. I think Fist! or Knight! work better as wildcard skills for fighters.

Talents also allow a little more customization. You could simulate Selmy Barristan with Knight! at a high level - that would be my second preference after Talents. However, it gives all the skills at the same level - it's not really set up to allow a little customization. Also, it does not allow a smooth transition from someone conventionally trained in the style in question. I like the idea of a fighter who starts out trained in a style and then adds Talent to represent his growing mastery of the style. It's trickier to transition from conventional skills to a wild card.

Re: Talents & Martial Arts
 

Branching off the above ... Given that a bonus to all DX-based skills is [10/], to all IQ-based skills is [10/], to all skills within a theme is (no more than) [12/]? A bonus to all skills clocking in at [15/] isn't necessarily a bad thing.

Re: Talents & Martial Arts
 

All DX or IQ skills would top out at 15 per level, not 10.
With IQ! costing only 10 per level, 15 point talents are only reasonable for character themes or if you hit the setting limit on a stat.

Yes, I know some people hate IQ!. But as I have never even approached the suggested disadvantage limit for any character more than 125 points, I don't see the issue.

Re: Talents & Martial Arts
 

I don't think that's GURPS' intent either.

One could charge a flat single-Perk cost to "open" a learnable Talent, but you only pay that 1 CP, then after that you can buy as many or as few levels as you want, although never more than the RAW max of 4 levels.

The whole Enhancements/Limitations thing to make a Talent learnable does strike me as excessive.

Re: Talents & Martial Arts
 

There is certainly merit in seeing GURPS' Talents as sub-attributes of IQ, DX, or both.

Also, of course, the "threat" from the player to the GM: If you don't let me buy All Weapons Talent for 15 CP/lvl, I'll simply buy up my chracter's DX for 20 CP/lvl instead. Is that what you want me to do?

All Weapons Talent is, if you are able to veiw it objectively, more interesting than full DX is, and therefore in principle valid.

However, I do think there is more merit in raising the cost of DX and IQ to 25/lvl, to modify the balance situation (max-breadth Talents still at 15 CP/lvl), and of course even more merit in recognizing the inherent stupidity of DX and IQ, and therefore replacing them with something less offensive.

Re: Talents & Martial Arts
 

Even if those two are absurd examples, there are - or should be - martial arts such as ninjitsu, containing non-combat skills such as Stealth and Climbing, and it's my impression that I'm not the only one who was unhappy to not see parkour included as a "martial art" in the 4E book.

Apart from it not being about combat at all, it makes perfect sense to me to handle it as a martial art in an RPG design context.

Re: Talents & Martial Arts
 

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.

Re: Talents & Martial Arts
 

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).

Re: Talents & Martial Arts
 

Does your setting have other similar Talents, for other character concepts? Or is Experienced a unique thing?

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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.

Re: Talents & Martial Arts
 

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.

Re: Talents & Martial Arts
 

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.

Re: Talents & Martial Arts
 

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.

Re: Talents & Martial Arts
 

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.

Re: Talents & Martial Arts
 

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.

Re: Talents & Martial Arts
 

Can you post a link to your blog entry, in here, when it's written, please?

Re: Talents & Martial Arts
 

Indeed!

The merituous approach might be to move one's attention away from the game mechanics, and look instead at the character as envisioned and described and defined by the person (author, GM or player) who created the character, and decide whether that character is appropriate or munchkinny.

It's probably the case that the GoT character in question is not suitable for a standard GURPS campaign, standard being RAW-defined as 150 CP, but would be perfectly legit in a higher-powered campaign.

He'd be legit in my Ärth setting, of course, a place for gifted heroes with great or broad competences. It's just that if all he can do is fighty fighty, he's likely to be boring or end up bored. But perfectly legit (assuming the players don't vote for a low or moderate point level) and - I have reason to believe - also perfectly creatable.

Re: Talents & Martial Arts
 

Yup, it does.

The problem is player choice. Player reluctance to make certain choices, certain combinations of choices.

The problem is that in some cases the player wants one thing, but the structure of the character creation system being used acts as a "force" on the player's choices pushing in another direction, often a starkly other direction. That is uncomfortable for the player, sometimes even extremely uncomfortable.

Re: Talents & Martial Arts
 

Yes, prexactly!

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Wildcards are simple in one way, but complicated in another way.

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How about Wildtalents? So Animals! would give a bonus to any roll that includes animals, and Cars! gives a bonus to any roll that includes cars? A bit like Higher Purpose.

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Probably yes. It's not much of a threat any6way. If I'm at all worried about PC's power level I've set a cp ceiling. Unless I've set a very high one spending 60pts on an All-Weapons Talent or an additional 3pts of DX is probably over-concentration.

I'd also want to advise the player that he is _extremely_ unlikely to actually fight with 5 different Melee weapons much less gain a critical advantage by attempting to do so.

Re: Talents & Martial Arts
 

I've long supported a learnable 10-point Melee Talent (and yes, I'm well aware there are enough melee skills to make it a 15-point Talent; I'm also aware that once you have a few melee skills the utility of additional melee skills falls nearly to 0, so charging for all of them seems like a point trap).

Obviously this isn't the same as a Martial Art Talent, but the effect would be pretty similar.

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Really? I challenge you to find that reference!

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100 to 200 for typical career adventurers as written in Basic.
I've read that 150 is equivalent to the very common 100 of 3rd edition.

Re: Talents & Martial Arts
 

OK, in response to the OP. There's a limit to how much you can improve your DX, Talents gets you past this. This is more of a Ritual Magic thing, but the Rule of 20 says that your default, before defaulting penalties is 20 if the base stat is higher then 20, again Talents gets around this. Talents can probably also be used against penalties