Skills as perks
 

In an attempt to bring down the number of skills to a manageable level, I'm thinking of ways to convert skills into perks. Some examples:

Fast-Draw (specialization required)
This allows you to Fast-Draw a weapon (or other item, if the GM allows this) at a skill equal to your weapon skill. It otherwise functions like the skill.

Gesture
On an IQ roll (minimum 10) you can convey one simple idea to another person, or understand one simple idea he is attempting to get across.

Speed-Reading
This perk doubles your reading rate.

Any other examples stand out to you?

Re: Skills as perks
 

So you've got
Perk: Skill Adaptation (use a Fast-Draw at relevant weapon skill's level),
Taboo Trait (cannot improve Gesture past IQ+0) and
Perk (Speed-Reading is stupid, you read faster).

I'm thinking there should be a broader approach to this, like "if any skill defaults to or from another skill at -3 or better, buy a Skill Adaptation perk and you've got them both at full value."

Re: Skills as perks
 

What, exactly, is gained by decreasing the number of skills while increasing the number of perks by exactly the same number? It's a bit cheaper, I suppose, but it takes up just as much space on the character sheet.

Re: Skills as perks
 

There are a handful of skills that just don't seem to contain enough material to be full skills, and a few more that seem qualitative, rather than something it makes sense to roll against to see if you succeed (not all those are worth only 1 point though). My usual list is something like:

Body Sense - a skill adaptation of whatever you use the teleport. If it needs to exist at all - you don't roll against anything every time you take a step to see if you keep your balance after all.

Computer Operation. You can use a computer. Roll against the skill for whatever you are trying to use it *for* if you need a success roll.

Counterfeiting. A skill adaptation of whatever the skill is to make the thing you are counterfeiting ordinarily.

Fast Draw. Yeah, skill adaptation of a weapon skill, or DX (i.e. a Shtick) if you don't want to be able to use the weapon well.

Fire Eating. A Shtick.

Forced Entry (?) I haven't quite figured this one out. There doesn't seem to be enough here to warrant skill rolls, but....

Free Fall. G-Experience for a single gravity band?

Hiking. Probably worth more than a point though. Also Running, Swimming and maybe Skating and Skiing.

Lip Reading. I suppose you might occasionally need a Per roll, but still.

Meditation. Cf. Autotrance, which is more useful. Though I sometimes think a combined mental discipline skill might be the way to go instead.

NBC Suit. OTW of Hazardous Materials. Putting you your PPE comes pretty early in teaching that surely. Also Environment Suit.

Panhandling. Beats me what this is, but it's insane for it to be a skill you roll against every *hour* of begging. I could believe an optional specialization of Performance.

Speed Reading. Sure

Typing. A skill adaptation added to your choice of skill you use a keyboard with - typically Administration or Computer something.

Ventriloquism. Another Shtick

Weather Sense.

Re: Skills as perks
 

I think they make more sense as perks than as skills. That's more or less it.

Re: Skills as perks
 

The three in the OP are all things you can learn and practice to get better at doing. You can't improve a Perk, or have different target numbers for different people with the same stats. How do you represent learning and improvement with Perks? (If they're "levelled Perks", that's just renaming a "skill".)

Re: Skills as perks
 

So is English. I see Gesture more as a language with a mandatory level of Broken than as a skill.

Re: Skills as perks
 

Battlesuit (and similar skills) would probably work better as a Perk - without it, you suffer -4 or so to all DX-based skills, with it you don't suffer a penalty. Most fiction with battlesuits, mecha, and so forth either ignore the issue of familiarity entirely or have the character take a bit of time to learn how to do it, at which point he's just as good in the suit as out. NBC suit skill and the like may be realistic as skills, but for gaming purposes a Perk to have familiarity is probably good enough.

Heck, in many cinematic settings Gesture can get up to Accented or even Fluent, essentially being some sort of military sign language.

Re: Skills as perks
 

Maybe. Warp already managed to forget ever mentioning it.

Umm, to configure packages and drivers when installing an OS? It's not Programming, not Computer Repair, and not Security. Nope, ditching the skill results in throwing lots of CompOps techniques to other skills, but also leaving orphans.

Money. Which seems to mean that the skill of legitly making money should be the same as making fake money.

It certainly simplifies some things. OTOH, it removes the ability to make a nuance between a mediocre fast-drawer but great shooter, vice versa, and someone who is good at both or neither.

Yeah. Or a Technique for Sleight of Hand and 'Feats of Strength', maybe. It feels way too specialised, and too close to other skills (compare to the way there's one skill to cover botany, zoology, micology etc.).

There are some, but they're not very numerous.

I endorse this approach. Though maybe make it cost more because 0G is nastier than low-G for non-0G-ers.

Probably more an issue with the way they're handled right now. They kinda make sense for stuff like packing your bag, negotiating sharp corners (above DX level, that is) etc. And Extra Effort, of course.

Too cheap for a Perk, IMHO.

Make Autotrance/Meditation a single skill, just like we have Axe/Mace and used to have Brewing/Distilling.

Yeah, HazMat probably should absorb NBC Suit skills.

Essentially a Professional Skill that seems to be expected to occasionally come up under conditions where every hour matters.

Probably perkable. The current mechanic makes it so that people rarely care to throw more than one point at it anyway.

Umm, maybe. Probably the Perk should allow you to substitute DX+0 or any related skill +0, and allow further increases as a Technique for those who want to win typing-speed competitions.

Not sure. It needs to occasionally win QCs, right?

This one is an actual skill that it makes sense to raise past Attribute+0 for some characters.

Re: Skills as perks
 

Maybe as a language of its own?

Re: Skills as perks
 

I could certainly see Crewman and maybe even Soldier as perks. "You do not make an idiot of yourself around a <vessel type>" and "You're acclimatised to the military way of doing stuff and familiar with the standard equipment of <specified army>".

Re: Skills as perks
 

I agree that some Skills would be better represented as Perks. But this will not change the number of small-s skills in the system. Perhaps it would be better to acknowledge that skills will often overlap?

I don't think so; most soldiers or sailors would say that there are people who are clearly careful and competent, and people who fumble their way through, and that experience has something to do with it. There are probably estimates out there of how long it took a newly impressed sailor to become competent in the 18th century; if it was more than a month or two of immersion than a Perk feels too cheap.

Re: Skills as perks
 

And give an IQ roll for knowledge questions, like Captain America in The Winter Soldier realizing that the ammunitions depot is in the wrong place.

Re: Skills as perks
 

Just about as much space on the character sheet, but a fair bit less rules complexity.

Perks are binary: you either have 'em or you don't.

Skills have a controlling attribute, a difficulty level, often a Tech Level and familarities, optionally prerequisites and specialties, and a numerical level.

Fast-Draw (Ammo)/TL8 (DX/Easy)-12 [1] and Perk: Fast-Draw [1] each occupy one line on a character sheet, but one of them has to pack far more information into that line.

Re: Skills as perks
 

Stat differences would generally suffice to distinguish the useful types from the nuisances, and in a lot of cases, the really useful semi-specialists will have some flavour of Mechanic or similar (Electronics Ops, a heavy weapons skill, whatever) to represent what they're really useful at.

As someone noted in the recent thread discussing Crewman skill, this is often taken by PCs to indicate that they won't get underfoot when travelling by a given vehicle type, but rarely actually rolled. At some point, one might as well make something like that a perk rather than a full skill. And what can Sailor-18 actually do so much better than Sailor-11?

Re: Skills as perks
 

What Environment Suit skills actually do isn't handled well that way.

For the putting on and/or operating element, being restricted to OTW means you can only be any good at it if you're a genius...and not all suits will necessarily be easy to use. This is a somewhat general problem with the 'perk to attribute level' replacement...even if a skill isn't very broad, a character might want to be competent at it, and attribute level is frequently less than competent.

But the bigger problem is that Environment Suit acts as a DX and skill cap..

Re: Skills as perks
 

That's the thing. It makes little sense that bulky armour gives no DX penalties, while a smart battlesuit or the like that has servos automatically match the user's movement so that the user doesn't even feel the suit is there gives a DX cap. At worst there should be a DX penalty without a proper Perk (or if skill is less than DX, if people prefer the skill path). Lower-of-two-skills is kinda meh when compared to heavy armour.

Re: Skills as perks
 

Agree with many of the ideas here. Certainly there's a lot of overlap between skills and I'd like to see some consolidation.

Gesture seems like either a language of its own (perhaps like a pidgin it caps out, this time at Broken). Or it could simply be an application of Perform that is easy enough to do untrained. If you want to buy it up (say you're playing a mime), then take it as a technique.

Fast-draw to me is a hard Technique of the weapon skill of the weapon you're fast-drawing. You lose fast draw (ammo) but to me that's ok.

Finance, Market Analysis, and Economics have vast overlap. There are differences in practice, but are they significant enough to matter in game terms? If I were building a financier, I'd take Law (US tax), Accounting, Current Events (business), Math (stats), and Economics. I suppose you could call the package Professional Skill (Financier). I don't see what Market ANalysis or Finance adds that aren't already covered by those other skills.

To me skills ought to be mutually exclusive and exhaustive. There should be enough skills to cover everything, but not so many that two skills cover the same ground (or, more often, where two skills cover all the same ground as a third). They should also all be useful for something. There are too many skills that you buy at char gen because you feel like you have to, to fit your character concept, and then never roll in a campaign. Knowledges in particular suffer from both problems-- too much overlap, too little utility.

Strategy and Tactics. In theory, I see the difference. In practice, again I don't see how the distinction would come up in-game, and a merge would make sense. Make it /TL since it appears that shifts in technology lead to major changes in military science.

Esoteric Medicine should be eliminated. Physician below a certain TL should simply BE those esoteric techniques, that may or may not actually work. (Certainly not in a realistic game).

As others have said, the Armor encumbrance rules need an overhaul-- and that includes NBC and Vacc suits, which are after all armor for environmental conditions.

I'm fine with the Bard and Ninja skills, but why not separate them out into their chapter or section (Powers as Skills).

Re: Skills as perks
 

Just another technique for your weapon. One for the weapon, another for the ammo.

You're confusing Esoteric with Naturalist. Esoteric medicine isn't just herbal medicines; it's all the other weird stuff -- chi healing, crystals, whatever. Details are setting dependent, but it's not TL limited. You could have weird alien Esoteric Medicine in your ultra-tech space opera game.[/QUOTE]

Re: Skills as perks
 

I think it would have more going for it in a situation where the ship acts as an environment rather than as a tool.

When you're using a ship, Crewman is an important skill for your mass of crew doing massed activities to work the ship, and maybe for a helmsman. Those are most likely NPC roles, though, and don't individually do much of interest.

But when you're operating within a ship, Crewman means knowing how to deal with that environment. A good crewman knows where things are and all the ways to get there from here (or can make informed guesses on an unfamiliar ship), and knows how to interact with most of the myriad devices along the way. Having that at high levels isn't much needed if all you want to do is not embarrass yourself while puttering around on your own ship under normal conditions. But in a shipboard crisis, it could be vital.
Environment Suit as DX-cap is not for a battlesuit so smart that the user doesn't even feel it's there, obviously. As Basic says, "some sleek, ultra-tech suits might not limit skills at all!" But lots of environment suits (and fictional battlesuits) are not easy to move, or move precisely, in. I'd be surprised if real armor is ever as hard to move in as a space suit, though fictional armor might be.

Capping might not be best mechanic, but I don't think it's as bad as you say.

Actually, exporting that component to a Technique might make it a bit nicer for people who have some DX-based skills raised well above DX...

Re: Skills as perks
 

I'm using a much shorter skill list than the norm (~30 is less than the 100+ in DF, much less the several hundred in the Basic Set).

Long-distance hiking is a function of HT-based Explorer, HT-based Athletics, or a default of HT-4. Simply hiking at full HT without the other things those skills grant would be a Perk.

Swimming is a function of HT-based Athletics for staying afloat, breath-holding, or endurance swimming. DX-based Athletics for the skill cap of fighting in the water. A Perk of swimming as if the skill was known at Attribute+0 is a Perk.

Knowing the market value of a saleable item is a roll against Merchant or Craftsmanship(assuming an appropriate familiarity of that skill). A Perk would allow this against base IQ instead, but would be of no help for haggling or Savior-Faire in the Merchant's Guild.

All weapons can be Fast-Drawn at skill-4. A Perk specialized per skill raises this to full skill.

Rather than having separate sword and knife fencing skills, I have a perk called Weapon Finesse specialized by skill; it adds the option of the F parry in exchange for facing encumbrance penalties for all one-handed thrusting weapons under the skill.

First Aid is a function of IQ-based Medicine, Poisons/Diagnosis of Per-based Medicine. A separate Perk would be available for IQ- or Per-based competence at administering first aid, of identifying poisons, or of diagnosing diseases.

The list goes on.

I don't think I'm even going to require rolls for Gesture or Knot-Tying, if they even come up.

Re: Skills as perks
 

I don't know; I have never been part of a military unit or large vehicle crew. But I try not to assume that if I am ignorant about something, it must be trivial and boring.

Re: Skills as perks
 

But you can look about it from a gaming perspective. Will there ever be a situation in a game where the difference between a sailor-11 and sailor-18 matters?

Actually, I think there is, if a ship is in a storm. Still, I think it is a nice rule of thumb to decide between skill and perk. It might be setting/game dependent.

Re: Skills as perks
 

He can do his work in half the time (-5 to skill) and still be better at it.

Re: Skills as perks
 

That is a bad habit that one should avoid, certainly. But then, I posed this as a question. I know that there are some people with maritime experience here; maybe they can answer it.

From what I've heard chatting to such people in the past, though, yes, maritime crew operations are a respectably skilled job. However, a lot of it involves keeping mechanical systems running - and that's Mechanic.

And yes, the other issue is how often any of this will come up in a game.

Re: Skills as perks
 

But that then raises the question of whether that's actually realistic. Crewman on a four-master presumably includes knowing how to help raise the sails right; Crewman on an airship might involve (I guess, from a position of extreme ignorance) walking round the gasbags once a day checking for leaks. Those kinds of routine-but-necessary activities really are quite hard to do in double time.

Re: Skills as perks
 

I'll defer to an actual seaman if one pops up. Until then, seamanship and sailors' skills seem like the quintessential example of a crewman skill where experience makes a vast difference. Contrast the ordinary seaman with the salty old chief petty officer, who knows his knots, the weather and wind, how to belay gear properly. I suppose all of this is covered by other skills, and I agree that skill overlap is a problem, but given that it's a thing in GURPS seamanship is a big deal.

Certainly in the fiction seamanship skills matter.

Re: Skills as perks
 

But once you've allowed for the stuff that's covered by other skills (Carpentry, Knot-Tying, Meteorology...), you're mostly left with "knowing where stuff goes and keeping things tidy". Which sounds to me more like a Familiarity than a skill in itself. It's knowing how and where to apply those other skills, really.

Don't get me wrong, I have no great hate for Crewman. But if one wants to prune back on the GURPS skills list, eliminating overlaps seems like a good place to start - and Crewman and Soldier are prime, blatant overlap bait.

Re: Skills as perks
 

The alternative (assuming fractional points stay dead) starts looking a lot like Dabbler, which is perhaps unfortunately-named but seems ideal for this purpose.

Re: Skills as perks
 

I like this concept. There are skills which I think are really groundwork for other skills, and they can safely be reduced to Perks.

Knot-Tying, for example. Yes, specialists like sailors know a lot of knots. But specialised knotwork is covered by their professional skills – like Crewman (Sailor). The perk gives knowledge of enough knots, bends, and hitches to handle any situation where something needs to be tied up – probably not much more than about a dozen of them. Sailors and climbers should definitely have it. Obsessive knot-fans can take it as a Hobby Skill, but remember that a point covers 200 hours of learning. You can learn enough knots in that amount of time for all your Crewman needs.

Panhandling is a sub-set or adaptation of Streetwise. The perk gives you the knowledge of the best kinds of places to beg, the approaches that suit your particular appearance, etc. When you actually beg, your roll will be against Streetwise, Performance, etc.

Parachuting. Most of the time this is ‘how to pack a parachute’ and ‘how not to break a leg on landing’, for which you only need a 1-point perk, 200 hours of training. On the rare occasions when you are using a steerable parachute to get to a particular landing-point, it will take fairly hard IQ rolls to judge the factors involved (wind speed & direction, rate of descent). If you do that regularly (e.g. Special Forces training) take a Parachuting speciality of the Piloting skill – it’s basically a non-rigid glider.

Some will depend on the genre. Fast-Draw might be worth using as a skill in a Wild West game where gunfights actually happen. But every other campaign I've ever run or played in, Fast-Draw hasn't been a contest to see who shoots first in a face-off, but just to see whether the characters can shoot in the first round. So turning it into a perk makes sense: anyone who spends 200 hours learning to fast-draw can probably be assumed to continue practicing their fast-draw as they keep using (i.e. improving) their skill with that weapon.

As for Gesture: the point Varyon made about some Gestures can get up to Fluent (i.e. military sign language) misses the point about the skills: military sign language is a Sign Language, and the people being signalled to have trained so they know the signals used. Gesture is to communicate to people who don't share your particular knowledge set. A high Gesture skill would make people good at Charades, but I think few people would work to get better at it. Pricing it as a perk would make sense - you are just someone who has the kind of imagination that lets you get over your message through mime.