Power-Ups 10 Speculation Thread
 

We have Perks, Quirks, Limitations, Enhancements, and Wildcards... time for Techniques?

Re: Power-Ups 10 Speculation Thread
 

Techniques would be good, and seems most likely, but there are a bunch of others too.
I would like to see one on inventing for example. Languages too, though I have some notes on it more in regards to Aliens, spirits, and magic.

Re: Power-Ups 10 Speculation Thread
 

Kromm specifically said it was not Techniques.

Re: Power-Ups 10 Speculation Thread
 

Hi

I truly hope its the skills version of alternative attributes.

The book would allow you to trim down the skill list without resorting to wildcard skills

Also - when is the release date? Or at what stage is this project in the pipeline?

Re: Power-Ups 10 Speculation Thread
 

It should be released this Thursday.

Re: Power-Ups 10 Speculation Thread
 

Oh cool, is that posted somewhere? How do you know?

Re: Power-Ups 10 Speculation Thread
 

GURPS News dated Aug 30th
Power Ups 10 in Sept and GURPS Loadouts Starship Crew in Dec.

Re: Power-Ups 10 Speculation Thread
 

Yeah but Thursday is more specific than September lol

Re: Power-Ups 10 Speculation Thread
 

Steve Jackson Games typically releases GURPS PDFs on the last Thursday of the month.

Re: Power-Ups 10 Speculation Thread
 

Oh damn , good to know. Thx

Re: Power-Ups 10 Speculation Thread
 

Let the refreshing begin!

Re: Power-Ups 10 Speculation Thread
 

Been doing that for hours now :)

Re: Power-Ups 10 Speculation Thread
 

Hi

You promised me a shiny new GURPS book today !

Re: Power-Ups 10 Speculation Thread
 

It is common for them to miss release dates due to something else sucking up time.

Re: Power-Ups 10 Speculation Thread
 

It's up! Skill Trees!

Re: Power-Ups 10 Speculation Thread
 

It's out!

And... Bought!

Re: Power-Ups 10 Speculation Thread
 

My first thought was "Hmmm, like the Skill Trees in Genesys..?" Bought it, will probably play around with it on the weekend.

Re: Power-Ups 10 Speculation Thread
 

Oh, nice. I'll be picking this one up when I get home. I've tried to make stuff like this for combat skills before, and I'd imagine Kromm came up with something much better and more elegant than my old hacks.

Re: Power-Ups 10 Speculation Thread
 

In truth, Power-Ups 10 is closer to Alternate GURPS than to Power-Ups (we just didn't want to launch another series!), and very much aimed at inveterate rules-hackers. I'm not going to pretend that it will meet the needs of all . . . least of all conservative GURPS fans. For that, there will be a sister volume, Power-Ups 11. Still, I show all my math and explain all my thinking, so even if you hate my approach, 80% of the work necessary to create your own approach is done for you.

Re: Power-Ups 10 Speculation Thread
 

Thank you, it looks interesting but going to require sleeping on it to digest properly.
Best line of the book though "It’s your funeral campaign!" where underlined is actually strikethough in the supplement. This is for an option idea in an optional box.

Re: Power-Ups 10 Speculation Thread
 

While I've only been able to give it a brief skim, speaking as one of those inveterate rules-hackers, I really appreciate this book, and the Under the Hood bits explaining your methodology and math. This book is great.

For future reference, strikethroughs are doable on the forum, using the [ s ] tag (with no spaces), to produce something like "It's your funeral campaign!"

Re: Power-Ups 10 Speculation Thread
 

Alternate GURPS or not, this is exactly the way I personally want GURPS to go for my games. Much less fiddling for really the same benefits. Great supplement. Much better for new players.

Re: Power-Ups 10 Speculation Thread
 

I called this! Lol thank you. You saved GURPS.

Re: Power-Ups 10 Speculation Thread
 

Got Skill Trees, currently absorbing the concept. What would really be helpful (to me at least) is having all the iconic DF characters "statted out" using Skill Trees, so we'd have examples to work from...

thom

Re: Power-Ups 10 Speculation Thread
 

It looks like an interesting concept, but also something that should be used from the start of a campaign instead of being added in the middle, so it's not useful to me at the moment.

Re: Power-Ups 10 Speculation Thread
 

Yes, definitely. It is not an add-on. It is one of many ways to get edition 4.1 or whatever, and you'd have to use it from Day One. To quote myself:

GURPS Power-Ups 10: Skill Trees uses skill and Talent prices from the GURPS Basic Set and GURPS Power-Ups 3: Talents in calculations, but its traits completely supersede standard ones during character creation and in play. Trunks replace and shouldn't exist alongside Talents or wildcard skills, while Branches, Twigs, and Leaves supplant and shouldn't coexist with ordinary skills or techniques. To ensure a straightforward campaign that's fair for all, choose either classic GURPS rules or this supplement's approach – don't mix the two!

If you've already created characters with the existing rules, you've already chosen your approach. You could reboot into the new one, but that strikes me as being a lot of extra work.

Re: Power-Ups 10 Speculation Thread
 

Huh. Interesting concept (I haven't bought it yet, but might if my finances improve). I find myself wondering what this would look like if the standard spell-based system were redone with (I assume) Colleges as Trunks, et al.

EDIT: The Celtic Tree Magic system from Thaumatology might be more thematic, though (or at least funnier).

Re: Power-Ups 10 Speculation Thread
 

I was going to comment about potentially converting an existing character to it, replacing skills with Branches (or Twigs, depending on scope) and Techniques with Leaves, and then merging appropriate Branches into Trunks, but doing some preliminary work on doing that with Shigran, it's readily apparent that using Skill Trees calls for a very different approach to skills, and possibly to attributes, as the costs are essentially front-loaded when compared to the default system. This means a character with high attributes and a between [1] and [4] each in a variety of skills in the default system is likely to cost markedly more, with the prices getting closer the more you are invested in a particular skill. For example, Shigran has a lot of skills at the [1] level (relying on his DX 15 to give him a decent skill level). He has a total of [41] in skills under the default system - but converting those skills directly into Branches (and a Twig), this is instead [130]! Consolidating Acrobatics, Climbing, Jumping, and Throwing together into the Athletics Trunk, plus grabbing one level of the Throwing Branch (his Throwing skill was +1 relative to the other 3 skills), drops this down to [110], and also gives him access to a lot more (like swimming, which I was a bit worried about him not having to start with). It's certainly something I'll need to play around with to see how it works out.

Individual spells are arguably focused enough to be Twigs, maybe even Leaves in some cases. You could have a group of closely-related spells as a Branch, and a College as a Trunk, although that latter might be a bit too broad. Roughly speaking, Leaves are equivalent to Techniques, Branches to Skills, Twigs are somewhere in between, and Trunks are akin to lesser, more realistic versions of Wildcard Skills (EDIT: actually, describing them as akin to Talents is probably more appropriate - the way things are written certainly implies that was the idea, although they typically have a lot more skills than Talents would). As noted for Shigran, Skill Trees would not mesh well with the typical way mages are built in GURPS (high IQ+Magery and [1] in a bunch of different spells). I do think this system would work rather well for a revamp of my Wand-based Elemental Magic System; I still need to do a more in-depth dive of it, however.

Re: Power-Ups 10 Speculation Thread
 

Yes. One reason why I said "edition 4.1 or whatever" is that points will not have precisely the same value as they currently do if you use this supplement to build your campaign. There will be an exchange rate other than 1:1 in the case of skill-focused characters. Diversified characters will cost more, while with the right trunks, focused ones will cost less. Those who don't care about skills at all will just do what they always do . . . And since these appear in different proportions in different campaigns, the exchange rate in question will be campaign-specific, not system-wide.

Anyway, it's the seed of an idea, given semi-official sanction by virtue of being published. At 20 years of age, Fourth Edition can safely be said to be a "stable release," and can reasonably support some speculation that takes it off in wild directions that might be some writer's idea of Fourth Edition, Revised, or Fifth Edition, or Mirror-Universe Edition, or Kromm's Fever Edition even if Fourth ends up being the Ultimate Edition.

Re: Power-Ups 10 Speculation Thread
 

I'm fairly confident a character like, say, Goblin Slayer, will work out to be less expensive in this system than in the default system. This is because he has middling stats (above-average due to training, but nothing spectacular - with the exception of Will, which is easily 20+) but high skill with basically every weapon possible (and adapts to new ones quickly), plus Brawling. In GURPS, that's a lot of weapon skills (while navigating defaults); in this, that's Melee Combat + Ranged Combat. He also seems to have the bulk of the skills under Athletics and Outdoors, as well as a good selection of those from Sneakiness (building him in That Other Game, Ranger would be the natural choice, and may be what he's based on). In the default system, that's going to be a huge number of skills, and the only way to avoid massively ballooning costs would be to get away from one of the central aspects of his character (that he's not exceptionally talented or otherwise gifted, and is physically largely-unremarkable, he's just highly skilled and very, very driven) and give him rather high DX, HT, and IQ and lower skill levels (probably with nothing above [4], and a lot of skills at [2], [1], or even part of a Dabbler Perk). Skill Trees seems like it's better suited for building a character to a concept, while the default system encourages altering a concept for optimization (do you really need to be skilled in a wide variety of weapons when you'll very rarely be without your main one?). This does unfortunately mean things like the DF templates (and Delvers to Grow) will mesh poorly with it, as those are all about optimization based on the default skill system.

Re: Power-Ups 10 Speculation Thread
 

If it's not backward compatible with existing 4e, then I think it's more like a move toward 5e than 4.1e.

GURPS Power-Ups 10: Skill Trees
 

Up from roots to crown
Pushing out from trunk to leaf
Fractal in Nature

— "On Trees"

GURPS is known for being "skill-based": Where some RPGs focus on raw talent and powers, and add ". . . oh, and you can study" as an afterthought, GURPS makes skills the focus of games that aren't in explicitly powers-based genres (like supers). GURPS is also known for being a little complicated, and much of that complexity stems from the previous point. "Here are a few hundred skills, linked by defaults and prerequisites, and split up into various groups, specialties, and techniques, all bought using discontinuous cost progressions that newbies will need to look up on tables" isn't the most enticing of sales pitches . . .

Some people solve this problem with wildcard skills – explored in all their glory in GURPS Power-Ups 7: Wildcard Skills – but those are innately "cinematic," and achieve simplicity by sacrificing resolution. GURPS Power-Ups 10: Skill Trees offers a different approach: a telescoping "skill tree" system that reduces what new or time-pressed players have to remember and write down, and yet supports many levels of refinement for veterans and perfectionists. Indeed, it spells out all of the underlying assumptions and math for the benefit of those who like complexity.

Author's Note: This supplement totally transforms all of the skill-facing aspects of character creation, and implicitly assumes that you're starting a new campaign – not adapting an existing one. Thus, it's "alternate GURPS" content, meaning it's aimed mainly at rules-hackers, who by nature are unlikely to agree with everything I wrote. However, I've shown my work, so it should still save you considerable time and effort if you want to overhaul the skill system in a different-but-related way.

—

Store Link: https://warehouse23.com/products/gur...10-skill-trees

Re: GURPS Power-Ups 10: Skill Trees
 

My review and thoughts
https://refplace.blogspot.com/2024/0...ill-trees.html

Re: GURPS Power-Ups 10: Skill Trees
 

I had the same thought - this is really, really awesome, and if this skill tree system was the baseline in 5E I'd be absolutely thrilled. But the system is difficult to incorporate into a game (especially given how much my group uses GCS and Foundry).

But I might use it in convention games I run for new GURPS players.

Re: GURPS Power-Ups 10: Skill Trees
 

Neat book. Reading through it. Am i right to think that skills no longer default to each other? They all basically default to attributes-5 ?

Re: GURPS Power-Ups 10: Skill Trees
 

Just bought it and I'm already thinking that it could be applied to GURPS Magic or other skills based magic system. A Branch could be a College of Magic, perhaps next level down could be Verb based, like Detect, Create, Shape...

Re: GURPS Power-Ups 10: Skill Trees
 

To torture the metaphor some, that's a really nice seed of an idea!

I've just spent a little time reading through the book, and there are so many concepts that can be unpacked further. For a relatively short tome, I think it's going to take a while to fully realise everything that can come from it.

Re: GURPS Power-Ups 10: Skill Trees
 

As I put on the official Discord:
"Absolutely fascinating little book, a little fuzzy-to-grok in places at first read, but with the kind of fuzziness that would probably straighten out fine when using it. I'm very suspicious that it would be nearly perfect for my personal Star Trek Adventures conversion -- high Trunk competency seems like an excellent representation of General Starfleet Competency."

I'm rather intrigued to try converting some characters with it at some point. (Both prior GURPS ones, so I know what's up, and non-GURPS ones, for the vibes.)

Re: GURPS Power-Ups 10: Skill Trees
 

I've been trying to come up with a way to broaden combat skills for some time and this might be the way, at least as a start.

Re: GURPS Power-Ups 10: Skill Trees
 

I really like Attribute-5 defaults because I like characters sucking when they have never done something that is challenging. But I don’t like having to trudge upward from that -5 at 7 or 3 points per +1 trunk/branch. I love the big initial jump in skill in normal Gurps. So I think in my game I will let the first 7 or 3 spent jump the penalty up to Attrubute-2. Since the book offers “hey just use -2 defaults” as a viable option, I feel like my rule is a legit in-between choice. So I get the sucking and the non-sucking that I want.

Re: GURPS Power-Ups 10: Skill Trees
 

I am curious now. Skill trees sounds similar to a concept I'm using for certain types of skills in my campaign based upon Vampire the Masquerade disciplines.

A discipline is in effect a spell that gains new attributes as it's leveled up. Some are straight forward like Potence at attribute + 0 gives the vampire +5 strength. ATT + 1 allows the vampire (if they want to use the more expensive version) have +10 strength instead.

Others allow variants. Protean at ATT+0 allows the caster to have animal like eyes that can see in the dark. Protean + 2 allows the caster to chose between that, growing claws or folding themselves into the earth beneath their feet seamlessly. Each effect has it's own costs.

To reduce the number of skills a cyborg needs to master his new body (and to make the game rules fair and consistent) I have gone the same route with cybernetics skills. Overdrive is the same thing as potence allowing the cyborg to override the safety limiters (which are set at the character's base strength) and utilize increasing levels of strength from the cybernetics. Unlike the vampire however their body just can't handle that increasing strength without further modification. So overdrive's max benefit doesn't come in at ATT+4 skill level, it comes in having 5/5 major body components cyberized.

Others, like Slayer: Cybernetically enhanced speed are far more like the vampires. If you got the Dexterity to handle it, the cybernetic synapse booster installed (think Sandevestan out of Cyberpunk Edgerunners) then you can activate Slayer's +2 attacks +4 speed (at a tremendous fatigue cost) at ATT+3.

I wonder if the skill trees in this book work similarly!

Re: Power-Ups 10 Speculation Thread
 

Loved it. Both how it works and the math behind it to allow playing around with how to implement it.

I was really happy when I saw that the list of Trunks almost perfectly matches the Niches from GURPS Template Toolkit 1 - Characters, which is what I had been using as my wildcard skills for some time now. Since I use the Wildcard Skills + normal skills are cumulative option, that also matches the concepts of this product (i.e., adding Trunk and Branch). This sort of makes what I've been doing official (well, optional rules official) and lowers their price for characters since Wildcards cost [12 x level], while Trunks are cheaper. So I can easily incorporate the Skill Tree concept and how it works into my games with few issues.

I only have two concerns with it.

The first is the lack of character point equivalency between the systems. GURPS Basic lists a professional skill at 12, so for an average character, that's Attribute +2. To get that with the normal skill system, you needed to invest (for Average skills) 8 points. With this new Skill Tree system, since you start at Attribute -5, since Skills roughly = Branches, you need 7 levels to reach Attribute +2, and that costs (7 x 3 =) 21 points. What would be easy mid-level skill values (9 to 12) for a few points in the normal skill system will now cost you a lot more. It only becomes cost comparable at the upper ends, near the skill cap. My gut feeling (I haven't done actual tests yet) is that a lot of templates from existing products would probably increase their value by +50 points or so to get roughly equivalent skills (and as only a "gut feeling" I wouldn't be surprised if that number is way off). A few might luck out and the cost increase will be less than that (especially if all their skills fall under a single Trunk), while others with a wide variety of skills might cost a lot more. I haven't tested that out to get factual numbers, and I plan to update my most commonly used templates to get a better idea, but I suspect I'll eventually need to update them all to see what works out as something fair for all possible characters.

Now, point equivalency between the skill systems was clearly indicated as not being an objective of the Skill Tree method. And that's fine. I don't even think it is a flaw of the system, and I don't mind the costs difference on its own. It's just that it has an impact on decisions I, as the GM, need to make regarding starting character points, which should be able to meet the templates of my game. It is going to take some time to fully understand the impacts and adjust all templates and starting character points accordingly, much better than just using my current "gut feeling" of the cost difference (which is probably off). I'm up for that challenge, and I'm definitely going to do it... but it's going to take time, and that is something that hampers immediate implementation of the Skill Tree system. And it's that last point - that I can't use it now without a lot of tests to understand what it means - which really bugs me about this, not the costs differences per se.

That said, as a quick solution (because, hey, it's GURPS and I want to tweak it to meet my needs!), I'm contemplating a house rule of "If you don't have any points in the Trunk of Branch, you are at Attribute -5 plus any Twigs or Leaves, but if you have at least 1 level of either the Trunk or Branch, you jump to Attribute +0 before adding the Trunk, Branch, Twig and/or Leaf. I'd also increase cost of Trunks to [8 x level] and Branches to [4 x level] so costs of Branches matches current costs of skills. With this, costs of existing templates would, I think, remain roughly the same, other than a few Skills/Branches would go up or down by a level or so because you get rid of Easy/Hard/Very Hard. There might even be some cost savings for templates whose skills are very focused thus allowing them to stick to a single Trunk... hopefully not too much of a savings. Anyway, this looks like a quick win, but again, would have to test it.. guess I'll see with time.


My second issue is more a personal preference rather than an actual issue. The "tree naming convention" just seems wrong. For some reason calling them Trunks, Branches, Twigs and Leaves takes the Skill Tree metaphor a bit to far for my own liking. Sure, you can use that as an example of how it works, but calling Skills "Branches", for some reason even I can't explain, just bugs me. I admit, this issue is absolutely just a "me thing", and not a critique of the system. I'm probably going to call them Skill Groupings, Skills, Specialities, and Techniques in my campaigns instead. But I'll still be using the same rules for them.

Despite these two critiques (well, 1 critique and 1 personal preference), I still think this is an amazing product. So congrats on that.

Re: Power-Ups 10 Speculation Thread
 

That’s what I proposed in the Power Ups 10 Announcement thread, although I just went to Attribute-2

Re: GURPS Power-Ups 10: Skill Trees
 

Bought and first reading.

As usual, amazing work :)
And Thanks for showing both the actual play rules, and the math behind !

It will need some testing to fully grasp :)
The -5 default will mean much higher cost in most cases (at least at low still levels, but allowing rolls at 10+trunk outside combat may offset this ... and the skill sheet will definitively be less cluttered and more easily parsed by beginners !

Would it make sense to have the perks weapon/equipment bond give a +2, since a leaf give a +1 and is not as specific ?

How to handle martial arts styles under this system ? as a trunk per style ?

Re: GURPS Power-Ups 10: Skill Trees
 

Thanks, though I suspect Kromm has already twigged that (pun intended).

Here's an example of it being applied to GURPS Magic:

Fire Magic (Trunk): 7/level, providing +1 to all fire spells.
Fire Creation (Branch): 3/level, giving an additional +1 to spells that create fire.
Fireball (Twig): 2/level, focusing more on the Fireball spell for an additional +1 bonus to casting it.
Maximizing Range (Leaf): 1/level, giving a +1 bonus to increasing the range of Fireball.

I'm thinking that there is a case to introduce 'Copse' of trees to cover Magical Traditions, such as a school of magic that teaches several colleges.

Re: GURPS Power-Ups 10: Skill Trees
 

Styles are lightweight templates. However, they're lightweight templates; and I'd consider adding a step between Trunk and Branch (at 5/level) for Styles. This is based on "Trunks and Character Concept" (p.16) suggesting that a Character Template's mundane primary and secondary skills could be consolidated into a Trunk.

Re: Power-Ups 10 Speculation Thread
 

You are not alone in that preference and your suggested names do sound a lot better to me.

Re: GURPS Power-Ups 10: Skill Trees
 

I wouldn't stop at the Branch level; I'd extend this all the way down to Leaves. In my own games, I've always hated the expense of Techniques in 4e and have used a house rule where Techniques the reduce or eliminate penalties are actually Perks: for one point, you jump from the Technique's default penalty to its maximum or –0, whichever is lower. In practice, this either eliminates a penalty or halves it. So I'm fine with the idea of a single level skipping over multiple levels at once.

Re: GURPS Power-Ups 10: Skill Trees
 

This is almost exactly the kind of revision to the skill system I'd be hoping for in a 5th edition.

I think with the opportunity of a full system change you could clean up some of the weird little edge cases and exceptions this book needed, streamlining things even further.

If you have control over the underlying skill (branch/twig/leaf) list you can cut/changes things as needed so everything except absolutely necessary outliers fits smoothly into the framework.

EDIT: Also, it occurs to me that if you wanted to reintroduce hyper-competence Wildcard-style super skills, you could call them "Forests" as an optional level above the Trunks...

Re: Power-Ups 10 Speculation Thread
 

Hm. Based on the preview, I can't see having much use for the Skill Trees book. It seems:

-to be devised to solve problems I don't have;

-to take a very gamist approach to how societies have developed, and people acquire, erudition;

-to produce a CP cost structure I find too steep; and

-likely to reduce skill diversity on character sheets, pushing the rules toward character 'classes' (which were one of the things I despised about TOG).

Also, the incompatibility with the mainline skills system unfortunately makes it difficult to implement. I will never have time to rebuild all my NPCs nor any inclination abandon any of my settings they are in, so even if I felt a need for it -- well it would have to be a very strong need.

And I find the tree nomenclature cloying and jargonistic. No GM should have to say something like "What's your Leaf level in Ice Pick?"


I do hope they do Techniques soon. That's one of the best innovations the rules have had in 4e, very elegant and useful, though it could use some tweaks to make them more attractive for the CP cost. I would definitely want to see a bunch of new ones and/or building guidelines for non-combat-skill Techniques.

Re: Power-Ups 10 Speculation Thread
 

I know psi-wars basically halves all the technique costs and people seem to love that.

Re: Power-Ups 10 Speculation Thread
 

Interesting. In my games I've implemented the low-hanging fruit of eliminating "Hard" techniques. I also let characters purchase Techniques after they reach campaign skill caps.

Re: Power-Ups 10 Speculation Thread
 

This is the big sticking point for me, at least as an immediate knee-jerk reaction. But, as it turns out, for a rules-hacker like myself (and make no mistake, the rules-hackers are explicitly the intended audience for this supplement), it's actually rather easy to adapt the concept but abandon the default static costs to have the pricing function more like the default skill system (where the first few points in a skill have a larger impact on skill level than later ones - Default+4 for [1], Default+5 for [2], Default+6 for [4], and each additional +1 is [+4]). I'm hesitant to actually post the adaptation, however, as it kinda steps on the toes of the book itself.

I don't think it really pushes toward character classes, but it probably is likely to reduce diversity a bit (in favor of characters all having much wider ranges of capability). Essentially, it encourages picking up several Trunks related to your character concept and building those up to an acceptable level, then potentially specializing in a single Branch or Twig of those Trunks (you can technically have two Branches at a lower cost than increasing that of the Trunk, but it's so close that I'd say boosting the Trunk is a better option), and maybe picking up one or two Leaves for that Branch/Twig (the only exception is if you have Leaves that can stack).

Re: Power-Ups 10 Speculation Thread
 

I'm with Varyon on this. The apparent steep CP cost to get equivalent levels of skills if you simply convert is, at the moment, a knee-jerk reaction. I haven't run all the numbers, and haven't redone all of my templates to see how it actually change all of the costs On to be honest, I expect the variances to be across the board with possibly a small number of templates actually being cheaper, most having a cost increase, and another small number having a large cost increase.

To me, that's just affects figuring out how to set up the starting parameters of the game. The actual in play application of the Skill Tree is, in my opinion, super easy to implement. I love its flexibility is deciding the scope of your skills.

So GURPS Skill Trees is playable out the gate, but it is just not "backwards compatible" in that you can't convert an existing campaign (well, not without a lot of work that probably wouldn't be worth it). You just need to start with it, and see how the point costs go.

As a rule-hacker myself, I'm also looking at, among other options, increasing but levelling off cost, probably something like [2], [4], +[8 x level] for Trunks (or what I prefer to call Skill Groupings) and [1], [2], +[4 x level] for Branches (i.e., Skills), while starting at Attribute -2 as nudj suggested as a possible house rule. I'd leave Twigs/Specializations at [2 x level] and Leaves/Techniques at [1 x level]. I think this would significantly narrow the changes in cost of existing templates and make them manageable with minimal tweaks. There will still be some changes in costs, but I think it will be close enough to not matter too much.

In addition, with that proposed change, existing NPC and such only uses Skills (or Branches) would end up having the same cost and thus be fully convertible back and forth... they just wouldn't be optimized in possible point savings (because they could merge multiple Branches/Skills into a single Trunk/Skill Grouping for less points). But there are plenty of NPC who aren't optimized (i.e., dropping skills to increase attributes), so that's not a problem. So this houserule option is currently leading as my favored one... but I'll wait until I see all the cost implications before deciding.

And that's not to "fix" how Skill Trees work in of itself. That's just to make it more backward compatible with the current skill structure.

Finally, I also truly appreciate the math that's provided, as it lets me understand the impacts of any changes I make in my own houserules.

Re: Power-Ups 10 Speculation Thread
 

One thing about this method that combined with extensive use of proper meta-traits for commonly grouped clusters of advantages/disadvantages (like "Flora" that we used in Garden of Evil) is that it could potentially vastly reduce the required size of character/monster stat blocks.

GURPS labors some what under the burden of what I call over-traited actors. The entry for Zombie, for example, has 24 different traits as presented in DFRPG Monsters.

What you really want to do is be able to say:

Zombie
Animated Dead Thing

ST 20 DX 12 IQ 7 HT 12
Will-10 Per-12 FP N/A
High Pain Threshold
Damage Resistance 2
High Pain Threshold
Vulnerability (Fire)
Melee Combat-12

and more or less call it a day.

The Animated Dead Thing meta-trait would subsume

Appearance (Monstrous)
Bad Smell
Doesn't Breathe, Eat, Drink, or Sleep
Immunity to Mind Control and Poison
No blood, brain, eyes, or vitals
No sense of smell/taste
Temperature Tolerance 5
Unhealing
Unliving

While one could argue "yes, this" or "no, that other thing" on a nitpick basis, the key bit is to be able to present a creature simply, with the understanding that a lot of the details are going to be only important off-screen.

There's a lot buried in the "No this or that" in Animated Dead Thing, but what it really means here is that there's really nothing here but to swing for the Hit Points, with some exceptions for lopping off a leg to have a mobilty kill.

The other part of having a trait list two dozen strong is that it means some really key bits get washed away in the Big Lists of Everything. I've seen important traits that are buried in the list get overlooked, and being able to only highlight the really important stuff (Altered Time Rate, Extra Attacks, Injury Reduction, Supernatural Durability are all things that spring to mind as radically changing the threat level in combat come to mind) is handy when writing things for public consumption.

So while I might cast a few nits to the wind on the specific implementation of Skill Trees ... the overall end result for me is going to be super worth it.

Mission X, currently in development, is going to use this one way or another. I've been talking about Skill Families, Skill Clusters, Skills, and Specializations/Techniques/Perks for a bit, and this provides an already-published stepping off point.

Re: Power-Ups 10 Speculation Thread
 

I have recently been reminded of how much I really dislike stat blocks using Metatraits instead of listing out the contents. It puts me to the effort of looking up the metatrait separately from the creature which is an extra flip through the rule books I would prefer to avoid.

Re: GURPS Power-Ups 10: Skill Trees
 

That would be "Trunks".

Re: GURPS Power-Ups 10: Skill Trees
 

Ah, fixed. Yes.

Re: GURPS Power-Ups 10: Skill Trees
 

Frankly, I think Trunks are already the right level for Wildcard-level super-skills. So does PU10.

Re: GURPS Power-Ups 10: Skill Trees
 

25 pages not a single full example, with cost and levels and correlations to attribute.

if spend X points in that Y trunk with an IQ of 12 will have a skill of Z

Re: Power-Ups 10 Speculation Thread
 

In my previous post, I had mentioned that I had knee-jerk reaction as to the added cost this would have to templates and how you had to adjust the starting character points. I had even taken a wild guess and said it's probably at least a 50 point increase while admitting I had no evidence to back it up. I've now run it through and redesigned approximately 30 templates and have some actual numbers to share with people as an FYI.

First caveat about this work. These are my templates for my games, not templates of various GURPS products. So obviously, others may get different results based on how they built their own templates.

My templates start off as "ordinary professionals", and then have lenses to improve them to heroic and cinematic levels. I only used the professional levels of skills since it's the upfront cost of reaching normal levels of skills that increases in Skill Trees. The ordinary professional bases mostly all had a standard design in skills.

Primary Skills: One skill at +3 [12] and two skills at +2 [8 each]
Secondary Skills: Four skills at +0 [2 each]
Background: Nine skills at -1 [1 each].

That comes to a total of 45 points. Obviously, because skills vary between Easy, Average, Hard, and Very Hard, the actual levels might vary a bit, but the breakdown of points remained the same in my templates, so we can ignore those.

So, I converted them and redid the skills using the Skill Trees, with Trunks at [7 x level], Branches at [3 x level], etc. If you use different values, the results will be different.

Also, although there have been posts suggesting getting a slight increasing then plateauing costs for Trunks and Branches (e.g., something like [1] for the first level, [3] for the second level, then [7] for the third level, and [+7] for each additional level), I did not try that in any of my tests. I wanted to use the rules as presented in Skill Trees. Although I did vary the "starting level" for my tests just to see the effects of that.

Here are my results so far:


Starting Level of Attribute -5

For one very focused template where all the skills miraculously fit under 1 Trunk, the new cost was 49 points, so only a 4 point increase. I consider that one an outlier and didn't include it in my other results, but sharing that fact with you anyway as an FYI.

Most templates require 2 or 3 Trunks, and those ended up costing 112 points (or a 67 point increase from 45). That's probably a better number to use. However, since everything had been converted into Trunks only, it lacked some of the nuances using Skills did.

On the other hand, when I assumed nothing could fit under a single Trunk and had to purchase each individual skill as a Branch, that ended up costing a total of 234 points (or a 189 point increase from 45). This scenario never actually occurred, as I could use Trunks in my templates, but it was a nice exercise to determine a potential upper limit as to what the costs could be for a template with a wide mix of unrelated skills.

When I tried to min-max Trunks and Branches to more closely match the nuances, the values really fluctuated by the template and its original skills. Right now, my average is 138 points (or a increase of 93 points over 45) , but the width of distribution is wide, so additional entries can cause that to move. Note, many were impossible to get exactly the same, as purchasing a certain level of a Trunk when you had 2 skills at that level automatically increases all the other skills that were lower in that Trunk to match. Still, I made them in a way that I was satisfied that it matched the right feel of the template.

So, in summary, it resulted in a cost increase that was typically between an additional 67 to 189 points. Since I started at 45, that's x2.5 the original points in skills to x5 the original points in skills, with an averaging around x3 (and large distribution of results).

Hopefully those will help for someone who wants to start with Skill Trees exactly as presented, noting that you will need a lot more points in skills for starting characters.


Option 2: Starting Level of Attribute -2

It had been suggested in some posts that instead of starting at Attribute -5 you could start at Attribute -2. So I ran those numbers instead, using the same costs of [7 x level] and [3 x level] for Trunks and Branches.

In my one outlier anomaly of fitting everything under a single Trunk, that ended up costing only 28 points, which is a savings of -17 points, or x0.6 the required number of points. Again, this was excluded from my other calculations.

In most cases, using only Trunks (and thus removing the nuances between similar skills) ended up costing a total of 49 points (or an increase of 4 points from 45). On the other end, using only Branches ended up costing a total of 90 points (or in increase of 45 points from 45).

Trying to obtain as close a match as possible mixing and matching Trunks and Branches is currently averaging about 60 points (or 15 points above 45).

In summary, it resulted in a cost increase that was typically between an additional 4 to 45 points. Since I started at 45, that's approximately x1 the original points in skills to x2 the original points in skills, with an averaging around x1.3 (and large distribution margin).

This is actually fairly decent with respect to keeping the point costs between Skill Trees and the current system the same. And you can apply Skill Trees as written other than the starting point (Attribute -2 instead of Attribute -5).



Option 3: Starting Level of Attribute -0

For the fun of it, I tried again, this time with a starting level of Attribute.

When using only Trunks, I ended up with a cost of 42 points (so a savings of -3 points compared to 45). When using only Branches, it came to about 66 points (so an increase of 21 points from 45). So you end up with a point variance between x1 to x1.5 Mixing both Trunks and Branches together averaged out to about 48 points, so that still rounds to x1 (with a wider distribution of results, of course).

This had a drawback, however. My original templates included Secondary skills at +0, and Background skills at -1. You can't achieve that if you start at Attribute, as adding just one level of a Trunk or Branch brings you to +1.

In summary, using a Starting Level of Attribute keeps the point total pretty much the same with you getting higher skill levels in the secondary and background skills, so you're actually more powerful. In the end, I personally didn't like this option because all the skills ended up with a higher level than the attributes.




Note that Skill Trees does start to get less expensive overall once you reach skills of +5 or higher everywhere. I intentionally did not do my tests to that point. In my games, I found it rare for characters to have that high a skill level in more than just a couple skills, so I didn't think it would end up being that much of a savings compared to what they needed to spend on all their secondary and background skills at much lower level. Still, it is something one should consider in addition to what I presented above. If your templates are very cinematic with very high skills levels, it might actually be cheaper for you even with a starting level of Attribute -5.

And I just want to conclude by once more reminding people that this was the result of converting my own personal templates that had standardize skill costs/distribution. You will probably get different results for your own templates. This is therefore just one data set, not an absolute conclusion. But it hopefully gives you a good idea as to approximately where such a conversion may lead for your game.

Re: Power-Ups 10 Speculation Thread
 

I started converting a DFRPG character at 3 levels (62 pts, 125 pts and 250 pts) and I get similar results.

I will try to post fully done characters later on, but at first glance if you convert so that you have at least the same skills at the same relative levels (*), there is an huge increase in cp for characters with many diverse skills in the -2 to +2 attributes range.
You can mitigate a little by playing with cross-trunk skills, twigs, and reducing IQ! and removing talents may gain you some points, but you are still looking at a +100% to +200% increase in skills cp budget on average. (to be confirmed once I finished my test characters, but it match @Kallatari findings.
Especially for super-optimized characters like DFRPG ones...

Of course, you do get some serious benefits : lots of other skills if you used trunks and the possibility of using 10+trunk outside of combat.

Once you look at characters with many skills at the +5 to +10 relative level, both method prices start to converge.

I think that for low-level campaign, the variant "default is attribute -5, once you have at least 1 level in a skill, you jump to attribute -2 instead of -4" would be a good alternative. You "save" a base cost of 21 points per trunk, 9 for branch (assuming no cross-pollination). Still more expensive than the classic way, but I feel it would get balanced results if you care about staying in teh same budget ballpark than the traditional way.

Your suggestion of moving the default to -2 would get even closer prices, but given the side benefits, it may be too generous, especially with trunks... YMMV.

Either variants will make very skilled characters in many skills cheaper, which is something to watch for if the characters have the budget for it.

* : Obviously, the 2 systems are based on a different approach, with the tree costs being linear but starting with lower skills, so characters build from scratch will likely end up different depending on the system, as each will point toward a different build approach.
If you are not converting templates made for the traditional system, it is probably as easy to increase the cp budget until you get the characters where you want them (possibly using points buckets for that) and ignore the fine tuning above :)

Re: Power-Ups 10 Speculation Thread
 

All this talk about costs make it seem like the system was primarly designed for characters with most of their points in closely related skills.

Re: Power-Ups 10 Speculation Thread
 

To be clear, this talk about points is for the purpose of "converting" (for lack of a better word) between the two systems in order to get similar final skill levels. If your skills are all closely related, you "win" at the conversion game and it's cheaper. If your skills are completely unrelated, you "lose" at the conversion game, and it's more expensive.

GURPS Powers-Ups 10 - Skill Trees is merely an alternate way of using skills, and doesn't really care about "conversion" with respect to points. It assumes you start the campaign with it, not that you're converting characters from the old system to this one. If you start that way, then it's fair for everyone; no one wins or losses, other than by their personal choice of what skills they purchase, much like in the current system (e.g., spending points on skills where you have a good attribute or talent is more effective than those who don't). Optimizing for best use of points exists in either system; the optimization is just done differently, and that makes for widely different point costs if you "convert".

Also, GURPS Powers-Ups 10 - Skill Trees states in its explanation as to its underlying assumptions, that skills are the most important part of a character, more so than attributes, with regards to defining who they are. From there, in my opinion (not something written down in the text), does that therefore not mean that if skills are the most important part then you should be spending most of your character points on skills? In that, the Skill Trees actually backs that up by working in that manner - you will have to invest a lot of points in skill to make a good rounded character. It's not in any way stated that way in the document, but personally I find that to be a happy coincidence.

I'm only playing around with the point costs because I like what's in Skill Trees, and I intend to use it in future campaigns. I've been playing with the current skill structure for over 20 years, so I understand it perfectly and can easily give advice to my players as to how many points they should spend on skills for a given concept. Skill Trees is brand new, and changes the point assumptions, and I just want to get a good wrap around as to what exactly it implies so that I can give the same sort of advice to my players. I'm trying to get that sense by "converting" what is there, and it's starting to show me what I'm going to need. So, to be clear, you shouldn't be converting anything, but testing it out by converting gives you a better idea how to implement it.

Since I've done a lot of work to get to that conclusion, I'm just sharing that work it so that others can benefit from it rather than doing it all themselves.

Re: Power-Ups 10 Speculation Thread
 

I didn't actually make any reference to default in that post, as I was simply looking at point costs if you "converted" templates.

To further clarify what I meant by "starting level of Attribute -2", I merely meant that you add you level of trunks, branches, twigs, and leaves to Attribute -2 to calculate your skill level. It wasn't intended to imply a default of Attribute -2. I probably should have been more clear in that post.

I would still leave Default at Attribute -5. So in effect, I'd also have a "jump" once you purchase at least 1 level of skill (at any tier).

And that's only if I want to keep points "roughly" equivalent between systems for "it makes me feel happier" reasons. I might just go all the way and give a lot of extra points to players and use the full -5 starting point because there is technically nothing wrong with that per se. You just need to adjust how you build your character. (Although -5 is still in the options for me, I do admit to leaning to skills start at -2 at the moment.)

I'm also looking a point buckets more closely now, and possibly further breakdowns (e.g., points buckets for primary skills and point bucket for secondary skills). It's one thing to say "I'm going to give them an additional +50 points (to pick a number at random) so that they can use them to get reasonable skill levels", but what happens if they spend it on attributes or powers instead? What if you're doing +100 or +150 points if you want to start at default -5? I do think Skill Trees really needs to tell players that they want to invest points in secondary skills to be real characters, and no just focus on their core concepts because it's significantly cheaper now to ignore secondary skills.

Re: Power-Ups 10 Speculation Thread
 

I misread your post and made a wrong generalization about default - sorry.

Re: Power-Ups 10 Speculation Thread
 

The system is pretty clear about its goals:

As good character concepts focus on narrow sets of related things, you can simplify your character sheet by raising only the highest-tier items that define your concept, plus a few unrelated bits that add color and personality.

and:

. . . you'll get sharper character concepts for subject-matter experts.

If the proposed Trunks don't fit your sense of "related," see Template Trunks (p. 16). You can define "everything on a template" as a Trunk if that's important to you for your genre or setting treatment.

Also take note that "you do not have to spend character points on a Trunk to have or improve its Branches, a Branch to have or improve its Twigs, or a Twig to have or improve its Leaves." That is, you can just up and buy Twigs or even Leaves; see Missing Pieces (p. 4). This is useful if all you want to do is be the best in the world at one specific thing; take 15 levels of a Leaf for 15 points and you can be operating at skill 20 . . .

Finally, there's a strong implication that people are buying Trunks instead of attributes:

Skill Trees favors PCs who are well suited to a role over generalists with high attributes and skills chosen willy-nilly.

and:

. . .skills are more expensive in Skill Trees, in part to encourage players to buy Trunks rather than attributes.

Rather than buy IQ 14 [80] and toss 1 point into each of ~10 sciences at skill 11 (H) or 12 (VH), for ~90 points, a generic "scientist" would buy IQ 12 [40] and Natural Sciences 7 [49], for 89 points, and use all sciences at 14. And if the GM decided that a roll should be based on a score other than IQ, well, the second character would usually do better; assuming DX 10 in both cases, a DX-based roll for something tricky in the lab would be 7-8 for the first character, 12 for the second one.

But yes, there's definitely a degree of favoritism toward specialists and a big hit to the efficiency of jack-of-all-trades types. Players would need to pick different optimization goals under this system, while GMs would want to both hand-craft Trunks to suit their campaign (I think templates would be a good starting point) and float rolls to many attributes more often as a matter of course.

Re: Power-Ups 10 Speculation Thread
 

This supplement is tightly written due to price-point constraints, so a lot of things won't be obvious at first. However, it exists to address many, mostly unrelated complaints that I've received about GURPS over the years:

• The overwhelming top-heaviness of attributes. This leads to minimaxing to optimize skills under the assumption that the GM will rarely or never base a roll on anything but a controlling attribute, which in turn leads to cinematic competence in non-cinematic campaigns ("I am a great scientist, so I am also awesome at social skills and art, and am strong willed and hyper-alert."). So, I made attributes less useful than skills for specific competence at a given point cost.
  
  
• The presence of Talents and wildcard skills and grouped skills and specialties and techniques and . . ., seemingly uncoordinated, to cover various degrees of general and specialized competence. So, I unified the lot, and in the process reduced the likely number of things written on a typical character sheet (possibly to something like "Thief 10" in some cases).
  
  
• The insanity of default webs. Those who love it, love it a lot! But everybody else is asking enough questions to merit their own FAQ. After encumbrance, defaults are among the rules most often killed by GMs. So, I made being good at related things innate and advised the GM to be flexible.
  
  
• The very existence of skill difficulties. They seem goofy to many people, and clutter character sheets. Why not just call some tasks harder than others? So, I got rid of difficulties and made modifiers, which need to exist in any event, more important.
  
  
• The 4-level jump from 0 points to 1 point on the Skill Cost Table. For each person who believes that "a little training goes a long way" is realistic and likes that jump, I have complaints from five people who find the "–" entries on the table confusing, unrealistic, or both. So, I got rid of the jump.

. . . plus some minor stuff, like acknowledging Unarmed Grappling and Unarmed Striking as a better way to treat unarmed skills relative to Melee Weapon skills, and getting rid of the especially goofy Average/Hard division for techniques, which is arbitrary anyway if you know how techniques are designed.

Veterans gamers might not agree with any of this! I understand that. But if you want to lower the barrier to comprehension for new players, you might – even as a veteran – consider using this system.

Re: Power-Ups 10 Speculation Thread
 

As a final comment, don't overlook Trunks and Flexibility (pp. 18-19) and Attributes and Fluidity (pp. 19-20). A lot of the time, the GM will just say, "Okay, make a roll against 10 + any Trunk that you can convince me applies." Maybe there will be task modifiers, maybe there won't be. But one could run an entire campaign with just Trunks and extreme flexibility . . . it might feel like Risus, but that isn't a bad thing.

Re: GURPS Power-Ups 10: Skill Trees
 

Perhaps I missed it on my first read, but I definitely was hoping for more thoughts on controlling skills (prerequisites) which I find interesting and realistic, as well as a generalization of the application of skill context (expert, basic, sport, hobby, etc). I also would have appreciated a worked examples of a style under this new system. As a system hacker with pages of notes this is a welcome addition, but completely the opposite direction of what I expected. Perhaps I could humbly request more designer notes be posted over time?

Edit: I will add emphasis that I really enjoyed it, and it does fantastic groundwork on harmonizing many overlapping and at times downright confusing design elements of 4E and earlier. I it would be excellent to follow this up with a How to Be a GURPS GM volume pointing to all these alternate systems for even the CORE RULES that have been collected over the years with an eye on tuning a game for a certain feel beyond bolt-ons. You could call it Beyond 4E if you want to be cheeky...

Re: GURPS Power-Ups 10: Skill Trees
 

I would be curious to see what an iteration of this system looks like without having to work within the confines of the existing GURPS skill list.

For example it seemed like there was a whole set of exceptions devoted to "Electronics Operation" as a special case and, well, maybe that skill doesn't need to exist in its problematic form and the special case rules for it can be cut.

Re: Power-Ups 10 Speculation Thread
 

I was starting to see how my posts on the points cost was maybe scaring some potential buyers away, so I was writing a response to say "despite all my recent posts of point costs difference, that shouldn't be looked at as a downside to Skill Trees. It's just a different system with different points costs, but it comes with many other benefits." Kromm's posts summarizes all of those benefits much better than my ramblings did.

Sure, I have focused on the last bullets in my recent posts not because I objected to it - I'm actually agreeing with it in principal - but because I was looking at a way of possibly making the point costs more equivalent between the two systems. Re-instating the jump in skill level is really the only way to better align point costs.

But making the points match is nothing but a knee-jerk reaction personal preference (an illusion of "if it costs the same, then the changes are minor"). The points don't have to equal out as they are two different systems. Still, I want to understand exactly how the point cost differs so as to better set up character creation for my games. All my posts - and possible tweaks to using that skill progression gap - are just about sharing what I've learned while doing it; they're not meant to be a criticism, just a observable fact.

And when you really start digging into it, the rule changes are indeed minor (even if the cost implications are not). The changes in explanation as to how it all works are significant, but you can quickly see where all of its pieces would fit in the current system (e.g., the fact that Branches are roughly the equivalent of Skills). It's not hard to steal pieces of the Skill Trees system and add those pieces into GURPS, thus minimizing impacts to your game, even if you don't use the entirety of Skill Trees.

The fact that I'm even posting on this product and delving into the details so soon after release is probably a good sign of how much I like Skill Trees. It's not intended to be interpreted as a complaint about it. (full disclaimer: I'm one of those rule-hackers this was probably written for.)

Re: Power-Ups 10 Speculation Thread
 

I really appreciate all the work that you put into Skill Trees, and that you've both shown your work and explained your motives.

And while I love most of what you've done, my own motives are slightly different. In particular, I have always felt that 4e skills and techniques are too expensive; and the "never more than +1 per level" goal conflicts with that.

As well, the way Techniques translate into the Skill Trees system isn't exactly intuitive, and is a bit confusing unless you're already familiar with Techniques from the existing Skill system.

To address this, I'd like to extend the metaphor slightly: alongside Trunks, Branches, Twigs, and Leaves, you have Roots. For the most part, the Skill Trees deal mostly with that part of the Tree that's above ground: the bonuses provided. Meanwhile, Roots are intended to address what's below ground: that is, penalties. Use the existing rules for Skill Trees whenever you're dealing with a bonus or +0; but use the following Root rules when you're dealing with a penalty:

A Root is an extension of a Trunk, Branch, Twig, or Leaf. It's rated in terms of how much of a penalty you have if you don't buy any levels, as well as a "depth": that is, how many levels it takes to get to the "surface level" of +0. Deep Roots require two levels to reach the surface: the first level halves the penalty, and the second level removes it. Shallow Roots one require one level; and if the Trunk/Branch/Twig/Leaf has no Root, there's no penalty associated with it.

Skills that require training have a Shallow Root with a –5 penalty: one level halves that penalty to –2, and a second level eliminates the penalty entirely, letting you use the skill at +0. This Training Root applies to any Trunk, Branch, Twig, or Leaf that requires extensive training; skills that replace an Attribute roll at no penalty or otherwise can be used without penalty even without points invested in them have no Training Root, and start at +0.

But in addition to that, a Root can represent any penalty, such as Ground Fighting or Kicking. In the old system, these were handled by Techniques; in Skill Trees with Roots, they're usually Roots of Leaves, defining a specific use of a Twig that would normally be penalized: I'd consider translating Average Techniques as Shallow Roots and Hard Techniques as Deep Roots for the most part. You can also cap how many levels can be put into a Root: this cap is usually the same as the Depth of the Root; but there are some that allow for higher caps or no cap at all, letting you develop the Leaf that the Root is attached to after the Root is dealt with (that is, providing a bonus in a situation where you once faced a penalty); and in a few rare cases, you might have a Deep Root that's only allowed one level, halving the penalty but no more. I believe that this may be unique to the Targeted Location Techniques as things stand; but it doesn't have to be unique if you can come up with another Technique-equivalent for which it would make sense.

Roots of Leaves would be used to represent penalties to Branches, Twigs, or maybe even other Leaves; but if you want to represent a penalty to a Trunk, you'd buy it as the Root of a Twig. Other than buying off the untrained penalty, I can't think of any ideas for a Root of a Branch or Trunk, as that would be penalties that apply to all of the uses of that Trunk or Branch. Possibly apply it to a Trunk of a Magic system where "non-mages" cast at a –5 penalty over and above any penalties for not being trained? The level(s?) invested in buying down this second penalty would be equivalent to taking Magery 0.

—————

Now, I'd consider using the concept of Roots even if you don't want to have more than a +1 per level; it nicely encapsulates the notion of buying down penalties. Just remove the Root's Depth as a separate concept, and require one level for every –1 that you eliminate. But I personally intend to never use that option, myself; it makes skills even pricier when one of my goals is to find a way to make them cheaper.

Re: GURPS Power-Ups 10: Skill Trees
 

As noted I plan on giving this a limited test drive by including it in my Star Heist campaign as a SkillSoft. Bascially players can buy a chipslot that includes a a Trunk, Branch, Twig, or Leaf. Also AI tutor programs and a few other things will use it. But the game will continue to use wildcard and regualr skills systems.

So I converted the Starship Crew templates into trunks. I think it needs refining but wanted to show my initial start.
Commander
Responsible for ship and crew.
Main Skills: Leadership, Shiphandling (Starship), Spacer
Other Skills: Administration, Electronics Operation (Comm), Electronics Operation (Sensors), Navigation (Dive), Navigation (Space), Strategy (Space), Free Fall, Piloting (Main), Piloting (Secondary), Vacc Suit.

Engineer
In charge of general maintenance and ship welfare.
Main Skills: Electrician, Electronics Repair (Comm), Electronics Repair (Sensors), Mechanic (FTL Motive System Type), Mechanic (Power Plant Type), Mechanic (STL Motive System Type), and Mechanic (Vehicle Type).
Other Skills: Computer Operation, Engineer (Starships), Scrounging, Spacer. Vacc Suit.

Helmsman
Pilot and navigator.
Main Skills: Navigation (Dive), Navigation (Space), Piloting (Main), Piloting (Secondary), Spacer
Other Skills: Area Knowledge (region of space), Astronomy, Cartography, Electronics Operation (Sensors), Free Fall, Shiphandling (Starship), Vacc Suit.

Loadmaster
Responsible for handling and loading of cargo.
Main Skills: Free Fall, Freight Handling, Spacer, Vacc Suit.
Other Skills: Forced Entry, Climbing, First Aid, Gesture, Scrounging, Search.

Medical Officer
In charge of crew and passenger health.
Main Skills: Diagnosis, Physician, Psychology, Surgery.
Other Skills: Electronics Operation (Medical), Mechanic (Life Support), Pharmacy (Synthetic), Physiology (any).

Operations Officer
General bridge crew, responsible for operations other than captaining and piloting.
Main Skills: Computer Operation, Electronics Operation (Comm), Electronics Operation (Sensors), Electronics Repair (Comm), Electronics Repair (Computers), Electronics Repair (Sensors).
Other Skills: Research, Computer Programming, Diplomacy, and Expert Skill (Computer Security), Cryptography, Vacc Suit.

Steward
Takes care of ships passengers and supplies, including acquiring them.
Main Skills: Diplomacy, Merchant, Savoir-Faire (Servant).
Other Skills: Administration, Connoisseur (any), Cooking, Electronics
Operation (Comm or Media), First Aid, Freight Handling, Housekeeping, Professional Skill (Bartender, Hairdresser, Masseur, etc.), Public Speaking.

Tactical Officer
In charge of ships weapons and defenses.
Main Skills: Gunner (Beam), Leadership, Intelligence Analysis, Strategy (Space), Tactics.
Other Skills: Electronics Operation (Sensors), Expert Skill (Military Science) Spacer, Gunner (any other), Vacc Suit.

Re: GURPS Power-Ups 10: Skill Trees
 

I know it goes against the official line and probably the growing common understanding, but I believe this can run concurrent with normal skills and even Wildcards.

It does require one thing, though: an acceptance that points are the least important thing. If you are OK with that (and if you're not, that's also OK!), then you can look at it like having more than one magic system - there are different ways that PCs or NPCs can learn and develop, and since many NPCs are often (and in my view should be) built along the lines of "Soldier:Spec Ops:Sniper: 16" or similar (i.e. just generate a broad level of expectation as a guide), then Skill Trees could work particularly well, and points are even less important (IMO).

This means you can have both Clustered and Diversified skill sets as best suit the character concept and type. The price difference? It is what it is. I know this won't suit some people, but I also know there are many for whom exact or very close point parity isn't a factor or concern.

Re: GURPS Power-Ups 10: Skill Trees
 

This is true, and reveals one of the disconnects between Kromm, the GURPS Line Editor, and Kromm, the GURPS GM, which is the subject of most of this post:

As the game's primary developer, I understand that many, perhaps even most customers want me to respect the points system, and that some of them actually care about ±1 point either way (I mean, people do argue about perks and quirks . . .). As a GM, I tend to ignore points, allow things that seem not-broken regardless of their cost, believe that point totals have huge error bars anyway, and consider arguing over rounding or other forms of ±1 point to be daft. So, if your campaign supports "Your character costs whatever, but this seems fine – go ahead," as mine would, then you can mix and match.

Good analogy, and it's interesting to note that the many and varied magic systems in GURPS do not prescribe even close to the same point costs for the same effects. This drives some people to state, "Well, if they were all based on advantages, that wouldn't happen." I'd counter with, "Magic based on advantages is one possible system. Magic based on skills is an entirely valid model that better suits many games. And within each category, there's more than one way to arrive at your destination."

But again, see above: I'm under some pressure to pretend to care when – in reality – I'm fond of there being numerous different, often quirky ways to do the same thing, and my natural inclination is not to let point costs get in the way of my fun.

The fact that my name keeps showing up on articles in Alternate GURPS issues of Pyramid, and on Power-Ups volumes like this one and Power-Ups 9: Alternate Attributes, is a big hint that I'm more of an "it is what it is" person than a "very close point parity" one. For me, points are more what you'd call "guidelines" than actual rules, and I jump at any chance to throw off the yoke and write crazy stuff that laughs at them (though I do value doing the math and showing my work, so that I know exactly how much pushback to expect from people who don't share my madness, here or at my gaming table).

—

All of which said, please note that my caution against mixing and matching wan't grounded in the worship of point totals, but in something mostly unrelated: GMing overhead.

Having to be conversant in multiple skill systems – standard skills and Talents with all the bells and whistles from Power-Ups 3: Talents, wildcard skills with all the features from Power-Ups 7: Wildcard Skills turned on, and Power-Ups 10: Skill Trees – is asking a lot from the GM. They'll have to vet characters built each way to ensure that they make sense and will do what the player thinks they'll do, even ignoring "game balance" and points. They'll have to know how each system works, assessing special Talent benefits for one person, tracking Wildcard Points for another, and knowing the special cases for skill trees (like what overlaps and when to use 10 + Trunk rolls) for a third. They'll have to make three different flavors of rules calls in play.

So, even if you laugh off points, be sure you want this in your game. "I don't care about points" is an aesthetic consideration. Being able to handle extra systems is a practical one, dependent on your degree of GM fu.

Re: GURPS Power-Ups 10: Skill Trees
 

FYI, here's a message I sent Kromm concerning duplication in naming of Twigs and Leaves, and his reply, which he said I could share with folks.


My Message: I have a question about Tree Skills and the possible implications of (or just confusion on my part about) the Overlaps rules (p.4), where it says you can add all Trunks, Branches, Twigs, and Leaves that are applicable.

So, let’s look at two different skills in the Skill Tree structure:

Vehicles -> Piloting -> High Performance Airplane -> F18

Repair/Maintenance -> Mechanic -> High Performance Airplane -> F18

Both branches have High Performance Airplane as a Twig (i.e., formerly specializations of the respective skills). Are these the same exact same Twig or are they two different Twigs that happen to have the same name? Phrased another way, if I improve High Performance Airplane to +4, does that increase both my Piloting and Mechanic by +4?

Up until just recently, I had assumed that they were completely different Twigs with the same name, and improving one had no effect on the other. But when you read Overlaps, when it says you can add all Twigs that apply, do that mean you can grab a Twig that’s normally from a different Branch if you can justify why it applies… and would that not therefore mean that you may as well only get a single High Performance Airplane (using this example) Twig because you can easily justify why it applies to either Branch, making it a single Twig?

On the other hand, the improvement of Trunks, Branches, Twigs, and Leaves lets you trade in lower tiers and use the points for a higher tier that encompasses them. So with the first example, you can trade in High Performance Airplane to improve Piloting, because the end result is keeps the same final skill level… unless High Performance Airplane falls under both structures, then it would have the same level for Piloting (which you improved) but you’d lose a level for Mechanic (which you didn’t improve). So that suggests they’re different techniques that are merely similarly named.

So, I thought they were distinct Twigs with the same name, but Overlaps is making me overthink this, so I’d just like to confirm.

Obviously, ditto confusion for F18 Leaf.


Kromm's Reply: With the option for user-defined, campaign-specific Twigs and especially Leaves, name overlaps are inevitable – what else are you going to call the bit that deals with a specific item or situation, whatever you're doing with it? – but these wouldn't be cumulative under the skill-tree rules. I agree that there's room for confusion . . . I guess it forces one to list the Trunk and Branch for clarity even if one has level 0 in those.

Re: GURPS Power-Ups 10: Skill Trees
 

Wait, you mean to tell me the guy who wrote "Pointless Slaying and Looting" doesn't practice the Holy Rite of Meticulous Point Accounting? Je suis choqué.


Personally, while I tend toward precision in point accounting, I'm more inclined to disregard that for NPC's (unless they're Allies, Enemies, etc... although even then, if I were more experienced with the system I'd be inclined to just eyeball them, particularly considering their point values are up to some percentage of the PC's, not exactly that value). And the Skill Trees system would work great for those characters! I don't need to give this bandit Axe/Mace 14, that one Broadsword 14, this other one Spear 14, etc, and then work out what their combat skill should be if they get disarmed, find themselves in a grapple, break their weapon and pick up another one from a fallen ally, etc. Nope, just give them Melee Weapon 14 and move on - and do the same with Athletics, Sneakiness, etc.

Probably the easiest way to handle this, if the character has only the Twig and/or Leaf (if they have the Branch or Trunk, simply listing that with the Twig/Leaf after makes it clear), is to use Piloting (High Performance Airplane), Piloting (F18), Mechanic (High Performance Airplane), or Mechanic (F18), as appropriate.

As for using a single Twig/Leaf for two Trunks, when the two Trunks cover rather different things but still have the same name for the Twig/Leaf (Vehicles covers using them, Repair/Maintenance covers repairing and maintaining them), I'd say you could probably get away with doing so if you make it one category higher. That is, you could have an F18 Twig (instead of Leaf) that gives you a bonus for anything you do involving an F18 (piloting, repairing, etc), and/or a High Performance Airplane Branch (instead of Twig) that does the same for any High Performance Airplane. But that might be a bit overly complex, it may be best to just require taking it separately for each Trunk.

Re: GURPS Power-Ups 10: Skill Trees
 

hmm, that's effectively turning High Performance Airplane into Expert Skill (High Performance Airplane), as Expert Skill is kind of like a floating Branch. So yeah, I could see that working that way for a cross-skill High Performance Airplane instead of the Twig specializations to a single Branch.

Re: GURPS Power-Ups 10: Skill Trees
 

I love it, and not just because it is very similar to a system I was working on (though I was calling the different categories Themes, Wide, Regular and Narrow skills). One of the reasons I never got that system finished was the rather daunting number of skills GURPS has.

I am a very visual person, this is a quick work up of how I interpret the trees as described: Rough HTML Animal Skill Tree Picture on Imgur

Breadth of coverage and utility is, I think, a far better measure of skill value than difficulty.

I feel a lot of spell colleges could be reinterpreted as a small number of branches and a lot of twigs and leaves.

A hypothetical GURPS 5th edition would benefit from this structure, since that’d give the writers a bit more of a free hand to modify the existing skills to better mesh with it. Though I’d change the naming to simply Skill Tree, Base Skill, Specialization and Hyper Specialization so the concept is directly in the name rather than allegory.

I see what the -5 rule is trying to do, but I still don’t like it. I’d rather adventurers default to +0 and mundane tasks have a large bonus as we do now.

Complementary skills should have to come from a completely separate skill tree, and by their nature would be self limiting as a bonus.

One thing I have wanted to do for a long time is disconnect skills from attributes. The tendency of most builds to boil down to Attribute + Talent + 1 or 2 points in each skill (especially for mages) never sat well with me. But the problem that rose up from trying to do that was the resulting point cost explosion. I think Skill Trees actually make this possible.

Have all skills “default” to 6, and your first level in any skill give you skill 10. Effectively your skill is 9 + trunk + branch + twig + leaf. Attributes in this case would be situationally appropriate complementary skills.

Example: I have a gunslinger with a skill level that is independent of the controlling attribute, effectively flat. The usual modifiers for range and such apply. For normal shooting, roll against DX for the complementary skill bonus. To pick out a target in fog, smoke or dark, roll vs Per, to try to figure out if a historical weapon is a fake, IQ. To win a quickdraw, Speed (times 2).

With this system, all the Attribute + value bonus thresholds would become flat 10 + value. Also DX! and IQ! Would get carved down in value a lot, probably 5 points per level.