[Gnome]

Originally Posted by Stormcrow

Well, sure. This is a 250-point character. "Leading roles in kung fu movies, fantasy novels, etc." I'm not sure why this is a problem.

This is the starting cost for templates in DF, Action, low-end Supers, and probably a few other sourcebooks I can't think of right now. It's not like I just pulled 250 out of a hat--most people playing rpgs are used to playing heroes, and 4e responded by giving us lots of heroic templates, which I appreciate!

But none of those templates jack up weapon skills that high. Which makes it relatively easy to make a 250 character that bests a DF Swashbuckler or Knight in a toe-to-toe fight pretty much every time, even though those templates are purportedly designed to help you make optimized melee fighters.

Originally Posted by Stormcrow

Well, sure. This is a 250-point character.
And if you're playing in a game where Broadsword-40 is affordable, I don't see why the foes can't also have Broadsword-40. Or Explosive Fireball-40.

Obviously a GM can respond to a PC with skill-40 by having NPCs with skill-40. This is a response to anything you think is broken: "the GM can do it too, in fact everyone at the table can do it!"
But the problem is, the rest of the system is not well-built to handle fighters with skill-40. The prebuilt monsters in DF all get crushed by a character like that, so you have to rebuild them all. The spells in Magic all tend to assume both the caster and anyone else in the neighborhood have skills below 20, so spells like Create Warrior become useless (the "warriors" are speedbumps at best), a Shield spell that gives you a mere +3 DB pales in comparison to -12 to defenses you have from a Deceptive Attack, etc., etc.

Originally Posted by Stormcrow

Anyway, the Basic Set on page 172 suggests the GM limit starting PC skills to somewhere between 20-25 to encourage a more realistic breadth of skill.

I've tried this. If you limit skill to 20, everyone buys skill 20. Limit it to 25, everyone buys 25. Which just goes to show primary skills are underpriced, and of course leads to less diversity among PCs.

This is why I favor using the 3e progression for weapon skills and spells. You actually have to think about whether it's worth buying sky-high skill, and it becomes possible to compete even if you focused on attributes, advantages, a diversity of skills, etc.