[Sindri]

Originally Posted by pfharlock

If I understand what you are saying (my grasp of the thread of conversation being admittedly pretty shaky), I think the game system disagrees with you.

That's why when you start buying up skills that have been raised using defaults, you only pay the difference.

Example, legendary fighter shiro is a master of the katana at 24. Once he fought with a Chinese jian (which for the sake of argument will say defaults to katana at -4, I'm not sure if it does by the rules or not). So he swings this thing at a 20, the default. He decides he really likes the jian and decides to practice with it. If shiro wants to raise his skill to 21 he only has to pay 4 points rather than paying the truckload of points it would take to get it to 20 if he didn't have his katana skill.

If the game system disagrees with me it's not the game system that wins :). I'm fine with people not having to spend as much raising a skill from default, that doesn't mean people should be in perma-default for core skills.

Originally Posted by Mathulhu

...or he could spend 4 points and up katana to 25 and jian to 21.

I noticed the gcg requires one to have at least one point in a skill to buy techniques that default from it. That might be a useful thing to enforce.

Does the technique feint (katana) default to feint (jian) in any way?

Yes, you must have at least a point in a skill to buy techniques. Techniques don't default to their siblings among other skills at least by RAW. Personally I'd like to avoid a situation where a character has the skill level he is otherwise happy with but needs to raise it to achieve the trained status if possible.

Originally Posted by pfharlock

Not to my knowledge. I know there are some benefits that actually having the skill conveys that merely defaulting does not, it sounds like techniques may be one of them.

Interesting point though, you could probably spend one point in jian and even though you are still swinging at a 20 (ie the skill didn't go up) you could probably start using the techniques.

(Please someone correct me if I'm wrong about which abilities you don't get from defaults, or feel free to mention what they are. That's a bit of crunch I don't have occasion to dig into much)

Edit: also it's worth noting that I don't know if either katana or Jian are real skills, I made them up to serve as placeholders for two skills from the book that do default to one another.

You can still use techniques without points in a skill. Personally I would ignore any points spent on a skill until it raises the level if I was playing with normal raising skills from defaults. Technically katana and jian aren't skills (well... isn't a skill anymore in the case of katana) but they perform fine for examples anyway.

Originally Posted by Tomsdad

Maybe not explicitly, but the reality of it is you pay the 67 pts for a skill of 24 in Broadsword, then you get some pretty respectable score is lots of combat skills.

The whole concept of defaults in general points to the idea that certain skills share fundamentals, and the the fact that some skills default more widely points to the idea that some fundamentals are widely shared. What a skill defaults to and by how much is an aspect of the skill just as its difficulty is.

There is no explicitness about it. Two skills with the same difficulty levels do not cost differently based on the defaults they grant. Full stop. The difficulty levels are too coarse and too not utility costed to argue that they are changed by the defaults available either.