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Old 09-03-2020, 04:27 PM   #26
kirbwarrior
 
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Join Date: Jun 2010
Location: Dreamland
Default Re: Reducing the number of wepon skills

Quote:
Originally Posted by Gnome View Post
Part of the problem might come from the fact that skill gives you better attacks, better defenses, and even the potential to do more damage (by targeting locations), so there's really a lot in that one package of melee weapon skill.
Remember to add 'if they have the right tool' to all of this. They have to have a (say) sword to be able to attack and parry with, they have to be facing enemies that get in melee and have weapons that can be parried, and if they have only one weapon skill they can't easily upgrade to whatever treasure they find in dungeons or stores. No amount of Broadsword is going to matter against bow-wielding birds. Without the right expensive advantages, you can't parry with arrows or bullets. And unarmed skills have even worse range with further limitations (Brawling and Boxing have poor parry options, Karate is affected by encumbrance, grappling is just a difficult and long affair).

If one skill is enough to dominate, then I'd assume the GM is letting it. Is that broadsword user going to have a ready blade when the batlord crashes a fancy dance? Is the user going to be able to fight off diffuse enemies? Will they see the traps in between them and the ogre? And this is all assuming that dealing lethal damage is even the goal!

The literal one skill I see easily abused in my campaigns at high levels is Stealth. And because I'm almost entirely under control of what situations can be solved with or even need Stealth, I don't have an issue with it. Every other skill has limitations of some kind built into them.

On topic, I think it's fine. I could see bumping them all a difficulty level and letting the RAW skills become specialties. And on the note of Bang! skills I think the weapon ones are also pretty bad. Sword! just doesn't cover that much compared to other ones. And is pretty poor compared to Weapon Talent [15] which is itself poor compared to DX [20].
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Quote:
Originally Posted by cosmicfish View Post
While I do not think that GURPS is perfect I do think that it is more balanced than what I am likely to create by GM fiat.
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