Breadth of Non-Combat Techniques (social and other)

[vicky_molokh]

Greetings, all!

The 10-point thread seem to be prone to spawning tangents. This one is produced by a mention of a hypothetical technique, which was deemed too broad. So the reasonable follow-up question is, of course, just how broad should Techniques be?

Spoiler:  

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

You know, I keep wondering why Social Engineering didn't list Seduction as a valid Technique with all the appropriate defaults (in addition to the stereotypical one). It would find its way onto character sheets of many [N]PCs, and propagate through the forum as a meme, clearing up the confusion.

I mean, there clearly are mechanics, so it might've took the point home by explicitly mentioning a named Technique for it. Or was space so much of an issue that a single-paragraph Technique wasn't an option?

Originally Posted by whswhs

Time to write was so much an issue that making up every conceivable technique wasn't an option.

And I'm not seeing seduction as a single technique, anyway. It's a goal. It's like having a combat technique called "kill people."

They cost roughly ¼ of full skills, so it's usually not a good idea to have more than 2-3 per skill. Also, here are some examples of Non-Combat Techniques: No-Hands Riding (pretty wide), Scaling (extremely useful as far as Climbing goes), Slip Handcuffs (definitely very common use, if the setting includes them, e.g. in TL7).

Now, perhaps we in fact have to few non-combat Techniques because people have no idea how much they should cover. Anybody got opinions on the issue?

Thanks in advance!