Skills and skill levels for building an army, intelligence service, bureaucracy

fifiste · 07-24-2013, 03:43 AM

What I have had trouble in GURPS is with having a big bunch of suitable skills that can be all useful for a certain task.
For current example finding a good hireling for a post. Lets say we have current affairs, streetwise etc. for knowledge of stories of feats to check out potential candidates. Then psychology and detect lies etc. for personality evaluation and truth-fullness, then your own skills in area to evaluate competence.
Do you fire off rolls for each steps sequentially? Then the more skills you have or use the LESS likely are you to succeed! Make them give bonuses/penalties to subsequent rolls? What if you skip one of them completely?
Or do you require a roll. vs. lowest of skills? What if you don't use then one of those? Coould still be possible to accomplish but at what penalty?
Lot of tasks in real world would require several skill rolls subsequently or concurrently but both rolling several rolls or rolling vs lowest have some troubles. One issue is that oftentimes there are are several options of using skills or not using and they are all penalized in different measures in real life. Sometimes it is impossible to do something without a complementary skill, sometimes it just makes it harder. Sometimes you need to finish something before other step, sometimes it just makes the other step more or less likely to succeed.
Can anybody point out book page numbers or discussions in forums etc. where all the multiple skill rolls and complementary skills etc. stuff has been dealt with.

07-24-2013, 03:43 AM	#15
fifiste Join Date: Aug 2012 Location: Estonia	Re: Skills and skill levels for building an army, intelligence service, bureaucracy What I have had trouble in GURPS is with having a big bunch of suitable skills that can be all useful for a certain task. For current example finding a good hireling for a post. Lets say we have current affairs, streetwise etc. for knowledge of stories of feats to check out potential candidates. Then psychology and detect lies etc. for personality evaluation and truth-fullness, then your own skills in area to evaluate competence. Do you fire off rolls for each steps sequentially? Then the more skills you have or use the LESS likely are you to succeed! Make them give bonuses/penalties to subsequent rolls? What if you skip one of them completely? Or do you require a roll. vs. lowest of skills? What if you don't use then one of those? Coould still be possible to accomplish but at what penalty? Lot of tasks in real world would require several skill rolls subsequently or concurrently but both rolling several rolls or rolling vs lowest have some troubles. One issue is that oftentimes there are are several options of using skills or not using and they are all penalized in different measures in real life. Sometimes it is impossible to do something without a complementary skill, sometimes it just makes it harder. Sometimes you need to finish something before other step, sometimes it just makes the other step more or less likely to succeed. Can anybody point out book page numbers or discussions in forums etc. where all the multiple skill rolls and complementary skills etc. stuff has been dealt with.