Width vs depth, IQ vs DX skills

Anaraxes · 04-09-2015, 12:08 PM

It's not just your group.

I think part of the effect is simply that the combat skills are seen as (literally) life-or-death matters. Failure there is a hard failure, whereas the IQ skills are more of a "soft" failure. You can fail that research roll or knowledge check and just suffer a bit of delay.

In some cases, it's a matter of numbers. Those DX specialists probably only need a handful of skills to implement their schtick -- a melee weapon or two, Stealth, Acrobatics, Throwing. For a space game, I made a chart showing the techy skills for running a starship, of which there were 40 after I consolidated a few. Scotty the Chief Engineer has to spread the points around a lot more than Dai Blackthorn, or even Sulu the Helmsman.

04-09-2015, 12:08 PM	#3
Anaraxes Join Date: Sep 2007	Re: Width vs depth, IQ vs DX skills It's not just your group. I think part of the effect is simply that the combat skills are seen as (literally) life-or-death matters. Failure there is a hard failure, whereas the IQ skills are more of a "soft" failure. You can fail that research roll or knowledge check and just suffer a bit of delay. In some cases, it's a matter of numbers. Those DX specialists probably only need a handful of skills to implement their schtick -- a melee weapon or two, Stealth, Acrobatics, Throwing. For a space game, I made a chart showing the techy skills for running a starship, of which there were 40 after I consolidated a few. Scotty the Chief Engineer has to spread the points around a lot more than Dai Blackthorn, or even Sulu the Helmsman.