Width vs depth, IQ vs DX skills

[Kromm]

It depends entirely on what challenges the GM throws at the players.

In my secret-agents campaign (currently on hiatus), just about all of the NPC foes met in combat are less capable than the PCs. Most are low-skill conscripts or criminal goons, poorly trained fanatics sent forth to sell their lives, or just desperate people snatching up weapons. Besting them almost never relies on outmatching them point-for-point in DX and combat skills – that's a special challenge I pull out once in a rare while, and noteworthy when it happens. The overwhelming majority of conflicts are won by getting the jump on someone via guile or planning. Consequently, the impressive skill levels are in areas like Acting, Camouflage, Fast-Talk, Holdout, Observation, Shadowing, and Tactics. I'll grant that Stealth is pivotal, too, but it's the one exception.

Most of the time in that campaign, however, the PCs aren't fighting – or sneaking using Stealth – at all. They're gathering information via social skills or Interrogation, using surveillance gear with Electronics Operation and Photography, looking for clues with skills like Forensics and Search, or digging around with Research. They're very often messing with specialized gear that calls for Armoury, Computer Programming, Electronics Repair, Mechanic, etc. And of course they're sneaking into places using Lockpicking and Traps. Because so much of the social stuff is resisted while the technical stuff has penalties for either improvised tools or enemy equipment quality, these levels are high.

My experience, then, is that there are campaign types where high IQ and IQ-based skills (and Per and Per-based skills, especially) are more important than high DX and DX-based skills, and where most of the PCs have lots of IQ-based skills at high levels.