Tips for avoiding skill bloat; Pro skills

FF_Ninja · 06-19-2017, 11:10 AM

Over the weekend, I helped my players draft their new characters. I scheduled a day for character drafting and curating, and the following day for actual campaign play. No one showed up until the day of; needless to say, there wasn't any actual campaign play. Handholding four people that are new to GURPS takes up inordinate amounts of time.

But I digress.

One character is an ATF agent. I gave him Pro: Law Enforcement, but I wasn't able to field questions well regarding its use. I realized that he didn't understand when I looked at his sheet and found he'd dumped his points into the pro skill and failed to purchase any other pertinent skills (Gun, Investigation, Driving, etc).

How do I explain (and understand, I guess), the overlap - where professional skills end and general skills begin? Are there synergy bonuses from your pro skill to skills he might use on the job? Is the pro skill able to replace certain skills entirely by itself (kind of a catch-all), or would that just make it a cheap, versatile (!) skill?

06-19-2017, 11:10 AM	#18
FF_Ninja Join Date: Feb 2016	Re: Tips for avoiding skill bloat; Pro skills Over the weekend, I helped my players draft their new characters. I scheduled a day for character drafting and curating, and the following day for actual campaign play. No one showed up until the day of; needless to say, there wasn't any actual campaign play. Handholding four people that are new to GURPS takes up inordinate amounts of time. But I digress. One character is an ATF agent. I gave him Pro: Law Enforcement, but I wasn't able to field questions well regarding its use. I realized that he didn't understand when I looked at his sheet and found he'd dumped his points into the pro skill and failed to purchase any other pertinent skills (Gun, Investigation, Driving, etc). How do I explain (and understand, I guess), the overlap - where professional skills end and general skills begin? Are there synergy bonuses from your pro skill to skills he might use on the job? Is the pro skill able to replace certain skills entirely by itself (kind of a catch-all), or would that just make it a cheap, versatile (!) skill?