Skill Advancement

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Stormcrow

They are designed to make you optimized melee fighters that can do melee fighting things beyond just swinging a sword. The knight gives you lots of Strategy, Tactics, Enhanced Block or Parry, Hard to Kill or Subdue, Luck, healing, Shield, Brawling, and multiple melee weapons. Mr. Broadsword may have some of that, but not as much as the knight, and in any given situation that isn't about swinging a broadsword, the knight will be on top. Broadsword got yanked out of your grip by a spell? Oops! The knight can pull out another weapon, but Mr. Broadsword is in trouble. Got hit for a lot of damage by something you couldn't Parry? Ouch! The knight has a very good chance of remaining upright, conscious, and alive, but Mr. Broadsword has probably been knocked out and may be dead already.

Make no mistake: if you sink all those points into Broadsword skill, you will be sacrificing important abilities elsewhere. You will be extremely specialized, which will work well until you find yourself in a situation you aren't specialized for.

You appear to be responding as though having Broadsword-40 costs [250]. It does not - it costs [120] (starting from DX 10). You could readily take one of the fairly-serviceable [125] delvers from Dungeon Fantasy 15: Henchmen (or, I presume, from Delvers to Grow, once that's released), tack Broadsword-40 on top (likely for less than [+120] if you pick a combat-focused template, which will already have a decent DX and some points sunk into Broadsword), and end up with a character who massively outperforms all the [250] characters in any situation where hitting things with a stick is useful. His secondary skills will be inferior to those of the other melee fighters, but he'll be far from useless in those regards.

That said, I'm largely fine with the way GURPS 4e prices skills (I feel it has too many skills, but that's a different discussion). As GM, if someone handed me a character with Broadsword-40 for use in a DF setting or similar, I'd probably laugh, hand the sheet back, and ask them to create a more balanced character (and try to help them with it). I wouldn't want to put any hard limits on skill, even in the form of Unusual Background surcharges, but a character with one skill so far in excess of all the others wouldn't pass review.