Skill Advancement

[bocephus]

Originally Posted by Emerikol

So I think the game can be broken if you have players intent on breaking it. This is why I asked the question. I've dealt with some expert rules lawyers over the years so I understand how they think.

So there are a variety of approaches to "fix" the problem.
1. Just get player buyin not to do this... For me this works but is unsatisfying.

2. Make the cost increase for advancement of the same effectiveness. This is absolutely realistic in my opinion. There is a diminishing returns for improving a skill with training. Then the question becomes what is the best approach.

3. Another approach is enforced breadth. You do this by requiring something like a pyramid. So you always must have more skills at cp 1 than you do at cp 2 and so forth all the way up. I'd probably just use a term like rank to represent movement up the skill table. So an IQ-3 very hard skill or an IQ easy skill are both rank 1 when you spend that first point. The downsides of this approach are that PCs will start taking skills just to grow their pyramid and they'd become jack of all trades in some pretty weird stuff.


So my sympathies likely lay with #2 above but I'm still not sure the exact right way to do this. I've mentioned that everything over 20 costs it level-20 in addition to the base +4. You could also just keep doubling the cost so it's +4 then +8 then +16 then +32 and at some point PCs will stop improving that skill.

Another, possibly simpler, option is to limit Crits to a max of 6 or less. If you follow the "exceed your skill by 10" rule a 40 skill would be a crit on most swings.

No matter how good your skill anything higher than a 6 is just a hit. This makes a 40 sword skill much much less useful. The math just doesn't pay back the points. Once you get to skill 20, to absorb a reasonable number of penalties, more is something you will grow into figuring out the sweet spot of whats legitimately enough to do the job.

There is a slight caveat to Range weapons, especially muscle powered ones because distances add significant penalties very quickly. But this is a function of how the mechanics work.

Yet another option is that as your skill proggession stays the same but the time to train increases. Instead of the generally accepted 200 hours to raise a skill (or something like it) once you get to Stat+4 or what ever you choose, start adding 100 hours each skill level. So its not the cost that is the investment, but the game time required. This will probably not work in games where there isn't some semblance of time tracking, or downtime that reflects healing, shopping, gathering supplies, travel.... but even if you are a generous GM and allow 4 hours of training a day, thats 25 days in game. Once it goes up it takes a month and a half, then two months, 2.5months, 3 months, 3.5... your character in vestment is the same in points but time determines the ability to raise the skill not just having cash in your wallet.

Lastly an option I came up with for a house rule. sort of what you said but not doubling. This was discussed at great length in another thread you can find by looking for posts that have this text.

Skill level cost variation (this replaces the standard version, its not an addition to it):
Scale them by one instead of exponential. Just adding one to each subsequent skill increase, you pay additional 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, and on (the points spent intersect at the 6th increase then start to become cost prohibitive) early on its even a touch cheaper, but definitely covers increasing skill once you are at that high skill level. If it wasn't that I use a tool that is pre configured for GURPS I think I would probably implement this right off now that someone pointed it out.

VH progression GURPS 4e 1, 2, 4, 8, 12, 16, 20, 24, 28, 32, 36
VH progression proposed 1, 2, 4, 7, 11, 16, 22, 29, 37, 46, 56
VH progression math: 1, 1+1, 2+2, 4+3, 7+4, 11+5, 16+6, 22+7, 29+8, 37+9, 46+10, 56+11, etc....

Its basically the same point investment up to:
Attribute +7 for easy
Attribute +6 for average
Attribute +5 for hard
Attribute +4 for VH

After this point it starts getting really expensive and a +40 would simply be untenable. Your game has to be balanced for this, and you can allow the addition of techniques for martial abilities to get players up into that 20ish sweet spot. But this is mechanically much easier to control if your not using one of the software build options, they usually hard code skill level progression