Spear vs Knights... am I missing something?

[martinl]

Originally Posted by RGTraynor

[...] I can't conceivably imagine how one gets to Spear-27 without being tolerably cool in battle.

[...]

The notion of a poor peasant being psychologically and tactically able to handle the situation's certainly a lot more realistic than the notion of one having a weapon skill that high, anyway.

Exactly this. The problem is not that Spear-27 is incredible in combat, the problem is that the CP based character building engine in GURPS allows Spear-27 on a pretty slim budget if there is no requirement for the character to make sense.

"Best in the world level skills" are around 20. Skill 27 is about as much better than "best in the world" as "best in the world" is above "average professional" (12-13). Skill-27 without a whole lot of support explaining that is weird at best. [1]

This sort of thing is unavoidable, as the GURPS CP system is not perfectly balanced (whatever exactly that is) and probably cannot be. Equal CP and wildly different power levels at [task] in [setting] is easy.

In my estimation, the CP system is more like a poetic form (like a haiku or sonnet). It provides structure that helps make a poem work, but it doesn't guarantee your poem will be good. The Spear-27 mook is the haiku:

Spear spear spear spear spear,
Spear spear spear spear spear spear spear,
Am bestest at spear.

It follows the form, and is arguably "bestest at spear", but it is not a good poem, PC[1], or NPC.

[1] OK, ok, the idea of a character who is inconceivably good at a limited thing for weird reasons is not completely out of bounds in certain genres, and could be interesting, but it's a "Aliens beamed all the spear fighting knowledge of 15 separate galactic civilizations into my brain and are now monitoring me from orbit to generate content for the 17th season of "Greatest Home Mammal Impalements" level weird.