Attribute Substitution and Defaults

[arnej]

Originally Posted by Refplace

What justifies that Guns/Pistol as a Per based skill? Is it intrinsic to pistols in the setting? Maybe some weird targeting mechanism where all you have to do is spot the target and point it in the general direction and some computer does the rest?

Guns was just an example.

It seems like it could get abusive if you use it to leverage some skill that a lot of things default off of. Say, Animal Handling.

Now I have Animal Handling (Equines)-15 (spent 2 pts).

Do I get to default Packing-10, Riding (Equines)-12, Teamster-11, and Vet-9?

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by arnej

It seems like it could get abusive if you use it to leverage some skill that a lot of things default off of. Say, Animal Handling.

Yes, Attribute Substitution has considerable potential for abuse. That's why the GM needs to approve it, and the changes are required to "make sense" which implies the GM should be sceptical. There's also a limit on many Attribute Substitution perks you can have.

Defaulting off an AS'ed skill requires GM judgement, but it should be biased towards "No."

[Gef]

I've tried to build characters based on the abuse, trying to anticipate what players might do. The 5-perk limit seems to do a good job controlling this, especially since there are so many desireable perks. I see this as working when you need to be good at one thing that's outside your best attribute, but if you want several, the better bet is Talent, 20 points for +4 to the half-dozen skills most central to your concept and a reaction bonus from people who would respect that. The GM not only has to agree that the Attribute Substitution makes sense in general, he's free to stipulate the attribute used for any particular skill check, whereas Talent applies regardless of attribute, so on balance, I haven't found Attribute Substitution abusive.

To your main point: I'd allow the guns default (different specialty of same skill). I wouldn't allow a HT-based Musical Instrument skill (analogous to Singing) to give HT-based Group Performance or Musical Composition, though.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by arnej

Guns was just an example.

It seems like it could get abusive if you use it to leverage some skill that a lot of things default off of. Say, Animal Handling.

Now I have Animal Handling (Equines)-15 (spent 2 pts).

Do I get to default Packing-10, Riding (Equines)-12, Teamster-11, and Vet-9?

I might rule differently in those two cases, and indeed for particular applications of the two cases, because of the way I feel about skill to skill defaults. Those are the flaw here, not the Attribute Substitution. If you do not allow skill to skill defaults at all, the "abuse" issues go away.

The existing method treats "some stuff can be done with more than one skill" as "all stuff can be done with either skill, no not in reality, but we'll kind of guess how much overlap there is and assign a penalty based on how small a fraction that is and call that good enough" which is frankly a terrible model all around.