Simplifying Innate Attack

[Kesendeja]

Reading through the rules, and having an extensive background in reading Fantasy and Sci-Fi (and having a fondness for the authors who did a fair amount of worldbuilding) I was wondering how badly altering Innate Attack Skills would mess things up.

Right now it's effectively four skills; Beam, Breath, Gaze and Projectile. The default is minimal I know, but for game purposes' it can get weird. (Trust me my players would confuse M.C. Escher, I swear one of them thinks in non-Euclidean geometry.)

Mostly asking for my modified magic system (Sorcery with a few tweaks). An Attack roll would be used to deliver a "Touch Spells" wouldn't the same be used for "Ranged Spells".

This would narrow it down to effectively two skills: Innate Attack Magic - Ranged and Innate Attack Magic - Close.

[Taneli]

It's not a big change, if one were to look for simplifying the pretty extensive GURPS skill lists, that one is one of the simplest.

[mlangsdorf]

The text of the Innate Attack skill makes it clear that it only applies to ranged attacks: "You can only learn this skill for ranged attacks. Use Brawling (p. 182) to improve your odds with abilities that require a touch" (Basic p 201).

So your tweak is already included in the rules and you're making a possibly unnecessary change.

[Varyon]

Touch-ranged spells I'm pretty certain you can use any unarmed skill for (Brawling, Boxing, Karate, Wrestling, Sumo Wrestling, or Judo), in addition to straight DX; Innate Attack is purely a ranged skill. That said, the reason Innate Attack has several Required Specializations is more for flavor/verisimilitude than any sort of balance. If you want to just have one Innate Attack skill, the only thing you really risk breaking is verisimilitude (if your players feel "pointing your finger at someone and creating a beam" and "breathing fire" are too different to be the same skill), and that can be solved by just making all uses of Innate Attack function the same way. So everything is functionally a beam coming from your finger, and there aren't any breath weapon spells or similar.

Back to melee, if you want there to be a melee Innate Attack skill, that's also still workable. It will seem odd that you cannot use an unarmed striking or grappling skill to deliver the effect and must instead rely on a specialty skill, however. I could see justification for mages and the like to specifically train a skill that just serves to touch the foe to deliver an effect, rather than striking them... but given you can't get easier than Easy, you may want to come up with a benefit to taking Innate Attack (Melee) over Brawling (if hit location matters for your melee spells, halved hit-location penalties would make sense).

[Pursuivant]

As long as the changes affect everyone equally, you probably won't break anything if you alter or combine Innate Attack skills.

For example, wizards in a "Harry Potter" inspired campaign who hurl spells using wands might all use Innate Attack (Spell) which covers any sort of attack fired from a wand or staff. Since everyone has to use wands or staffs to sling spells, they're all working from the same baseline.

Also remember, although it's not listed in the defaults listed below the skill name, IA variants default to each other at -2.

That's a trivial enough default that you could easily make IA variants Techniques or Familiarities based on a single skill. Alternately, buy variants of IA after the first as Perks, with overall skill based on the originally-purchased IA skill.

Combining all the IA variants + Brawling (IA attacks only) into a single skill isn't going to change things that much. IA specialists will save a few points because they only need to buy one skill, but they won't get the benefits of Brawling skill when making non-IA attacks.

Extending IA to include Brawling, or vice-versa, is probably too good a deal, however, unless you're running a really high-powered High Tech or Ultratech campaign. In those situations a single Easy skill such as Beam Weapons or Guns can be used to deal out massive long-range damage and it makes sense to lump skills for less effective weapons/attacks together to make them a bit more appealing to players.

[RGTraynor]

(shrugs) This isn't any more of a conceptual complexity than weapon skills are generally; we don't, after all, use "One Handed Melee Weapon" and "Two Handed Melee Weapon" as skills.

[Tinman]

Originally Posted by RGTraynor

(shrugs) This isn't any more of a conceptual complexity than weapon skills are generally; we don't, after all, use "One Handed Melee Weapon" and "Two Handed Melee Weapon" as skills.

And yet there was a pyramid article making an excellent case to consolidate all the guns skills into long-arm & pistol.
I could definitely see the same for innate attack. beam & projectile into IA(hand). Possibly, gaze & breath into IA(???).

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Tinman

And yet there was a pyramid article making an excellent case to consolidate all the guns skills into long-arm & pistol.
I could definitely see the same for innate attack. beam & projectile into IA(hand). Possibly, gaze & breath into IA(???).

IA (Face), maybe? Really, it feels like Innate Attack as simply the ranged analogue to Brawling (that is, for use of ranged innate weapons) should be perfectly acceptable; it's not like biting, headbutting, punching, elbowing, kicking, striking with a knee, or striking with a tail require separate skills - you just use Brawling for all of them.

[Kesendeja]

Originally Posted by Varyon

IA (Face), maybe? Really, it feels like Innate Attack as simply the ranged analogue to Brawling (that is, for use of ranged innate weapons) should be perfectly acceptable; it's not like biting, headbutting, punching, elbowing, kicking, striking with a knee, or striking with a tail require separate skills - you just use Brawling for all of them.

This was my reasoning, Innate Attack and Brawling should work for my needs. One for ranger and one for Melee.

Certain spell might use a specific skill.... like Force Sword for a mystical version.

[zoncxs]

Originally Posted by Tinman

And yet there was a pyramid article making an excellent case to consolidate all the guns skills into long-arm & pistol.
I could definitely see the same for innate attack. beam & projectile into IA(hand). Possibly, gaze & breath into IA(???).

Innate Attack Beam, Projectile, Breath, and Gaze all cover a specific means of delivering a ranged attack.

Gaze : delivered via eyes/ organ you use for sight.
Breath : delivered via mouth / orifice used for breathing
Projectile : delivered via hand / appendage that can throw
Beam : delivered via hand / appendage that can point

Since each of them are defaulted to each other at -2, I would change it into 1 skill and have the other 3 be techniques:

Innate Attack, Pick one of 4 specializations as your main means of attacking. All other forms can be learned as an average technique at -2 each.

For example:

Skills:
Innate Attack (Projectile) (E) DX+2 [4]

Techniques:
Beam (A) Innate Attack (Projectile)+0 [2]
Breath (A) Innate Attack (Projectile)+0 [2]
Gaze (A) Innate Attack (Projectile)+0 [2]