Absurdly high skill levels

[Bruno]

The open-ended nature of some penalties and the contest-based uses of others means that you basically can't say when Absurdly High Skill Levels max out the benefit to be gotten.

Melee and ranged weapon skills are the extreme example, but I think it applies to a lesser extent with some other skills.

It seems intuitively impossible that anyone could ever need a Rapier skill of 100. Say you're in the almost-pitch-dark (-9), Extremely heavily encumbered (-4) because you're carrying your unconscious companion, on a rain-swept (slippery, -2) steeply angled (-2) poorly maintained slate roof (-2 for being uneven and full of holes) and you're acutely afraid of heights (Phobia, -4). You're doing a rapid strike (-6, not a Weapon Master) with your Rapier in your off hand (-4, you didn't take Offhand Weapon Training or Ambidexterity), to the chinks in your opponents eye armor (which you can barely see in the dark, -10).

Oh, and you're downslope from your enemy on the roof, giving effectively 2 feet of vertical distance (-2 to hit the head) and he stabbed you last combat round and you have Low Pain Threshold (-8 for shock).

That's only -53 to skill, so you "only" need a skill of 69 to have an effective skill of 16 and maximum possible hit and crit chances, right?

If your opponent has a skill of 70 with his rapier, his base Parry score is 39 (assume he has Combat Reflexes). He's above you (+1) on a rain-swept (slippery, -1 - defense penalties are halved for bad footing) steeply angled (-1) poorly maintained slate roof (-1). He's using his rapier in his good hand, is NOT encumbered, is not in pain, and not afraid of heights. And he retreats, (+3 because he's using a rapier). He gets no penalty for bad lighting, apparently. Effective Parry score of 40, or nigh-unhittable unless you crit - and you only have a 9.3% chance of critting.

You'd need to stack on 30 levels of Deceptive Attack (-60!! to hit) on both Rapid Strikes just to knock his Parry down to 10. Meaning that to flounce confidently through this situation, our beleaguered PC needs a skill of higher than 129, just to soak up the penalties and swing the odds in his favor.

Basically, any ridiculous level of skill a player can get, an NPC can get or exceed better. Any place where skills are contested or placed in opposition to each other, there is no "maxing out".

[pawsplay]

There is always some benefit to be gained, but basically, skills start doing some slightly odd things over 20, but the system works pretty well up until 30 or so. Past that, and you have scenarios where techniques based on a defense can't fail except on a critical failure even at default, gadgeteers can automatically design very complex items of +3 TL, and so forth. Even then, you could adjudicate the results, it's just that the game would be unrecognizable as a simulation of much of anything.

[vitruvian]

Physical action skills (jump, lift, climb, etc): The speed at which you do these things, like the Influence rolls, are not determined by the skill roll. So it doesn't help you that much. It just makes sure that you can scale the "unclimbable pole", or make sure that you also gets a little bonus to your lifting checks and so on. It doesn't really pay off to have anything above skill 30. Maybe climbing might benefit from a little higher skill than the others.

True for some of these, not others. Lifting, for example, can give you +5% lifted weight times margin of success, 10% times margin on extra effort, with no upward limit that I can see. True, it's almost as good to take super-high Will at 5 pts a point, but still... but you're right, most of them are simple success rolls where you don't need more than 26-30 since TDMs for most tasks top out at about -10.

[gmillerd]

Having base skills near or above 20 is absurd for most the games I am in. Though getting there with trait modifiers and beneficial conditions isn't that hard for mundane characters within their sphere of specialization and outside heroic conditions.

When I visit base skills near or above 30, I find it hard to conceive of that skill in a useful manner. It seems like the skill blends into so many other aspects at a certain point. When the characters are actually challenged, the modifiers are truly absurd.

Too often the modifiers also seem to combine skills, such as stealth and the skill or what have you seem to introduce another problem. But who with a 30 History really is lacking in Research skill.

The entering doors you lockpick in realtime by touch alone in absolute darkness (or whatever the forum example of old was.)

[pawsplay]

Some silly examples:

History (20th century Military)-30 with no Strategy skill
Politics-30 with no Current Affairs skill
Sex Appeal-30 with no Erotic Art skill
Soldier-30 with no Guns or Melee weapon skill

[The Benj]

Originally Posted by pawsplay

History (20th century Military)-30 with no Strategy skill

I see no big issue there (besides having a skill of 30, which I think is absolutely ridiculous). There's plenty of people who know lots about how things went without being able to apply that knowledge.

Politics-30 with no Current Affairs skill

I'm kind of dubious about Politics skill in general. It seems like a Public Speaking specialisation to me.

Sex Appeal-30 with no Erotic Art skill

Definitely nothing wrong here. Just because you can seduce people doesn't mean you know the kama sutra.

Soldier-30 with no Guns or Melee weapon skill

A little silly. But then, I hate Soldier skill too.

[pawsplay]

Originally Posted by The Benj

I see no big issue there (besides having a skill of 30, which I think is absolutely ridiculous). There's plenty of people who know lots about how things went without being able to apply that knowledge.

This is beyond "lots." How could you even assimilate that much knowledge without even a basic understanding of what was done and way? It would be like Literature (Hindu) with no appropriate language skill, memorizing entire epics phonetically and alphabetically without learning any words.

I'm kind of dubious about Politics skill in general. It seems like a Public Speaking specialisation to me.

A lot of it is actually private speaking.

Definitely nothing wrong here. Just because you can seduce people doesn't mean you know the kama sutra.

There is still something wrong there. How can you have such an understanding of sex appeal that you can effortlessly attract virtually anyone, yet be an ironing board in the sack? It's possible to be pretty good at Sex Appeal without any Erotic Art, but you can't be transcendently good at Sex Appeal without acquiring some basic body language skills that would at least serve for the basics.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by pawsplay

There is still something wrong there. How can you have such an understanding of sex appeal that you can effortlessly attract virtually anyone, yet be an ironing board in the sack? It's possible to be pretty good at Sex Appeal without any Erotic Art, but you can't be transcendently good at Sex Appeal without acquiring some basic body language skills that would at least serve for the basics.

But, by definition, Erotic Art isn't the basics. Erotic Art is the equivalent of martial arts. No matter how good you are at Brawling you still aren't using Karate even though you maybe be able to handily thrash any Karateka alive with your Brawling 40. Having sex with someone with Sex Appeal 30 but no Erotic Art is probably more way more actually enjoyable than having sex with someone who has Erotic Art 30 and Sex Appeal 12 but it isn't as impressive in the sense of "How can someone bend that way?"

Originally Posted by pawsplay

Come again? Erotic Art .

Oh no you di'int.

[TheDS]

These higher-leveled skills couldn't POSSIBLY be useless or absurd, or they wouldn't be priced so exceptionally high at 4 CPs per skill point. That skill-100 costs around 350 CPs, which as we all know, represents 350 points' worth of unfairness vs someone who doesn't have it. Isn't YOUR first action when building a 500 point character to figure out which skill you want at 100? Well why not?

Originally Posted by pawsplay

Some silly examples:

History (20th century Military)-30 with no Strategy skill
Politics-30 with no Current Affairs skill
Sex Appeal-30 with no Erotic Art skill
Soldier-30 with no Guns or Melee weapon skill

These might all default to each other. I know the third example does as I was browsing through the book last night and this stuck out.

[macphersonrants]

I played a character in a highly cinematic game that was heavily cribbed from the Miyamato Musashi character in GURPS Japan. Based on that experience, I can say for certain that a melee combat skill of 30 was not an useless waste of points. It allowed me to do things like combining a martial arts technique and a high negative modifier aimed attack while dealing with bad conditions and still keep the maximum chance for a critical. That said I wouldn't personally go much higher than that even in the most cinematic games. There are better places to spend those points.