Absurdly high skill levels

[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

[Ed the Coastie]

Originally Posted by gmillerd

...entering doors you lockpick in realtime by touch alone in absolute darkness...

*g* I've done that once, just to see if I could do it. It took me about 10 minutes, counting the time necessary to find the door.

I guess I rolled a critical success...

[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.

[Ze'Manel Cunha]

Originally Posted by Ed the Coastie

*g* I've done that once, just to see if I could do it. It took me about 10 minutes, counting the time necessary to find the door.

I guess I rolled a critical success...

Lockpicking is mostly by touch, so the biggest TDM is for finding the door in the first place.

[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.

[Mgellis]

One issue is usefulness.

With most skills, the default "This is IMPOSSIBLE! Only an idiot or a genius would even attempt it!" penalty is -10. So, for most skills, 26- is all you are likely to ever need because your effective skill level is 16- and rolls of 17 or 18 are failures no matter what.

With other skills, where penalties can exceed -10 (combat, ritual magic, etc.), having a skill level of 30- or even 40- could conceivably be useful. If, for example, I want to make a skull shot (-7) at someone 1,000 yards away from me (-14) in poor light (-5), then even if I've got a really good rifle and stop to aim, etc. (about +8, depending on the rifle), I would need a skill of 28- simply to have a 50% chance of hitting.

Another issue is plausibility. But this is going to vary from group to group, depending on how the rules are interpreted. In general, though, I assume that skill levels above 20- are somewhat cinematic, although there are exceptions.

Mark

[Witchking]

On the theme the highest skill I ever had in 22 yrs of using GURPS was a 23 in Physician (M/VH). That was with my second character. He had an IQ of 10, 28 pts in Physician, and first level Eidetic Memory (30 pts back when Eidetic doubled the points put into mental skills). I found it interesting, I never lost a patient, and I eventually worked up a cure for the local equivalent of cancer (mostly to save my wife). Overall I found it to be more that a bit of overkill, especially seeing as it was off of a 100 pt build with 40 pts in disads and 23 was my level at roll up and I never increased it from there....