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Old 11-21-2021, 08:46 PM   #11
Fred Brackin
 
Join Date: Aug 2007
Default Re: Professional skill seem cheap

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Originally Posted by Steev View Post
I generally use the PC’s career to baseline a lot of their skills eg a soldier would have skills in all things soldiery.

Looking at he skill professional skill and soldier they seem awfully cheap. At IQ 10 I can build a skill 18 soldier for 32pts which seems insanely cheap.
It's insanely high but not at all cheap for what the character gets because it doesn't include any comabt abilities or even soem non-coiombat stuff that has its' own skill.

The Wildcard or Bang! version mentioned by others would be skill with _all_ thing soldier-like including omabt and hiking and everything else but would cost much more points. 120 pts tp get to Soldier!-18 from a base 10 but that fellow is probably the best soldier in the world and doesn't have many Attributes at 10 anyway.

Of course, Wildcard Skils won't be allowed in many games and you'd ned to buy multiple Skills and for a truly great soldier there's be Attributes (primary and secondary probably) above 10 and useful Advantages too ( Combat Reflexes and Fit/Very Fit just for starters)..
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Old 11-21-2021, 09:09 PM   #12
whswhs
 
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Default Re: Professional skill seem cheap

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More seriously, I would have a conversation with the player about his goals for the character. It's likely this build would not be what he was hoping for. He would be a hopeless shot without the rifle skill, for example, and couldn't drive a tank without driving (tracked).
Not to mention that he doesn't have Savoir-Faire (Military). So he's had years of experience, but he doesn't know any more about how to salute, or recognize ranks, or politely tell an officer that he's wrong, than a civilian.
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Old 11-22-2021, 04:10 AM   #13
Steev
 
Join Date: Mar 2005
Default Re: Professional skill seem cheap

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Originally Posted by whswhs View Post
Why do you want to?.
My general principle in games is to have character generation take no more than a few minutes and involve as little stress as possible for the player.

So I would, in this military style game, like the players to essentially pick a soldier, a specialty and a couple of customisations and be ready to play.

Hence my desire to employ templates etc.

Am I unusually in wanting this? If character generation takes ages and involves a lot of my time I essentially cannot kill PCs off in the game as everything would grind to a halt as I helped them generate a new character.

Do others not find this? Bear in mine my group do not know the gurps system so I would need to help them.
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Old 11-22-2021, 04:16 AM   #14
Farmer
 
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Default Re: Professional skill seem cheap

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Originally Posted by Steev View Post
My general principle in games is to have character generation take no more than a few minutes and involve as little stress as possible for the player.

So I would, in this military style game, like the players to essentially pick a soldier, a specialty and a couple of customisations and be ready to play.

Hence my desire to employ templates etc.

Am I unusually in wanting this? If character generation takes ages and involves a lot of my time I essentially cannot kill PCs off in the game as everything would grind to a halt as I helped them generate a new character.

Do others not find this? Bear in mine my group do not know the gurps system so I would need to help them.
You get what you pay for, I guess. Characters in 2 minutes aren't going to have a lot of player investment and aren't likely to have a lot of character. They're just some numbers to roll against. Sure, a player can add through their role playing, but they don't have much to help them.

I also don't see the benefit in killing off characters with abandon. Combine that with the above and I'd expect even less player investment. "Oh, I died, here's me mark 2, 5, 19, 127...".

You don't need to spend hours and hours, and templates are a great way to get the basics done, but then let them spend some time customising. They'll learn the system after some initial help.

But, absolutely to each their own. It's not a case of right of wrong, but you asked for what others do so that's my opinion of why I don't do it the way you mentioned.
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Old 11-22-2021, 05:52 AM   #15
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Default Re: Professional skill seem cheap

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You get what you pay for, I guess. Characters in 2 minutes aren't going to have a lot of player investment and aren't likely to have a lot of character. They're just some numbers to roll against. Sure, a player can add through their role playing, but they don't have much to help them.

I also don't see the benefit in killing off characters with abandon. Combine that with the above and I'd expect even less player investment. "Oh, I died, here's me mark 2, 5, 19, 127...".

You don't need to spend hours and hours, and templates are a great way to get the basics done, but then let them spend some time customising. They'll learn the system after some initial help.

But, absolutely to each their own. It's not a case of right of wrong, but you asked for what others do so that's my opinion of why I don't do it the way you mentioned.
Believe it or not it is pretty much the opposite.

When my players generate characters they pick concepts they are interested in and I don’t want rules to get in the way. I just want them there as a back drop when we need to roll dice. Hence I want the actual system generation to be fast and fluid.

My games are high role play and low number crunch. I ran The Armitage Files over lock down, once a week for over a year. There were 2 character deaths (one guy took a shotgun blast in the chest and one girl was shot with a pistol and bled out on the way to hospital) the entire time but the players all knew the threat level of the game and played cautiously as they could die and be replaced at any time.
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Old 11-22-2021, 06:01 AM   #16
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Default Re: Professional skill seem cheap

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You can very plausibly decree that a character with that skill level in soldier must spend 30 points on some combination of rank and reputation to go with it.

More seriously, I would have a conversation with the player about his goals for the character. It's likely this build would not be what he was hoping for. He would be a hopeless shot without the rifle skill, for example, and couldn't drive a tank without driving (tracked).
Although in the right sort of game, combining ridiculously high Soldier skill with Book-Learned Wisdom (Limited: US Army Field Manuals) could be entertaining.
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Old 11-22-2021, 06:27 AM   #17
Turhan's Bey Company
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Default Re: Professional skill seem cheap

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Originally Posted by Steev View Post
My general principle in games is to have character generation take no more than a few minutes and involve as little stress as possible for the player.

So I would, in this military style game, like the players to essentially pick a soldier, a specialty and a couple of customisations and be ready to play.

Hence my desire to employ templates etc.
It sounds, then, like the problem prompting the thread topic is simply that you've misunderstood Soldier skill and Professional Skill.

So, yeah, templates. You can assemble a "soldier" template who will certainly have Soldier skill, but that's not really where the points will be because it only covers routine parts of military life and not comprehensive coverage for everything a soldier might potentially be called on to do. It'll also need at least one weapon skill, optionally skills for climbing, driving, first aid, survival, and other adventure-y tasks. Or you can use wildcard skills, which are comprehensive coverage for everything a soldier might potentially be called on to do, which is simpler but less customizable. The real question you need to ask, here or in another thread, is what skills and other traits a soldier should have, and maybe see if anybody's already written up such a template.
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Old 11-22-2021, 06:29 AM   #18
WingedKagouti
 
Join Date: Oct 2007
Default Re: Professional skill seem cheap

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Originally Posted by Steev View Post
Believe it or not it is pretty much the opposite.

When my players generate characters they pick concepts they are interested in and I don’t want rules to get in the way. I just want them there as a back drop when we need to roll dice. Hence I want the actual system generation to be fast and fluid.

My games are high role play and low number crunch. I ran The Armitage Files over lock down, once a week for over a year. There were 2 character deaths (one guy took a shotgun blast in the chest and one girl was shot with a pistol and bled out on the way to hospital) the entire time but the players all knew the threat level of the game and played cautiously as they could die and be replaced at any time.
It actually sounds like you and your players want a system that is lighter on rules than GURPS. While you can run GURPS that way, a lot of the assumptions in most books are based on more detailed characters.
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Old 11-22-2021, 06:37 AM   #19
whswhs
 
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
Default Re: Professional skill seem cheap

Quote:
Originally Posted by Steev View Post
My general principle in games is to have character generation take no more than a few minutes and involve as little stress as possible for the player.

So I would, in this military style game, like the players to essentially pick a soldier, a specialty and a couple of customisations and be ready to play.

Hence my desire to employ templates etc.

Am I unusually in wanting this? If character generation takes ages and involves a lot of my time I essentially cannot kill PCs off in the game as everything would grind to a halt as I helped them generate a new character.

Do others not find this? Bear in mine my group do not know the gurps system so I would need to help them.
I've run a lot of GURPS campaigns, often with players without much GURPS expertise, including some new to GURPS and some nearly new to RPGs as such. I do help them, by talking with them about their character concepts and suggesting ways to express those in GURPS. And yes, it does take time; we have a presession that lasts at least a couple of hours, and then a month of e-mailing back and forth while I check the legality of the character design and suggest refinements. I've used racial templates, but I don't think I've ever used occupational templates.

I don't often see character deaths; my players mostly are cautious about what risks their characters take. But if a character dies, the player gets to sit out that session (and enjoy the reactions of the other characters to the death). And then I'll work with the player to come up with a new character before the next session.

That's not to say you have to do that. But standard GURPS is designed to give details on a character's distinctive traits. It's not going to work right if you try to reduce all a character's skills to a single insanely high skill. If you want to do that kind of archetypal play, take a look at ! skills. GURPS Power-Ups 7 has a detailed presentation, with a long list of possible skills, and a preface that explains something very like the style of play you describe; I think it may be the tool you want. In particular, the wildcard skill Ten-Hut! is specifically designed for doing all sorts of soldierly stuff—though you're also going to want a weapon skill, possibly Shooter!
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Old 11-22-2021, 06:49 AM   #20
Varyon
 
Join Date: Jun 2013
Default Re: Professional skill seem cheap

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My general principle in games is to have character generation take no more than a few minutes and involve as little stress as possible for the player.
Not quite the right genre, but have you seen Delvers to Grow from Gaming Ballistic? It basically lets the players make the important choices and generates a fully-functional character in only a few minutes. The problems you might run into with it are:

1) It's made for DFRPG, which is perfectly compatible with "normal" GURPS, but you'd generally either need the relevant books there or their predecessors in the GURPS DF series.

2) It's made for DFRPG, which is set in TL Olden Tymes with Magic and focuses on murder-hobo adventurers, not modern (TL8) soldiers in a military.
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