12-18-2015, 11:42 AM | #21 | |
GURPS FAQ Keeper
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Kyïv, Ukraine
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Re: Changing techniques to just 1pt leveled perks
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12-18-2015, 11:54 AM | #22 | |
Banned
Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: Europe
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Re: Changing techniques to just 1pt leveled perks
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Apart from that, it's a very reasonable thing to suggest, that characters should be allowed to pay the necessary 3 or 2 points to buy up a Skill level "around" the already purchased Technique (or two Techniques). And maybe it won't be used very often in most campaigns after all. |
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12-18-2015, 01:33 PM | #23 | |
Join Date: Apr 2011
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Re: Changing techniques to just 1pt leveled perks
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The thing is, I like the way ability --> talent --> skill --> technique balances right now. It encourages simple character sheets and no unnecessary specialization. What you don't want are specialization rules where you feel like you have to specialize, or worse where it makes the most sense to "specialize in everything". With that said, Kromm was talking a week or two ago about the GURPS community applying itself to simplification and elegance, rather than coming up with five page rules systems to handle edge cases in maddening detail. And I've been pleased to see people stepping up to the plate with ideas like this. Do we need techniques to have a difficulty? Is that extra point for hard techniques really giving us anything? It's not just about word count, it's about complexity of rules interactions, ease of learning the system, and player attention span to learn all this. Before this thread, I'd have felt it was worth it, but now I'm thinking that having a mechanic that won't move a character's point total by more than +/-5 isn't worth the cost. |
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12-18-2015, 01:55 PM | #24 |
Join Date: Dec 2006
Location: Eindhoven, the Netherlands
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Re: Changing techniques to just 1pt leveled perks
If we're discussing removing Hard techniques as a concept, I'm all for it.
Hard Techniques create, first of all, an unnecessary complication. Techniques are, themselves, a complication atop skills, and they have to additional complications: the associated penalty (Counter Attack is Weapon-6, while Feint is Weapon+0), AND also the skill level. But what does the latter add? Well, it mostly adds extra investment. You're effectively paying a 1 point UB cost, then you can carry on increasing your technique for 1 point per level, but that means to get the most out of that UB cost, you need to buy as much technique as possible. Counter Attack-5 costs 2 and is a worse investment of your points than Counter Attack -0 for 7. This makes Hard techniques a dubious proposition, and techniques were already dubious to begin with, so I don't think that helps things. Worse, there are quite a few hard techniques that are simply a -1 to skill by default. Is that worth 2 points for the (max) +1? Very dubious. I vastly prefer to houserule techniques to just average, all of them. One point buys you +1 to a technique, period. No muss, no fuss.
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My Blog: Mailanka's Musing. Currently Playing: Psi-Wars, a step-by-step exploration of building your own Space Opera setting, inspired by Star Wars. |
12-18-2015, 02:03 PM | #25 | |
Join Date: Sep 2007
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Re: Changing techniques to just 1pt leveled perks
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There are times when you'd like to continue to count Techniques as "skill" points rather than "advantages". Consider common rules and houserules about advantage limits, skill point minimums, changes in ease of acquisition or training requirements after game start, style requirements for X points of skill invested to earn Y points of Style Perks, comparing veteran training versus talented newbies, floating skills to other attributes. It's certainly tempting to shrug and say "what's in a name?" But in this case I'd be happier continuing to think of the points as a kind of focused training in skills rather than a micro Talent Advantage. It's not that Kay Fu was born with inherent natural expertise in Elbow Strikes. She just trained more on that move. Attacking the "more than three Techniques and you might as well just buy the skill" problem will require fractional points. (Or else multiplying all other point costs by 2, 4, 8, 10, 60, whatever, so the smallest unit is still an integer.) But then, this might not be such a problem. If Techniques really are signature moves or areas of special concentration, characters shouldn't have a lot of them for a given skill. You can't be focused on everything, by definition. |
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12-18-2015, 08:47 PM | #26 |
Join Date: Nov 2007
Location: Sydney
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Re: Changing techniques to just 1pt leveled perks
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12-19-2015, 12:32 AM | #27 | |
GURPS FAQ Keeper
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Kyïv, Ukraine
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Re: Changing techniques to just 1pt leveled perks
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They all cost [1], and all provide some sort of quantitative bonus (a +1 to one thing, a +1 to multiple things, or perhaps a +1 to one and +2 to another, or provide a bonus that effectively offsets a Default penalty for the purposes of wielding a single weapon), plus some of them provide an extra qualitative benefit of some sort. Techniques are rather rigid in that they normally only apply to some one type of roll and cost +1/+1, and anything working differently is written up as a weird exception that delves into relative technique levels (e.g. Ground Fighting for ADs). |
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12-19-2015, 07:17 AM | #28 | |
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Canada
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Re: Changing techniques to just 1pt leveled perks
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The other option is to go back to 3e style increasing skill costs, which make techniques a lot more attractive at times... but it only moved the breakpoint up to wherever the per-level flat cost point was (I forget now, but I remember it differed per skill type).
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12-19-2015, 01:39 PM | #29 | ||
Join Date: Sep 2007
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Re: Changing techniques to just 1pt leveled perks
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Part of the question here is whether you view the set of all Techniques as being identical to one level of the basic skill, so that the two should cost the same. Of course, different skills have different numbers of Techniques, which makes this an awkward goal. Quote:
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12-19-2015, 06:25 PM | #30 |
Join Date: Aug 2014
Location: Snoopy's basement
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Re: Changing techniques to just 1pt leveled perks
A Technique is a particular application of an existing skill. If you have the skill you can do a technique at some penalty. This is not the case for a Perk, which usually cannot be attempted at any default.
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gurps, points, rules, techniques |
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