02-04-2021, 08:21 AM | #91 | |
Join Date: Apr 2015
Location: Pennsylvania
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Re: Skills - maybe this game isn't what I'm looking for
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02-04-2021, 08:25 AM | #92 |
Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: One Mile Up
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Re: Skills - maybe this game isn't what I'm looking for
Nitpick: Riding is DX/Average.
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02-04-2021, 08:26 AM | #93 |
GURPS Line Editor
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Montréal, Québec
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Re: Skills - maybe this game isn't what I'm looking for
Ordinary Folks (p. B172) was meant to be read seriously, not dismissed. An average person has skill levels between 8 and 13, with their job skills at 12 or 13; as p. B447 says, "When assigning skill levels, assume that skill 12 suffices for 'safe' jobs." Most other skill levels are below 12. If you like to use "template language," put primary skills at 12-13, secondary skills at 10-11, and background skills at 8-9. Even for PC professions, Listing Skills (p. B448) recommends a 12 for non-life-or-death primary skills, and an 11 or so for secondary skills . . . it's really only jobs like "brain surgeon," "fireman," and "soldier in wartime" that get up into expert levels (14+).
As p. B171 says, "Your unmodified skill level [...] measures your odds of success at an 'average' task under adventuring conditions." The rules support this in several game-mechanical ways:
When the GM zooms in and shows ordinary people at work, they're rolling at 12, +4 or +5 for basic difficulty, and from 0 to +9 for some of time, teammates, supervision, and equipment. That's 16-26. So rolling needn't happen at all unless the GM insists.
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Sean "Dr. Kromm" Punch <kromm@sjgames.com> GURPS Line Editor, Steve Jackson Games My DreamWidth [Just GURPS News] |
02-04-2021, 09:11 AM | #94 | |
Join Date: Jun 2013
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Re: Skills - maybe this game isn't what I'm looking for
Whoops. Sorry, posting from work, so no book access. 12 in a DX/A skill is enough to support Status 0, so would be an average job. Skill 11 means more than the minimum in this case, albeit not by all that much. And, as my late EDIT mentioned, that's a pretty quick mounting of the horse if you're just rolling at straight skill (or more likely skill+1, given a trained mount) - unless you've got savages/the law/whatever coming after you, you can probably spend a full 8 seconds to get on and secured*, for a further +3 to skill from Time Spent and thus a bit less than a 1/20 chance of failure.
*I don't really have any experience with riding, but it occurs to me that a failed roll here could easily mean you manage to get on the horse and think you're good to go, but then when you have it start moving you find yourself sliding off. That is, failure by 1 or 2 might mean you have to later make another roll to avoid falling off, rather than just failing to mount to start with. If you're riding in calm conditions - such as not being pursued - this second roll may well have some positive TDM's. That's into houserule territory, of course, but it's the kind of ruling a GM could easily make. Quote:
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02-04-2021, 09:22 AM | #95 | |
GURPS Line Editor
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Montréal, Québec
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Re: Skills - maybe this game isn't what I'm looking for
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Sean "Dr. Kromm" Punch <kromm@sjgames.com> GURPS Line Editor, Steve Jackson Games My DreamWidth [Just GURPS News] |
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02-04-2021, 09:38 AM | #96 |
GURPS Line Editor
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Montréal, Québec
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Re: Skills - maybe this game isn't what I'm looking for
The tricky bit is for the GM to distinguish between "day in the life" rolls and "adventuring" rolls for PCs. There's a strong tendency – implied even in posts to these forums, where we discuss the matter every few months – to come down on the side of the latter for all rolls. That does have the advantage of being less work for the GM . . . but at the cost of being less fair to the players, who are guided by all the rules I cited above and by most of the published templates to believe that 8-11 suffices for "background" stuff.
When I GM, I toss +5 at anything that isn't on-message for the adventure. If effective skill ends up at 16+, I don't even require a roll. Yet I realize that there are GMs who insist on, say, Merchant rolls to buy ordinary gear from legitimate merchants at market prices, and Riding rolls every single time someone mounts up. This is only slightly less silly than asking for DX rolls to cross the street. If you run the game that way, you owe it to your players to make sure that they have the points to be super-competent at everything. I wouldn't go so far as to say "an extra 160 points for +4 to DX and IQ," but I would counsel a full bump up the power-level scale on p. B487; e.g., if you're thinking of running a "heroic" campaign at 150 points and plan to ride the players about rolling for every last thing at base skill, then run a "larger-than-life" campaign at 250 points instead.
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Sean "Dr. Kromm" Punch <kromm@sjgames.com> GURPS Line Editor, Steve Jackson Games My DreamWidth [Just GURPS News] |
02-04-2021, 10:56 AM | #97 | |
Night Watchman
Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: Cambridge, UK
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Re: Skills - maybe this game isn't what I'm looking for
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For example, in our WWII campaign, most of the Intelligence Analysis rolls are made under circumstances where the characters are at no immediate personal risk, nor is there a penalty for haste. However, we're trying to figure out the plans of people who have significant resources and skills, and probably get to spend more time on an individual issue than we do. So "Adventuring" rolls seem to be in order. When we talk to professional photo-interpreters and the like, their character sheets, if they had them, might well have lower skill levels than us, but they do the work routinely, and would get the "everyday" modifier.
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02-04-2021, 11:20 AM | #98 | |
Join Date: Jun 2013
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Re: Skills - maybe this game isn't what I'm looking for
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02-04-2021, 12:32 PM | #99 | ||
Join Date: Jun 2006
Location: Sweden, Stockholm
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Re: Skills - maybe this game isn't what I'm looking for
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Here is where I placed the driving skill f.ex. based on the GURPS books: See Link for explanation: http://forums.sjgames.com/showpost.p...8&postcount=52 Quote:
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02-04-2021, 12:42 PM | #100 | |
GURPS Line Editor
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Montréal, Québec
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Re: Skills - maybe this game isn't what I'm looking for
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Sean "Dr. Kromm" Punch <kromm@sjgames.com> GURPS Line Editor, Steve Jackson Games My DreamWidth [Just GURPS News] |
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