Skills - maybe this game isn't what I'm looking for

[cvannrederode]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

I grew up around horses and never really had anyone hold the opposite stirrup, and I dealt with hotbloods exclusively. Now, a mounting block is always a good idea, it prevents potential damage to the muscles of the horse's back, and it is also a good idea to have someone hold the reins, as horses have a tendency towards skittishness. Strangely enough, my mom, who has been riding for over fifty years, only started wearing a padded vest in the last few years (though it ended up saving her from real problems last year when she had a fall).

In full disclosure, this was a Dressage school in Bavaria during the mid 80s, so your mileage may vary. We also had a puffer (a horse who would inhale and hold her breath while you did the cinch. So it would start loose until until someone was on her for a few minutes. We tightened her cinch when we got to the ring, routinely).

[Gold & Appel Inc]

Originally Posted by Varyon

As for the original Riding-11 example, keep in mind that represents someone who is a bit more dexterous than average (DX 11) who has basically invested the minimum amount of effort into learning how to ride a horse (an investment of only [1]).

Nitpick: Riding is DX/Average.

[Kromm]

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:

• Task Difficulty (p. B345). Everyday rolls for earning a non-adventuring living are at +4 or +5; incidental rolls less important than the previous ones are at +6 to +10. The riskiest stuff a non-adventurer might do in a day (or a lifetime!) is at +1 to +3.
  
  
• Time Spent (p. B346). On top of the above, if there's no time pressure, anybody can claim up to +5 for working meticulously. If we take "student" as a job, there's an implicit time-compression factor of 2, 4, or even 8 possible (p. B293), so we could justify from +1 to +3 even when time ostensibly matters.
  
  
• Assistance (Complementary Skills, p. B206) often gives +1 if you work with others, supervision (Long Tasks, p. B346) may give +1 if you have a competent boss, and equipment (Equipment Modifiers, p. B345) is likely to give +1 or +2 if you're using the professional-grade ("good" or "fine") gear invested in by an employer rather than the home-grade ("basic") gear assumed by the skill.
  
  
• Job Rolls (p. B516). The previous points assume the GM asks for individual rolls for specific tasks. Most non-adventurers never roll for that stuff. They make a monthly roll – which might be at a bonus for an easy job, such as one where some of the above situations apply on the regular – and "on anything but a critical success or critical failure, the worker collects the monthly pay for the job." Thus, they'd normally have to roll 17-18 to feel any bad effects at all.

So, ordinary people with skill 12 generally roll once a month and just claim their pay 98.1% of the time. In their entire working life from age 18 to age 65, they might experience 10-11 critical failures with results such as "a month's lost pay," "demotion," or "on-the-job injury." I'm only 53 years old and I've already experienced most of my share. (Note carefully that the rules do not assume that critical failures are the worker's fault, because rolling 3d and looking for 17-18 is basically a "check for bad luck"; e.g., an injury could be caused by a colleague, while lost pay or a lost job could be due to recession or mismanagement.)

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.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Gold & Appel Inc

Nitpick: Riding is DX/Average.

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.

Originally Posted by Kromm

Note carefully that the rules do not assume that critical failures are the worker's fault, because rolling 3d and looking for 17-18 is basically a "check for bad luck"; e.g., an injury could be caused by a colleague, while lost pay or a lost job could be due to recession or mismanagement.

Honestly, I'd be inclined to interpret any roll above 12 as indicating some sort of bad luck being in play (and conversely any roll below 8 indicating some sort of good luck being in play) - it's just that those with higher skill can essentially soak the "bad luck" penalties to still succeed. Those with really high skill (16 and higher) can even turn most disasters (rolls of 17) into mere failures. A job roll of 14, for example, might represent a colleague making an error that impacts your own job in some way, but if your skill is high enough, you can catch and correct the error before it impacts you. A roll of 17 could mean a colleague tripping and spilling a corrosive reagent on you (injury) or mismanagement resulting in the company downsizing (lost job), but an expert (skill 16+) is always prepared to hop into the safety shower and loses no time hosing himself down (avoiding the injury) or is too valuable to be cut during the downsizing (avoiding the job loss).

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by Varyon

Those with really high skill (16 and higher) can even turn most disasters (rolls of 17) into mere failures [...] but an expert (skill 16+) is always prepared to hop into the safety shower and loses no time hosing himself down (avoiding the injury) or is too valuable to be cut during the downsizing (avoiding the job loss).

Pretty much my thinking as well. I lean toward "You need at least skill 12 to get most jobs, but skill 13, 14, and 15 don't make any real difference, and skill 16+ is for most purposes the level where you rate special treatment."

[Kromm]

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.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Kromm

The tricky bit is for the GM to distinguish between "day in the life" rolls and "adventuring" rolls for PCs.

One guideline is "What's the opposition?"

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.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Kromm

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.

I'd say you also owe the players a warning. "I know the books say skill 8-11 is enough to get by for background skills, but in my campaign you need skill 14+ if you expect to be able to do something reliably. Someone with Driving-11 probably doesn't have a license anymore, thanks to all the accidents he's been in."

[RedMattis]

Originally Posted by Varyon

I'd say you also owe the players a warning. "I know the books say skill 8-11 is enough to get by for background skills, but in my campaign you need skill 14+ if you expect to be able to do something reliably. Someone with Driving-11 probably doesn't have a license anymore, thanks to all the accidents he's been in."

Driving-11 is what most people have. The really crappy drivers drive around with something like Driving-7, and mostly manage because they are very familiar with their specific route (driving to work and the local shopping mall f.ex.). I mean Kromm is the Line editor and he was the one who just said "An average person has skill levels between 8 and 13".

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

Originally Posted by RedMattis

Driving-0 "That's one of those roaring horseless carriages, right? I rode in one once."
Driving-3 "I've been a passenger more than a few times..."
Driving-5 "I sometimes drive, but I can't stand driving in cities, there are so many cars everywhere and it stresses me out."
Driving-8 "I mostly drive to work, or drive to shop. I don't get how some people dare drive when the roads are icy though."
Driving-10 "I'm a pretty good driver and wish people would learn to drive better on the roads."
Driving-12 "Yeah, I can drive. Whatever the weather I'll drive: it is my job after all!"
Driving-14 "Hey, I'm not merely a good taxi driver, I actually race and stuff in my spare time!"
Driving-16 "I'm a professional racer, and my driving on the roads is spotless."
Driving-18 "I won the regional racing championship by a landslide. I'm a bit busy because I will compete in a drifting race on Tuesday so we're doubling down on the training now."
Driving-20 "I just placed second in a high-profile global championship."

With that said, you're of course free to judge that the skill-scale if shifted upwards in your campaign. :)

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by Varyon

I'd say you also owe the players a warning. "I know the books say skill 8-11 is enough to get by for background skills, but in my campaign you need skill 14+ if you expect to be able to do something reliably. Someone with Driving-11 probably doesn't have a license anymore, thanks to all the accidents he's been in."

Yeah, it would help to accompany the extra points with the reason why: "I expect high skill levels because I'm a maniac for requiring skill rolls, so here are enough points to ensure that any skill you intend to use is at a level where you won't fail often. If you use them for stuff like high ST or Filthy Rich instead, just know that you'll see the spotlight less often."