GURPS Power-Ups 10: Skill Trees

[Colonel__Klink]

I am curious now. Skill trees sounds similar to a concept I'm using for certain types of skills in my campaign based upon Vampire the Masquerade disciplines.

A discipline is in effect a spell that gains new attributes as it's leveled up. Some are straight forward like Potence at attribute + 0 gives the vampire +5 strength. ATT + 1 allows the vampire (if they want to use the more expensive version) have +10 strength instead.

Others allow variants. Protean at ATT+0 allows the caster to have animal like eyes that can see in the dark. Protean + 2 allows the caster to chose between that, growing claws or folding themselves into the earth beneath their feet seamlessly. Each effect has it's own costs.

To reduce the number of skills a cyborg needs to master his new body (and to make the game rules fair and consistent) I have gone the same route with cybernetics skills. Overdrive is the same thing as potence allowing the cyborg to override the safety limiters (which are set at the character's base strength) and utilize increasing levels of strength from the cybernetics. Unlike the vampire however their body just can't handle that increasing strength without further modification. So overdrive's max benefit doesn't come in at ATT+4 skill level, it comes in having 5/5 major body components cyberized.

Others, like Slayer: Cybernetically enhanced speed are far more like the vampires. If you got the Dexterity to handle it, the cybernetic synapse booster installed (think Sandevestan out of Cyberpunk Edgerunners) then you can activate Slayer's +2 attacks +4 speed (at a tremendous fatigue cost) at ATT+3.

I wonder if the skill trees in this book work similarly!

[Kallatari]

Loved it. Both how it works and the math behind it to allow playing around with how to implement it.

I was really happy when I saw that the list of Trunks almost perfectly matches the Niches from GURPS Template Toolkit 1 - Characters, which is what I had been using as my wildcard skills for some time now. Since I use the Wildcard Skills + normal skills are cumulative option, that also matches the concepts of this product (i.e., adding Trunk and Branch). This sort of makes what I've been doing official (well, optional rules official) and lowers their price for characters since Wildcards cost [12 x level], while Trunks are cheaper. So I can easily incorporate the Skill Tree concept and how it works into my games with few issues.

I only have two concerns with it.

The first is the lack of character point equivalency between the systems. GURPS Basic lists a professional skill at 12, so for an average character, that's Attribute +2. To get that with the normal skill system, you needed to invest (for Average skills) 8 points. With this new Skill Tree system, since you start at Attribute -5, since Skills roughly = Branches, you need 7 levels to reach Attribute +2, and that costs (7 x 3 =) 21 points. What would be easy mid-level skill values (9 to 12) for a few points in the normal skill system will now cost you a lot more. It only becomes cost comparable at the upper ends, near the skill cap. My gut feeling (I haven't done actual tests yet) is that a lot of templates from existing products would probably increase their value by +50 points or so to get roughly equivalent skills (and as only a "gut feeling" I wouldn't be surprised if that number is way off). A few might luck out and the cost increase will be less than that (especially if all their skills fall under a single Trunk), while others with a wide variety of skills might cost a lot more. I haven't tested that out to get factual numbers, and I plan to update my most commonly used templates to get a better idea, but I suspect I'll eventually need to update them all to see what works out as something fair for all possible characters.

Now, point equivalency between the skill systems was clearly indicated as not being an objective of the Skill Tree method. And that's fine. I don't even think it is a flaw of the system, and I don't mind the costs difference on its own. It's just that it has an impact on decisions I, as the GM, need to make regarding starting character points, which should be able to meet the templates of my game. It is going to take some time to fully understand the impacts and adjust all templates and starting character points accordingly, much better than just using my current "gut feeling" of the cost difference (which is probably off). I'm up for that challenge, and I'm definitely going to do it... but it's going to take time, and that is something that hampers immediate implementation of the Skill Tree system. And it's that last point - that I can't use it now without a lot of tests to understand what it means - which really bugs me about this, not the costs differences per se.

That said, as a quick solution (because, hey, it's GURPS and I want to tweak it to meet my needs!), I'm contemplating a house rule of "If you don't have any points in the Trunk of Branch, you are at Attribute -5 plus any Twigs or Leaves, but if you have at least 1 level of either the Trunk or Branch, you jump to Attribute +0 before adding the Trunk, Branch, Twig and/or Leaf. I'd also increase cost of Trunks to [8 x level] and Branches to [4 x level] so costs of Branches matches current costs of skills. With this, costs of existing templates would, I think, remain roughly the same, other than a few Skills/Branches would go up or down by a level or so because you get rid of Easy/Hard/Very Hard. There might even be some cost savings for templates whose skills are very focused thus allowing them to stick to a single Trunk... hopefully not too much of a savings. Anyway, this looks like a quick win, but again, would have to test it.. guess I'll see with time.


My second issue is more a personal preference rather than an actual issue. The "tree naming convention" just seems wrong. For some reason calling them Trunks, Branches, Twigs and Leaves takes the Skill Tree metaphor a bit to far for my own liking. Sure, you can use that as an example of how it works, but calling Skills "Branches", for some reason even I can't explain, just bugs me. I admit, this issue is absolutely just a "me thing", and not a critique of the system. I'm probably going to call them Skill Groupings, Skills, Specialities, and Techniques in my campaigns instead. But I'll still be using the same rules for them.

Despite these two critiques (well, 1 critique and 1 personal preference), I still think this is an amazing product. So congrats on that.

[nudj]

Originally Posted by Kallatari

Loved it. Both how it works and the math behind it to allow playing around with how to

That said, as a quick solution (because, hey, it's GURPS and I want to tweak it to meet my needs!), I'm contemplating a house rule of "If you don't have any points in the Trunk of Branch, you are at Attribute -5 plus any Twigs or Leaves, but if you have at least 1 level of either the Trunk or Branch, you jump to Attribute +0 before adding the Trunk, Branch, Twig and/or Leaf.

That’s what I proposed in the Power Ups 10 Announcement thread, although I just went to Attribute-2

[Celjabba]

Bought and first reading.

As usual, amazing work :)
And Thanks for showing both the actual play rules, and the math behind !

It will need some testing to fully grasp :)
The -5 default will mean much higher cost in most cases (at least at low still levels, but allowing rolls at 10+trunk outside combat may offset this ... and the skill sheet will definitively be less cluttered and more easily parsed by beginners !

Would it make sense to have the perks weapon/equipment bond give a +2, since a leaf give a +1 and is not as specific ?

How to handle martial arts styles under this system ? as a trunk per style ?

[Ninja Monkey]

Originally Posted by Farmer

To torture the metaphor some, that's a really nice seed of an idea!

Thanks, though I suspect Kromm has already twigged that (pun intended).

Here's an example of it being applied to GURPS Magic:

Fire Magic (Trunk): 7/level, providing +1 to all fire spells.
Fire Creation (Branch): 3/level, giving an additional +1 to spells that create fire.
Fireball (Twig): 2/level, focusing more on the Fireball spell for an additional +1 bonus to casting it.
Maximizing Range (Leaf): 1/level, giving a +1 bonus to increasing the range of Fireball.

I'm thinking that there is a case to introduce 'Copse' of trees to cover Magical Traditions, such as a school of magic that teaches several colleges.

[dataweaver]

Originally Posted by Celjabba

How to handle martial arts styles under this system ? as a trunk per style ?

Styles are lightweight templates. However, they're lightweight templates; and I'd consider adding a step between Trunk and Branch (at 5/level) for Styles. This is based on "Trunks and Character Concept" (p.16) suggesting that a Character Template's mundane primary and secondary skills could be consolidated into a Trunk.

[WingedKagouti]

Originally Posted by Kallatari

My second issue is more a personal preference rather than an actual issue. The "tree naming convention" just seems wrong. For some reason calling them Trunks, Branches, Twigs and Leaves takes the Skill Tree metaphor a bit to far for my own liking.

You are not alone in that preference and your suggested names do sound a lot better to me.

[dataweaver]

Originally Posted by nudj

I really like Attribute-5 defaults because I like characters sucking when they have never done something that is challenging. But I don’t like having to trudge upward from that -5 at 7 or 3 points per +1 trunk/branch. I love the big initial jump in skill in normal Gurps. So I think in my game I will let the first 7 or 3 spent jump the penalty up to Attrubute-2. Since the book offers “hey just use -2 defaults” as a viable option, I feel like my rule is a legit in-between choice. So I get the sucking and the non-sucking that I want.

I wouldn't stop at the Branch level; I'd extend this all the way down to Leaves. In my own games, I've always hated the expense of Techniques in 4e and have used a house rule where Techniques the reduce or eliminate penalties are actually Perks: for one point, you jump from the Technique's default penalty to its maximum or –0, whichever is lower. In practice, this either eliminates a penalty or halves it. So I'm fine with the idea of a single level skipping over multiple levels at once.

[Professor Phobos]

This is almost exactly the kind of revision to the skill system I'd be hoping for in a 5th edition.

I think with the opportunity of a full system change you could clean up some of the weird little edge cases and exceptions this book needed, streamlining things even further.

If you have control over the underlying skill (branch/twig/leaf) list you can cut/changes things as needed so everything except absolutely necessary outliers fits smoothly into the framework.

EDIT: Also, it occurs to me that if you wanted to reintroduce hyper-competence Wildcard-style super skills, you could call them "Forests" as an optional level above the Trunks...

[Donny Brook]

Hm. Based on the preview, I can't see having much use for the Skill Trees book. It seems:

-to be devised to solve problems I don't have;

-to take a very gamist approach to how societies have developed, and people acquire, erudition;

-to produce a CP cost structure I find too steep; and

-likely to reduce skill diversity on character sheets, pushing the rules toward character 'classes' (which were one of the things I despised about TOG).

Also, the incompatibility with the mainline skills system unfortunately makes it difficult to implement. I will never have time to rebuild all my NPCs nor any inclination abandon any of my settings they are in, so even if I felt a need for it -- well it would have to be a very strong need.

And I find the tree nomenclature cloying and jargonistic. No GM should have to say something like "What's your Leaf level in Ice Pick?"


I do hope they do Techniques soon. That's one of the best innovations the rules have had in 4e, very elegant and useful, though it could use some tweaks to make them more attractive for the CP cost. I would definitely want to see a bunch of new ones and/or building guidelines for non-combat-skill Techniques.