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Old 02-05-2021, 02:45 AM   #111
Celjabba
 
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Default Re: Skills - maybe this game isn't what I'm looking for

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Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth View Post

To be fair to anyone making that mistake, Characters does expressly say to do so: "Make a skill roll when you first try to mount a riding animal"
I have no problem asking for a riding roll (with all appropriate modifiers) the first time you try to mount a specific horse previously unknown.
As in : the first time ever with that specific horse, not every time you will ride it.
And then only roll for when something happens to frighten or challenge the creature.

Last edited by Celjabba; 02-05-2021 at 02:52 AM.
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Old 02-05-2021, 04:30 AM   #112
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Default Re: Skills - maybe this game isn't what I'm looking for

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Originally Posted by Black Leviathan View Post
A regular person is going to avoid situations where they don't get a routine skill use bonus and they're going to gear up as best as they can to avoid failure, but they're going to end up in a dangerous traffic situation, or a fist fight, or they'll need to lie to an angry boss, or they're going to fall off a boat moving boat and need to swim.
Well, I don't drive, but I'm over 70, and I haven't encountered the other three in my adult life. Maybe I lead a quiet life.
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Old 02-05-2021, 05:24 AM   #113
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Default Re: Skills - maybe this game isn't what I'm looking for

One thing I'd like to point out: A lot of people have claimed here and in other places that you need higher skill levels to reflect professional levels in things like combat skills.

I disagree. Guns-12 and proper use of modifiers for day-to-day situations is enough to reflect most skilled shooter's performance at the range, and without those reflects combat performance fairly well too (possibly too well). It also works for your trained policeman with a pistol in many fire-fights, as they tend to see very low hit rates (due to poor lighting, etc.). Guns-10 gets about the right results for badly trained people, such as gang members, cops who only normally use their gun once a year and on the range at that, and so on.

Note that using an Acc 5(+2) hunting rifle, with Guns-12 at shot at 200m at a person or other SM+0 target (a deer, say) has: Guns-12 - 12 (range) +5 (Acc) +2 (scope) +2 (time aiming) +1 (braced) +1 (AoA) = 11- to hit. A hunter who often does this probably gets a bonus, especially if it's in their 'home' hunting area, where they'll know the range precisely because they know the terrain intimately, increasing their hit chance even in poor light. For a 'marksman' sniping an 11- seems fair, considering they'll be under a fair bit of stress, if only because as soon as they fire they'll probably come under fire themselves.

A sniper with a good rifle (Acc 6) and more skill (Guns-14) will be making Vitals attacks, and even without a better scope and/or match-grade ammo will hit the torso on a 12-.

These numbers look good to me, and show that soldiers, even elite ones, with skill levels over 14 should be very rare. Of course if the PCs are themselves highly skilled it's quite reasonable that their more noteworthy foes are also highly skilled.
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Old 02-05-2021, 06:28 AM   #114
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Default Re: Skills - maybe this game isn't what I'm looking for

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Originally Posted by whswhs View Post
Well, I don't drive, but I'm over 70, and I haven't encountered the other three in my adult life. Maybe I lead a quiet life.
Strangely enough, I was involved in all of them before I turned twenty and I thought that I lived a quiet life. I learned to avoid most of them better by the time I turned thirty though.
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Old 02-05-2021, 06:55 AM   #115
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Default Re: Skills - maybe this game isn't what I'm looking for

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Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth View Post
...Not sure how any of those qualifiers would be relevant to whether you use Merchant? Wouldn't that come down to (a) is there a price negotiation involved and (b) is the table actually going to engage with it?
It's expected that characters can simply purchase generally-available items at market value (book price) without going through any sort of mercantile minigame. That is for when you need to purchase something rare, and/or when you are trying to negotiate to below market value. There can easily be settings (or at least cultures within settings) where haggling is expected, but again, the GM should tell players this so they don't end up paying 3x market price for general supplies just because they didn't think to give one of their characters Merchant-16.

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Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth View Post
To be fair to anyone making that mistake, Characters does expressly say to do so: "Make a skill roll when you first try to mount a riding animal"

It's still the wrong call, but it's not hard to see how it could happen.
Indeed. It's important here for the GM to note that this is for mounting the animal in a single second, such as during combat or a chase scene; outside of such, a character can easily take a bit over half a minute to mount up, and get a healthy +5 to their check.

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Well, I don't drive, but I'm over 70, and I haven't encountered the other three in my adult life. Maybe I lead a quiet life.
I'm 36, the only one I've encountered was the driving one, and it was my passenger's skill check that helped me there - the light turned green, I waited a moment and then started to go, then my passenger (who had a better view - and also higher relevant skills - than me, thanks to some intervening shrubbery) saw a truck flying down the road, far too quickly to stop. He shouted a warning, I stopped, and the truck tore off the front half of my engine block (without the warning, I likely would have seen the truck too late, and there's a very good chance it would have struck right at my door). In GURPS terms, seeing as my car was still totaled, I'd say this was probably a Critical Failure, it's just that the GM allowed my passenger to use his sizable Driving and Observation skills to have only the car be damaged, rather than us (possibly letting those be used for complementary skill rolls; of course, the safety features of my vehicle helped here as well).
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Old 02-05-2021, 07:50 AM   #116
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Default Re: Skills - maybe this game isn't what I'm looking for

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Originally Posted by Varyon View Post

It's expected that characters can simply purchase generally-available items at market value (book price) without going through any sort of mercantile minigame. That is for when you need to purchase something rare, and/or when you are trying to negotiate to below market value. There can easily be settings (or at least cultures within settings) where haggling is expected, but again, the GM should tell players this so they don't end up paying 3x market price for general supplies just because they didn't think to give one of their characters Merchant-16.
Pretty much this.

I said "ordinary gear." If you want something extraordinary like fine-quality gear or stuff at the edge of the next TL, you might need to make Merchant rolls to find it or to negotiate its importation especially for you. That's pretty much a bog-standard use of the skill as written on p. B209: "find out where any commodity is bought and sold."

I also said "legitimate merchants." These are people who charge "fair market value" and don't try to talk the price up. Finding them may require the skill roll above in new markets (there are even specific modifiers for this); getting them to not cheat you may require a skill roll as below.

And I said "at market prices." If you want to lowball the price, or if you're dealing with merchants who try to highball the price, you might need to make skill rolls – again, exactly as written on p. B209.

These are the times when the GM should require Merchant rolls. If the goods are right there in a shop, if you're willing to pay the price on the sticker, no questions asked, and if you're not even roleplaying the scene as anything special, as the "adventure" of finding goods, then you shouldn't ever have to roll against Merchant. Yet there are GMs – I've met them and played in their games – who consider a successful Merchant roll necessary to add any item of gear to your character's equipment list once the game begins. They use "Roll vs. Merchant" as a de facto control on characters getting too much gear too quickly, despite the characters having more than enough money.

My point was that this practice isn't terribly fair. It's like requiring Cooking or Housekeeping rolls for each meal in order not to starve when carrying more than enough food, or asking for Area Knowledge rolls for each outing in order not to get lost in one's own city. You shouldn't normally be rolling for that kind of thing. You should only roll when it's an adventure: The PCs want to buy cutting-edge computer tech that hasn't hit retail yet, and want to pay retail prices for it, so they roll vs. Merchant; the PCs want to impress an NPC with a meal, as a complementary skill roll giving a persistent +1 or +2 to all later Influence rolls during the dinner, so they roll vs. Cooking; the PCs are trying to get across town faster than the bad guys, so they roll vs. Area Knowledge.

I tend to assume that GMs won't ask for nuisance rolls, only for rolls that signal "the adventure is on" . . . and then I remember some of the GMs I've had over the years.
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Old 02-05-2021, 10:34 AM   #117
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Default Re: Skills - maybe this game isn't what I'm looking for

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Originally Posted by Black Leviathan View Post
A regular person is going to avoid situations where they don't get a routine skill use bonus and they're going to gear up as best as they can to avoid failure, but they're going to end up in a dangerous traffic situation, or a fist fight, or they'll need to lie to an angry boss, or they're going to fall off a boat moving boat and need to swim. Virtually everyone encounters stuff like that. People with a skill of 11 are slightly better than 50/50 survivors in those situations.
I think you're getting confused about what the numbers mean, and the situations. Or maybe I am.

Don't confuse the real world "50/50" chance with... well... most GURPS Skill Checks. Yes, eventually your average person is going to find themselves in a situation where they have to roll. Of these rolls, some will lack all the bonuses available. Lacking all is not the same thing as having none, though. We get to a more unusual situation where you have few or no bonuses. Things are downright extreme when you not only are rolling without any bonuses, but at any sort of penalty. Again, we're talking for "regular" people, living their lives.

On top of this are the ramifications of failing. We're not talking about "Succeed or die" rolls, here. Failing a Driving (Automobile) roll could just mean you're a little late, or that you're out some money because you had to pay for parking, you're a little stressed, etc. Even a failure by five probably just meas you're badly lost or late. Save traffic "accidents" for Critical Failures... which, for an "average" (DX10, IQ10) person driving at default (Skill-5), is still going to happen often enough. I mean, the average American is supposed to be involved in a car accident once every 18 years. XP
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Old 02-05-2021, 02:36 PM   #118
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Default Re: Skills - maybe this game isn't what I'm looking for

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Originally Posted by Kromm View Post
I also said "legitimate merchants." These are people who charge "fair market value" and don't try to talk the price up. Finding them may require the skill roll above in new markets (there are even specific modifiers for this); getting them to not cheat you may require a skill roll as below.
For the record, this is the one that through me off. I would never have guessed that merchants who expect to haggle, and thus don't present the 'fair price' as a starting position, were not 'legitimate' in a social milieu where that is expected behavior.
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My point was that this practice isn't terribly fair. It's like requiring Cooking or Housekeeping rolls for each meal in order not to starve when carrying more than enough food, or asking for Area Knowledge rolls for each outing in order not to get lost in one's own city. You shouldn't normally be rolling for that kind of thing. You should only roll when it's an adventure: The PCs want to buy cutting-edge computer tech that hasn't hit retail yet, and want to pay retail prices for it, so they roll vs. Merchant; the PCs want to impress an NPC with a meal, as a complementary skill roll giving a persistent +1 or +2 to all later Influence rolls during the dinner, so they roll vs. Cooking; the PCs are trying to get across town faster than the bad guys, so they roll vs. Area Knowledge.

I tend to assume that GMs won't ask for nuisance rolls, only for rolls that signal "the adventure is on" . . . and then I remember some of the GMs I've had over the years.
I do find the way this is recurrently presented to be a really silly throwing-away of potential.

There's nothing inherent in GURPS' system that means it can't handle 'slice of life' situations where getting 'lost' a few miles from home, being a menace in the kitchen, critical ineptitude in ordinary social interactions or, looping back to the original post, failing to mount a horse on the first try could be game-worthy situational elements. It's hardly unusual for player characters to have numbers that make such outcomes plausible for that matter. Nor is it unusual for such situations to figure in reasonable source media - including ones that are largely 'adventure' oriented.

If you're treating 'non-adventure' situations as an interruption that you want to get through as quickly and frictiionlessly as possible - and I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that - then putting away the dice and just letting PCs succeed until they leave the mundane again is a good call.

But that doesn't mean it's wrong to want to engage with those situations and use the rules. And outright saying that it is and handwaving undefinable 'non-adventure' bonuses to make it impossible to do so meaningfully isn't entirely helpful.
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Old 02-05-2021, 03:23 PM   #119
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Default Re: Skills - maybe this game isn't what I'm looking for

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Note that using an Acc 5(+2) hunting rifle, with Guns-12 at shot at 200m at a person or other SM+0 target (a deer, say) has: Guns-12 - 12 (range) +5 (Acc) +2 (scope) +2 (time aiming) +1 (braced) +1 (AoA) = 11- to hit. A hunter who often does this probably gets a bonus, especially if it's in their 'home' hunting area, where they'll know the range precisely because they know the terrain intimately, increasing their hit chance even in poor light. For a 'marksman' sniping an 11- seems fair, considering they'll be under a fair bit of stress, if only because as soon as they fire they'll probably come under fire themselves.
This is fine for a sniper where they have the time and safety to prepare. I'd expect a real-world sniper to be able to take their time for a shot.

However, if we have that same character with Guns-12 in a shootout with a criminal who is shooting back at a range of 10 yards, you get a very different story.

We remove most of the bonuses because he didn't have time to aim, don't have the ground "marked" so the range is exact, and is under stress. So, now he is rolling against his skill at -4 (range) to his, or 8.

I have heard that shootouts involving police often have a lot of bullets flying without hitting anybody, so maybe this is realistic.

However, I'd give my character a 16+ in their firearms skill. With a skill of 16, the -4 reduces this to a 12, which gives a reasonable chance of hitting my target.
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Old 02-05-2021, 05:53 PM   #120
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Default Re: Skills - maybe this game isn't what I'm looking for

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Originally Posted by DangerousThing View Post
We remove most of the bonuses because he didn't have time to aim, don't have the ground "marked" so the range is exact, and is under stress. So, now he is rolling against his skill at -4 (range) to his, or 8.
10-25% is a typical hit rate for cops and civilians - or it was the last time I dug deep into it. I talk about this in my "Dodge This!" article in Pyr 3/57, with (current at the time) references.
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