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#61 | |
On Notice
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Sumter, SC
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"Your unmodified skill level is called your base skill. It measures your odds of success at an “average” task under adventuring conditions – in other words, in a stressful situation where the consequences of failure are significant." This mean the skill level does not measure the depth of knowledge in that skill. Heck, you have have Science!-10 and know every science skill in the game but even though it is a wildcard skill you still relatively suck at using that skill under adventuring conditions (only 60% of the time). The only advantage Skill-16+ grants is the ability to have a decent effective skill level with regards to a task that has penalties. Since Task Difficulty penalities effectively maxes out at -10 effectively implying -11 or higher penalties are "impossible" regardless of what the adjusted skill level says (Basic Set pg 171) it make little sense to go over Skill-26. Even with the special wildcard abilities, per the suggested cap of 7, anything above 17 is not all that useful and even if the old cap of 10 is used 20+ is not all that useful except with regards to Task Difficulty penalties.
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Help make a digital reference for GURPS by coming to the GURPS wiki and provide some information and links (such as to various Fanmade 4e Bestiaries) . Please, provide more then just a title and a page number. Last edited by maximara; 02-10-2020 at 04:49 AM. |
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#62 | |
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Iceland*
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'Impossible' isn't meant literally or to imply that no harder task could exist. It just means that an ordinary person couldn't do it. Experts with specialized tools, extreme natural talents and a lot of practice absolutely do and might even do it routinely.
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Za uspiekh nashevo beznadiozhnovo diela! |
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#63 | |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Wellington, NZ
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Oh yes - they also like to hit with most or all of their shots, and with a RoF10 laser that means they want an effective skill of at least 20-, and the RoF bonus is only +2. Recently they've decided that they like doing all this without aiming (probably at least in part because I've nerfed the Acc of most hand-held beam weapons somewhat). Yes, my players are greedy. Nevertheless, they certainly have use for massive skill levels.
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Rupert Boleyn "A pessimist is an optimist with a sense of history." |
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#64 |
Join Date: Apr 2010
Location: The Hall of Fallen Columns
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In an early build, I was statting up a Ravenloft lich lord who could raise very large numbers of undead as a trivial action. Azalin can animate undead in a 2-mile radius (Roots of Evil) as a free action (say it's 1 second).
Accordingly, I think I had to boost the lich's "Mass Zombie" spell skill to ridiculous levels. I don't have that early build anymore (I just used the "Army of Undead" and "Aura of Death" powers from Pyramid 25 at page 5), but a back of the envelope calculation would be: Mass Zombie: requires 1 minute per yard of radius. 2 miles is 3,520 yards. The spell should take 211,200 seconds to cast (i.e. 3,520 radius times 60 seconds in a minute). To get this down to 1 second, we'd need to halve it 17 times or so. (There might be some inaccuracies due to rounding, but since you round down, this is an upper conservative limit.) The first "halving effect" of casting time occurs at skill level 20, and each additional 5 skill levels gives you an additional halving effect. Thus it would be 20 + (16 x 5) skill levels. Azalin would have a conservative estimate minimum of 100 skill levels in Mass Zombie to do this. Obviously there are much more points-efficient ways, as I later learned. Edit: the energy cost of casting this spell is also very significant, and if we want to wrestle this down to something manageable, it would require even more levels, since energy cost reductions are arithmetic (unlike casting time reductions, which are geometric). The base cost to cast Mass Zombie at a 2 mile radius is 7 x 3,520 = 24,640. Each full multiple of five skill levels above 10 gives you a 1 FP discount to the spell cost. At spell skill level 100, you get a discount of 19 points of energy cost, which is a not-very-feasible 24,621 FP. To reduce the energy cost to 1 FP, the caster would need to lower the cost by 24,639, and thus must know the spell at skill level (10 + (5 x 24,639)), which would be skill level 123,205. This would be a few thousand points shy of 500,000 character points to buy, depending on IQ and Magery. I guess I'll go with the advantage build instead. Last edited by SolemnGolem; 02-11-2020 at 03:49 AM. |
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#65 | |
Hero of Democracy
Join Date: Mar 2012
Location: far from the ocean
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That's a crazy game. I'm kind of dumbfounded. I'll admit weapon skills do tend to have more meaning at sky high levels than other skills.
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Be helpful, not pedantic Worlds Beyond Earth -- my blog Check out the PbP forum! If you don't see a game you'd like, ask me about making one! |
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#66 | |
Join Date: Mar 2016
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#67 | |
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Iceland*
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Note that if the very skilled PCs are rolling against 6 to 8 for suppressive fire, there is at least a chance that the (usually more numerous) NPCs are not hitting even if they do manage to Aim.
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Za uspiekh nashevo beznadiozhnovo diela! Last edited by Icelander; 02-10-2020 at 01:13 PM. |
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#68 | |
Join Date: Jul 2015
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The problem I found was that the GM just made his NPCs better too. So in order to hit them, I HAD to do deceptive strikes, or they would just parry with their 12-14 defenses. And on the flip side, with a defense of 14-16 yourself, there isn't much tension knowing that you have an 85% chance to defend. And if you don't, they have to roll high enough to bypass your armor. And if that actually does enough, you still have your health roll, which is another 75% chance of success. And if that fails too, you still have your friends to pick you up. But in the end, it basically just added more math to our combat experience. |
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#69 |
Join Date: Dec 2007
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30. The highest skill level I've ever used is 30. If I accidentally generated a skill higher than based on nothing more than modifiers, I'd probably rethink my modifiers.
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#70 |
Join Date: Mar 2016
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Here's a random specific example: An AK-47 or M-16 (mid-range weapons in terms of size) has a Bulk of -5. That means to Move and Attack while using an AK will reach penalties of -10 or more quickly even at relatively short ranges. That's an incredibly common thing to happen in action fiction. And there are man-portable weapons with Bulk ratings double that or higher.
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skill, skills |
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