Thoughts about wide proficiency

[RedMattis]

I had a player comment that a swordsman shouldn't struggle too much to learn using a spear, a dagger, or general fisticuffs.

It makes sense that an expert swordsman would be quite a lot less competent with an unfamiliar weapon, but if they've had varied training and experiences they should still have dramatically more understanding of general 'how-to-fight' than a militia who picked up his spear a few months ago and now has a single point in "spear". Please feel free to give thoughts one this.

In the past I've solved this with somewhat generous talents like "Sword and Board" (+1 to all one-handed weapon skills and shields), but it is generally not an attractive deal compared to DX! (DX+1, Move-1 [15 points]) for anyone who wants a lot of other DX skills.

I had a thought about dealing with this 'general experience' using some sort of modified Talent, and make it both attractively-enough priced and mandatory to some level. Here is what I came up with:

General Proficiency (@Skill@) [8 points/level]
You are skilled in a particular area along with similar and supporting skills. Pick one skill from the skill list. You get a bonus to that skill and related skills based on the following progression:

• Very Similar (+1 per level): e.g. Broadsword -> Saber | Broadsword -> Two-handed sword.
• Somewhat Similar (+2/3 per level, round down): e.g. Broadsword -> Two-Handed Flail
• Fairly Different (1/2 per level, round down): e.g. Broadsword -> Wrestling | Broadsword -> Whip
• Different (No bonus!): e.g. Broadsword -> Guns | Broadsword -> Erotic Art | Broadsword -> Economics

In addition, if you have at least a "+1" bonus you will at least have a skill-level one level below what you would have if you had a single point invested in the point.

What is considered "Very Similar", "Somewhat Similar", "Fairly Different", "Different" is up to the GM. It is recommended to base it on the general relevance of the skills in the campaign. F.ex. being lenient and including many science skills in "Somewhat Similar"-category in a campaign where such skills rarely come up.

I would require taking some levels of General Proficiency for characters with notably high skills in areas where this should apply.

Thoughts? Does this seem balanced? Does it make sense? Useful?

[Emerikol]

A lot of these skills default to other skills. So it’s already covered. Also general ability is probably covered by high DX. If you think spear should default of sword just make it -6 or something like that.

[Rolando]

What you describe is covered by a lot of factors.

A veteran or experienced fighter have other traits besides weapons skills. Combat Reflexes, DX and Tactics to mention the few that comes to mind.

It's not just about skills and defaults, which are also covered by the rules.

So an expert swordsman will fight better than a conscripted militia even without a sword.

And as a veteran mercenary or soldier may know more varied weapons skills, so even if the character is a "swordsman" it doesn't means the character may not know other weapons skills.

Your "average" veteran medieval mercenary will probably know how to use at least 3 or 4 different weapons, shield and a host of other complimentary skills. Your average conscripted militia in their first battle will be lucky to know how to use a spear and shield.

[JulianLW]

I had the same question a couple of months ago in this thread, and it got hashed out pretty well:

http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?t=172874

Here's the solution I finally came up with, following the recommendation of several experienced GMs who basically said: "change the defaults so that all melee skills default off of each other."

A new perk:

Improved Melee: Prereq: 20 CP in Melee Skills. Your highest-cost Melee Skill replaces DX for melee defaults and unskilled attacks. Skills with No Default may be raised from -6 Hard, -5 Average, -4 Easy.

With this progression, if you have 20 CP in Brawling for DX+6, then you also have Knife at DX+2. You have Broadsword at DX+1, etc.

[Celjabba]

Originally Posted by RedMattis

I had a player comment that a swordsman shouldn't struggle too much to learn using a spear, a dagger, or general fisticuffs.

Which, in Gurps, is *best* represented by having him competent (= having invested characters points) in spear, dagger, brawling, shield, and a bunch of other weapons...
Being a veteran expert well trained in a weapon is a perfectly valid reason in Gurps to invest (lots of) characters points in other weapons with minimal training time.

But while it may be *Best* as far as game mechanics and quasi-realism goes, it is sadly among the *worse* way as far as build efficiency goes : it cost a lot of characters points.
Much more than raising DX, or allowing cheap weapons talents, or defaulting from a single sky-high skill, or about every other alternatives.

The problem come when you want a fighter competent in lots of weapon with reasonable attributes, but don't want to pay dozens of characters points for the "privilege"

It is the same with other area in Gurps were there are many separate skills covering various aspect of a "job" : the more skills you need to be good at being a polyvalent fighter/physician/engineer/... , the more characters points you need, which is unbalanced against other profession where a single skill or at most two are enough to cover everything, or again high-attribute builds.

If you take 2 real world twins, and have them train and work for about the same amount of time but in different professions, one may end up costing 50 (or more, or less) characters points more than the others to build in Gurps because he need half a dozen skill at professional level. It is a problem.

It would require testing, but your "General Proficiency" seem to be another solution to that problem, with less side effect than high attributes, and more flexibility than talents.

[Keampe]

One solution is to divide weapons up into different categories such as:

Light Weapons - Fencing weapons and Knives
One handed weapons - includes shield
Two handed weapons
Pole weapons
Flail weapons
Exotic weapons - weird weapons like Net

Weapon skills within each category default to one another at -2 except exotic
Weapon skills default to other categories at -4, except exotic.
Exotic weapon skills are each treated as their own category.
If a fighter has no experience whatsoever with a particular weapon an additional -2 familiarity penalty is assessed.

So an ice age hunter only familiar with spears gets transported to the renaissance and given a rapier would use it at Spear -6 until they gained familiarity at which point they're at Spear -4.

Just some thought.
- Shane

[cdru]

Another possibility is to have the Weapon Adaptation perk (From Power-Ups 2 or Martial Arts) available, while also not having it count against any limit on combat perks

[Chris Rice]

I tend to agree there is a problem here. In Melee there are no talents so everyone uses whatever weapon they have with their DX adjusted only for armour and wounds. It’s simple and elegant. In ITL, the Talents were a great idea, but the implementation for weapons less so. It doesn’t work for me that you can use a sword at say DX10 because you have the Talent but an axe at DX 6; it’s too much of a difference for my tastes.

And I don’t think the answer is “more Talents,” I want to keep the game simple and elegant.

I think I’d rather something like “ Heroes can use any normal weapon without penalty. Wizards are at -2 or maybe -4 with all weapons other than the Staff.”

Then do away with the weapon Talents and just allow individual weapon proficiencies but to a maximum of +2.

This is just a rough idea at the moment.

[Kallatari]

Why not just use a Melee Combat! wildcard skill? That works out to 12 points per level.

If as a GM you don't like wildcard skills and don't want to fully implement them, that's fine. You are allowed to specify the list of wildcard skills in your game and restrict its to a small list (such as only Melee Combat!) rather than let players make their own. Or, take the trick that DFRPG used for techniques and convert it to an advantage for your game.

Melee Combat [12 x level]: You are automatically skilled in all melee combat skills at a level equal to your DX attribute (treat it identically to having the skill at that level for all purposes). Each additional level gives you an extra +1 to your skill.

This is mechanically the exact same thing as having the wildcard skill, just wrapped up under the clothing of an advantage.

And it removes the complications of trying to find out the defaults between all the different combat skills.

[RedMattis]

Originally Posted by Keampe

One solution is to divide weapons up into different categories such as:

Light Weapons - Fencing weapons and Knives
One handed weapons - includes shield
Two handed weapons
Pole weapons
Flail weapons
Exotic weapons - weird weapons like Net

Weapon skills within each category default to one another at -2 except exotic
Weapon skills default to other categories at -4, except exotic.
Exotic weapon skills are each treated as their own category.
If a fighter has no experience whatsoever with a particular weapon an additional -2 familiarity penalty is assessed.

So an ice age hunter only familiar with spears gets transported to the renaissance and given a rapier would use it at Spear -6 until they gained familiarity at which point they're at Spear -4.

Just some thought.
- Shane

I did consider changing the defaults as well, but there are a few reasons I preferred a Talent-like solution.

First, it changes rules instead of adding onto them. This can confuse players more.

Second, it makes buying up skills more complicated math-wise and is a bit janky in GCS unless you go through all the skills and change defaults.

By making it based on talents you can simply add "+1" (etc.) to a bunch of skills on the talent.

I do like the idea of simplifying weapon groups as you did though.

One crazy idea would be to simply make a big "Melee Weapons DX-E" skill and then have all weapons be techniques going to max +0. Maybe a base level of -2 for easy melee weapons, -3 for average, and -4 for hard. Same for unarmed and guns. The former which would default to/from "Melee Weapons". Stuff like Karate's increased damage, or Judo's throws would be (somewhat affordable) advantages along the lines of Weapon Master.