04-04-2020, 12:47 AM | #1 |
Join Date: Jun 2010
Location: Dreamland
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Gameplay balance issues?; Talents in place of skills
Skills are (basically) 4pts per level, and with Average skills that translates exactly to +1/lvl
Talents as of PU3 can be Skills per level in cost DX and IQ are 20pts per level each DX! + IQ + HT! comes out to (15+20+2) 37pts per level I added Omnitalent for 40pts per level to cover all skills based on the above, and x10 cost for "all in the group" seems pretty common in GURPS It is cheaper to buy up DX than it is to buy up 6 DX skills and significantly cheaper to buy up the relevant Talent There's definitely some oddities in all that. I was thinking that if one skill is 4pts per level, and all skills is 40pts per level, then maybe skills might make more sense to treat like AAs and have some sort of staggered cost. There are plenty of complicated ways to do it, but likely the simplest is just making every skill after the first cost 1/lvl, paying 4pts for the highest. There are definitely complications; Difficulty modifies where Attribute+0 is, buying up from default becomes even worse of a plan, and techniques are already this cheap. For difficulty, just treat it like AAs again and care about total point cost, not relative modifier. 32pts in a skill means any skill with less base value is 1/4 price. Buying up from defaults was already a trap. I already use a house rule that doing this uses the costs from Techniques, and leaving it here would work easily enough. Techniques in that house rule become a flat 1pt (similar to but not the same as a perk). Seems about fine for this. I don't know if this is perfect. But after seeing how often players would rather buy up attributes before even considering having six high skills (skill 14+), I was thinking about expanding Talents into the place of skills. It's absolutely breaking the regular concept of Talents (one major rule being it can't be 'skills I want') but from a mechanical perspective it seems sound. This is all just theoretical, and I think would absolutely change how skills are even looked at. On the flipside, it does make having staggered amounts of skills without requiring attributes being at nonconceptual levels. And since Power talents can already use regular talents, converting multiple skills into the talent-like pricing means that having powers use skills can let them stagger some, too. What does the hivemind think? Would this unbalance anything? Would it substantially change how to look at character creation? Would starting point totals be different to make up for it? Is there already a thread about this that escaped me in my search? Have you done anything like this? To bring it back from mechanical to flavor, I like the idea of asking players to give an explanation to their new 'talents' if they come up, having fun explaining why they bought this specific group of 11 skills to +7. |
04-04-2020, 03:19 AM | #2 |
Join Date: Mar 2006
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Re: Gameplay balance issues?; Talents in place of skills
Yep, skills are odd in 4E, being still mostly locked into the old, simulationist 3E skill system, while 4E mostly took a giant-step towards HERO system, aka - simulation, what's that? - yeah, weird combo.
So, if you allow unlimited Talents, and unlimited Attribute-buying, skills are generally pointless, beyond spending the one point. So, rather than all that, why not just put limits on things?
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04-04-2020, 10:34 AM | #3 |
Join Date: Aug 2014
Location: Snoopy's basement
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Re: Gameplay balance issues?; Talents in place of skills
I have to admit, I was not able to understand what you are proposing.
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04-04-2020, 01:28 PM | #4 | |
Join Date: Jun 2010
Location: Dreamland
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Re: Gameplay balance issues?; Talents in place of skills
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Instead of making IQ looks much better at five skills, it directly compares at 17 skills. And only once you have 37 skills is it better to increase all (non ST) attributes or get Omnitalent. |
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04-04-2020, 08:34 PM | #5 | |
Join Date: Apr 2019
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Re: Gameplay balance issues?; Talents in place of skills
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It looks like your trying to sort of create a "leveling" type aspect? Sort of once you earn X number of points all your skills go up one? Is that sort of what your going for? |
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04-04-2020, 10:08 PM | #6 | |
Join Date: Jun 2010
Location: Dreamland
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Re: Gameplay balance issues?; Talents in place of skills
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04-05-2020, 12:37 AM | #7 |
Join Date: Feb 2016
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Re: Gameplay balance issues?; Talents in place of skills
Wildcard Skills are functionally equivalent to what you are suggesting (though they also give other benefits like maximized techniques and bonus points every session). In general though, I feel that the solution is to make skills better, not cheap (or to make attributes, secondary characteristics, and advantages more expensive).
In my games, I have characters reduce their skill penalties by one per every 4 CP invested in the relevant skill and its associated techniques (or every 12 CP in the relevant Wildcard skill), halved, rounded down, in the case of defensive penalties. For example, a DX 10 character with Karate (H) DX+10 [44]-20 reduces skill penalties by 11 and defensive penalties by 5, meaning that they can Deceptive DWA (Punch) two people in the skull with an effective skill of 16 and parry three times per turn without any penalty. Last edited by AlexanderHowl; 04-05-2020 at 12:40 AM. |
04-05-2020, 02:42 AM | #8 | |
Join Date: Jun 2010
Location: Dreamland
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Re: Gameplay balance issues?; Talents in place of skills
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Aside from that, I do really like Wildcard skills with all the bells and whistles. If I had a clue on how to actually make them well (I'm still not completely confident with Talents and those are entirely quantifiable) then I could do something similar with them. |
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04-06-2020, 07:04 PM | #9 |
Join Date: Jun 2010
Location: Hmm, looks like Earth, circa CE 2020+
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Re: Gameplay balance issues?; Talents in place of skills
Talents are intended to give a discount. Personally, I think that Talents are generally well-balanced in relation to other aspects of characters. They're actually one of the changes from Third to Fourth Edition that I like best.
Skills reflect training and experience, while Talents express, well, natural talent. This is realistic. The members of the Beatles were bright, but not super geniuses. They hadn't lived long enough to earn enough points to play, sing, and compose some of the greatest music of the 20th century. But they had the Talent.
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04-06-2020, 07:28 PM | #10 | |
Join Date: Jun 2010
Location: Dreamland
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Re: Gameplay balance issues?; Talents in place of skills
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Skills can reflect training and experience, but they can also be flavored as natural talent in one narrow area (effectively including a single skill talent). Talent can also be the reverse, a broader form of getting better, just as getting DX or IQ can be from training and not just inborn. |
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