Explain to me about Professional Skills

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by maximara

The problem here is the United States and Europe have their own ideas of what Egyptology even is. Here in the States it Egyptology part of archaeology .

And...that's a problem how? Look, academically speaking Egyptology is in fact a sub-discipline of archaeology. That is entirely beside the point when talking about game mechanics where an Expert: Egyptology, with low Archaelogy skill is just an archaeologist with a lot of expertise evaluating artifacts but sloppy field work. How the game divvies up expertise has nothing to do with real world academic classifcations.

[maximara]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

And...that's a problem how? Look, academically speaking Egyptology is in fact a sub-discipline of archaeology. That is entirely beside the point when talking about game mechanics where an Expert: Egyptology, with low Archaelogy skill is just an archaeologist with a lot of expertise evaluating artifacts but sloppy field work. How the game divvies up expertise has nothing to do with real world academic classifcations.

Except that is not how the skill is described:

"Egyptology: The study of ancient Egypt. Can function as Anthropology, Archaeology, History, Linguistics, or Occultism for that purpose."

So if our Expert (Egyptology) was in the Valley of the Kings and needed to roll against Archaeology to do a proper excavation per the skill description he would roll against his Expert (Egyptology) skill. So to have a low Archaeology skill he also have to have a low Expert (Egyptology) skill...which kind of defeats the purpose of having Expert (Egyptology) rather then Archaeology (Ancient Egypt) in the first place.

This is exactly what I mean by off the wall moon logic.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by maximara

Except that is not how the skill is described:

"Egyptology: The study of ancient Egypt. Can function as Anthropology, Archaeology, History, Linguistics, or Occultism for that purpose."

So if our Expert (Egyptology) was in the Valley of the Kings and needed to roll against Archaeology to do a proper excavation per the skill description he would roll against his Expert (Egyptology) skill. c.

Nope. What that actually means is that the Expert in (Egyptology) knows all the things about Egypt that an Archaeologist with that specialty would. But actual tool use is not his thing.

[evileeyore]

Originally Posted by whswhs

It doesn't work that way. The writeups of Expert Skill in the Basic Set make it clear that they are bodies of factual knowledge. There's no "how to" aspect. It's stated explicitly that Expert Skill never grants the ability to do practical tasks—and that would include the practical tasks of a science that produces new knowledge. Setting up an experimental apparatus, or doing a dig, or dissecting a corpse would take a non-Expert skill.

Which notion as maximara is pointing out, the very skill descriptions themselves immediately ignore and invalidate.

So don't mind me over here treating Expert skill like the upgraded Professional skill it's skill examples paint it as.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by maximara

Yet that is exactly how the expert skill is written ie Computer Security is totally separate from programming. Silly or not that is the way that Expert skill is written. Which is my point. Some of the expert skills presented require off the wall moon logic to make the least bit of sense.

Not at all. They just require you to recognize that they're intended to be used in conjunction with other skills. It's no more silly to say that Expert Skill (Computer Security) is pointless without Computer Operation than to say that Fast-Draw (Knife) is pointless without Knife.

[Inky]

Anaraxes: Well, all I can say is I've tried to do it like that and I've proved utterly incapable of it. It's just impossible to guess every tiny thing that will be relevant ahead of time. I did take seven or eight skills along the lines you mention, but something's always popping up. Often things that are a question of having a better chance (but not guaranteed) at some wider task, rather than simply knowing a fact. Maybe I'm just not clever enough for GURPS.

Can you do that with Savoir-Faire, make up new ones as you feel like it? Our group don't seem to do that.

[maximara]

Originally Posted by Inky

Anaraxes: Well, all I can say is I've tried to do it like that and I've proved utterly incapable of it. It's just impossible to guess every tiny thing that will be relevant ahead of time. I did take seven or eight skills along the lines you mention, but something's always popping up. Often things that are a question of having a better chance (but not guaranteed) at some wider task, rather than simply knowing a fact. Maybe I'm just not clever enough for GURPS.

Can you do that with Savoir-Faire, make up new ones as you feel like it? Our group don't seem to do that.

The problem, at least as Expert Skills and Professional Skills go, is that professions tend to have several several skills which themselves will be at several levels which all interact with each other in a 'total is greater then the sum of its parts' way.

Historical Anthropology is a prime example of such a profession which blends history, archeology (historical), and anthropology into one field. But what exactly does it cover in GURPS terms what the field even is varies depending on who is talking about it? And there is the problem.

Originally Posted by evileeyore

Which notion as maximara is pointing out, the very skill descriptions themselves immediately ignore and invalidate.

So don't mind me over here treating Expert skill like the upgraded Professional skill it's skill examples paint it as.

Some of the listed examples for Professional skills are IMHO even worse then those for Expert Skill as for showing how the skill is supposed to work. Journalist, prostitute, and zookeeper are more a blending of other skills then separate skills in of themselves.

Hobby and Professional skills existed in 3.5 but AFAICT Expert Skill is unique to 4e and is the only one that specifically states that such skills "never provide the ability to do practical tasks" implying that professional skill can provide the ability to do practical tasks otherwise they would also state this ;-).

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by Inky

Can you do that with Savoir-Faire, make up new ones as you feel like it?

Characters don't make them up on the fly, during play. GMs (and players) can certainly make up new specialties that fit their setting. Sometimes you'd do so even after play starts.

(Imagine an SF game where you're discovered by an alien species and learn to get along with it. There might well be Savoir-Faire (Vulcans) in that setting, but no character would start with it, or even know it exists if the GM were playing their cards close to their chest.)

B169 has the rule for optional specialties. You might use this rule for any number of skills if you wanted to model a character that has a narrow focus rather than a general competence with a skill. (In this example, the reference to "War Office" makes me think you might apply that to, say, Current Affairs if you wanted to suggest that the character stays in touch with military or geopolitical events thanks to their job, but isn't an overall newshound, neglecting the economic or cultural news.)

If you don't care for going into that much detail with skills, there's certainly precedent for lumping the minor uses together into one skill. "Minor" is tricky, though -- presumably it doesn't include anything that's covered by another skill, much as Soldier doesn't give you Guns, Tactics, Leadership, Armory, Electronics Operation, Observation, etc. (See the description of Soldier; it covers "basic" tasks with the no-stress, routine "non-adventuring" +4 TDM, but at base skill level, without that TDM. So you could look at is as "Other Skills -4", though there's still that "basic" qualifier that limits applicability. It's not clear to me that this is really much different from having taking the default (say IQ-4) and just applying the +4 TDM... whatever works, I guess.)

But as I said, I probably wouldn't demand a skill roll in the first place for an elementary task like seeing if a trained soldier knows how to dig a foxhole even against Soldier, and certainly wouldn't require points in Combat Engineering. How does failure make the narrative better -- and is that chance of random failure interesting enough to be worth making a character constantly look incompetent in their supposed fields?

If you do like this route, then all the characters should get such a catch-all skill for their background. If it's just a way for one character to buy a Modular Skill that covers six or eight others on a whim, while other characters have to pay for their six or eight skills individually, then there's some unfairness in the point budgets.

Wildcards are the extreme version of catch-all skills. They _do_ give you the full versions of any related skills, which is why they cost so much. If you really don't care for trying to find all the relevant skills in that very fine-grained skill list, you might like wildcards. Most concepts only need one or two; then, they're good to jump into the action.

[Donny Brook]

The RAW on Expert Skills seems pretty clear:

When answering factual questions on [the] theme, you may substitute a roll against your Expert Skill for any IQ-based roll against any skill that has a default. Expert Skills... never provide the ability to do practical tasks.

If you read on through the examples, many of them refer implicitly or explicitly to that formulation. For example, Conpsiracy Theory mentions "to answer questions". Egyptology, which follows immediately after reiterates it in the phrase "for that purpose". Hydrology, Military Science, and Natural Philosophy all recite "to answer questions". There are examples that look a bit different, where they refer to a specifically useful output from the Expertise, like Computer Security or Epidemiology. I don't think these examples are meant to counterveil against the general no-practical tasks concept, but they do lead to the idea that a Expert Skill is are a distinct function rather than a catch-all.

Of course it's up to each GM to interpret the limits of "practical tasks".

In my case, I also have a house rule that an Expert Skill can be used for tasks other than 'answering questions' at -3.

[maximara]

Originally Posted by Donny Brook

Of course it's up to each GM to interpret the limits of "practical tasks".

In my case, I also have a house rule that an Expert Skill can be used for tasks other than 'answering questions' at -3.

You will notice that Expert Skill is the only one of the three (Hobby, Professional, Expert) that goes out of its way to forbid practical tasks.

Hobby Skill states it "cannot learn skills defined elsewhere" (sic). So you cannot have Hobby Skill (Artist, Painting) even though in the real world people have painting as a Hobby. Yet you can have Expert (Egyptology) rather then Archeology (Egyptology).

On the other hand, the Bartender example for Professional Skill is far more then simply 'answering questions' so why is a skill that is Hard (Expert) have that limitation?

Hobby and Professional Skills gives the whole Expert Skill a non sequitur tone.

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

An Egyptologist who is not an archaeologist can tell you all about what is known about the dynasties, and identify the era a given artifact comes from. But he doesn't know how to safely dig out and brush off a discovery, doesn't know the method by which an Archaologist quarters the search field at a site.

So if you asked the Expert Skill (Egyptologist) how to safely dig out and brush off a discovery or the method by which an Archaologist quarters the search field at a site in the Valley of the Kings he would not be able to answer because "he doesn't know how" or it is "practical" (and therefore not allowed)? How does that work?!?