GURPS Power-Ups 10: Skill Trees

[dataweaver]

Originally Posted by Kromm

It comes down to the fact that going off on a tangent about magic in a supplement intended to be a genre-independent alternate-GURPS volume limited to "21 pages before the ad. Okay, maybe 22-23 pages before the ad. What, you went to 24 pages? *sigh*" would've been troublesome. I made it very clear in at least three places that this one is for rules-hackers prepared to do some legwork. It is a collection of hyper-optional ideas that the GM may, might, could, is welcome to, and is free to use . . . or not. As the introduction literally states, it's "GURPS Power-Ups 9: Alternate Attributes, but for skills."

There's also a line somewhere about PU11 being a companion of sorts for PU10, and another one (I think?) mentioning that while PU10 is primarily for rules hackers, PU11 will be for the more conservative crowd. So: would it be safe to speculate that PU11 will be more like PU9 than PU10 is? By that, I mean will it somehow take the existing Skill list, complete with all of the features that Skill Trees attempts to remove, and provide tools for turning specializations into skills and vice versa, turning Skills into Techniques and vice versa, turning Familiarities into Specializations and vice versa, broadening and narrowing skills, lumping and splitting them, converting skills to advantages, and otherwise adjusting the skill list to be more to your liking? Still a book for hackers; but one that isn't quite as drastic of an overhaul as Skill Trees is…

[dataweaver]

Originally Posted by Malfi

I get it now, many thanks to everyone for clarifying this for me! Especially to Mr. Kromm!

Dr. Kromm… :)

[cmdicely]

Originally Posted by jackcelso

25 pages not a single full example, with cost and levels and correlations to attribute.

if spend X points in that Y trunk with an IQ of 12 will have a skill of Z

If you spend 7 points in a standard-cost Trunk (1 level) with an IQ of 12, you will make IQ-based rolls against that trunk at a base of 13, which is mostly equivalent to a skill of 8 in the basic system (because of the -5 basic penalty for skilled tasks.)

[cmdicely]

Originally Posted by Tyneras

For magic spells, I less inclined toward Magic as a trunk skill, more towards a college or magical style as the trunk. Existing spells might be branches or twigs or leaves, many are awfully limited or specific, like Least Spells. Possibly combining specific imbuements as leaves.

A lot of work, but something I think has the potential to be quite useful.

I think if you go with College-as-Trunk, spells should still mostly be at most Twigs, but that in most colleges there are groups of spells within the college that would make good branches. It would be a fair amount of work to go through and work that all out, though.

[cmdicely]

Originally Posted by jackcelso

Changing what didn’t need to be change. Instead of redoing the skill system,they could rebuild the magic system and its gaps…

The magic system has been rebuilt to a greater or lesser extent (I’m skipping GURPS Magic here because that is more an elucidation than a rebuilding) in, that I can think of:

GURPS Thaumatology, more than once.

GURPS Thaumatology: Chinese Elemental Powers

GURPS Thaumatology: Magical Styles

GURPS Thaumatology: Ritual Path Magic

GURPS Thaumatology: Sorcery

GURPS Powers: Divine Favor

OTOH, for people who think the basic skills system could use some work, this is the first significant whack at it (though, to be fair. Power-Ups 3: Talents and Power-Ups 7: Wildcard Skills deserve some mention.)

[Refplace]

Originally Posted by cmdicely

OTOH, for people who think the basic skills system could use some work, this is the first significant whack at it (though, to be fair. Power-Ups 3: Talents and Power-Ups 7: Wildcard Skills deserve some mention.)

Also more than one Pyramid article, plus the GURPS Magic supplements.

Myself I am leaning towards Magery as a Trunk and colleges or Paths as Branches. Spells and Nouns as twigs.
However there would still need to be some work and fine tuning, which I am fine with as for this supplement. Its not a Thaumatology supplement after all so expecting much word count towards magic seems unreasonable.

[mburr0003]

Originally Posted by dataweaver

Dr. Kromm… :)

He didn't spend eight years in necromancy College to be called 'mister'.

[Kallatari]

Just giving another update at using these rules, as pure factual implementation items for people to consider in their own work.

We decided to actually convert our long-term characters from my Infinite Worlds ISWAT (practically Supers) to the Tree Skill system, using a starting point of Attribute -2 instead of Attribute -5 (although default is still Attribute -5).

These are characters we've been playing for about 7 years now. They started at 250 points, and are currently in the 1200 point ballpark. They've grown organically over time, and vary a lot in what they do.

The rules for conversion were simple. You purchased the Trunk at the level of the second highest skill of that trunk, and then increased the Branch for the one skill that was higher. A few nuances to that for when a skill was part of multiple Trunks, but that was the gist of how we converted.

Of the 5 characters, 3 of them ended up costing about 75 points more after converting (specifically, 68, 76, and 79). That was surprisingly consistent, although with a small pool I can't say if it coincidence or not.

The other two were anomalies, again, with respect to my own little group.

One is a character who had been using "Wildcards!" of my campaign which were based on the Niches of Character Templates Tools... which, in Skill Trees, now effectively become Trunks. So they all dropped in prices from the cost of a Wildcard to the cost of a Trunk. When you included the points spent on Talents and moved them into the Trunk, that character actually ended up being 134 points cheaper than he was before (Other than Gadgeteer and Gunslinger, he's effectively the powerless character in the group, so he had over almost 500 points in skills, compared to the rest which hovered around 200 points and have lots of points invested in advantages for their powers)

The other extreme is a high-attribute characters (basically, an Angel and thus +4 to all attributes), so this character had a lot of 1-point skills scattered about. Trying to recreate that broad knowledge by getting almost every trunk, even when starting at Attribute -2 instead of -5, ended up costing an additional 140 points.

He we started at Attribute -5 instead of Attribute -2 (i.e., the so called "level jump" in skills), the costs would have definitely been higher.



And for those who are curious, we all agreed before hand that if we converted our total character points cost values would change, but no one would actually gain or lose earned points for any cost difference. It's simply a reflection of the new costing. And even with that, everyone ultimately decided that the one player who ended up being 134 points less expensive could receive 134 points to compensate for the huge difference.

[Kallatari]

Originally Posted by Kallatari

Trunk = Power Source

A Power Trunk replaces a Power Talent that covers an entire power source that was previously worth [10 x level] (e.g., the Magery advantage is now the Magery Trunk).

Any restriction that applied to purchasing, learning, or improving a Power Talent (e.g., whether it must be purchased as a starting character or not, whether it can be improved, if there are maximum levels, etc.) now apply to the Power Trunk.

Similarly, if the Power Talent provided other limitations to your powers (such as minimum level requirements), count your level in the Power Trunk instead (e.g., instead of spells requiring a minimum level of Magery Power Talent, they now require a minimum level of Magery Trunk.)

Powers that didn't have a [10 x level] Power Talent are not allowed to get a Power Trunk; e.g., if using GURPS Psionic Powers, there is no overarching Psionic Power Talent worth [10 x level], so there therefore isn't any Psionic Trunk.

Having converted long-standing characters now, I am taking this suggestion back. It made the skill-based powers slightly too cheap, and didn't work all that well in all circumstances. So, in short "Don't do that!"

I am now suggesting leaving actual Magery or Psionic Powers or Super Powers as separate Power Talent advantages that determines if you have the power or not, and it adds to skill, just as it does in the Basic Rules.

You can still have Trunks that are all the abilities (i.e., all the spells) of that power, and Branches for the focus (e.g., magical college, psionic power, etc.), and Leaves for the individual abilities (spells, psionic abilities, etc.). It's just that the Magery Trunk is not the Magery Advantage, so it doesn't count for minimum Magery level to cast a spell, etc.

Also, it's just simpler than having to re-imagine all of the Power Talents into a skill Trunk of the Skill Tree, especially if you have many Power Talents for powers that don't have or require skills to use (e.g., many Super Powers).

[dataweaver]

Indeed. I'd likely make an exception for Psionic Powers, with a Trunk for being a Psi, Branches for each of the Powers, Twigs for each Ability, and Leafs for the Power Techniques; but that's largely because Psionic Powers uses Skills for Everything, and is pretty much already optimized for a psionic Skill Tree.