Absurdly high skill levels

[vitruvian]

Physical action skills (jump, lift, climb, etc): The speed at which you do these things, like the Influence rolls, are not determined by the skill roll. So it doesn't help you that much. It just makes sure that you can scale the "unclimbable pole", or make sure that you also gets a little bonus to your lifting checks and so on. It doesn't really pay off to have anything above skill 30. Maybe climbing might benefit from a little higher skill than the others.

True for some of these, not others. Lifting, for example, can give you +5% lifted weight times margin of success, 10% times margin on extra effort, with no upward limit that I can see. True, it's almost as good to take super-high Will at 5 pts a point, but still... but you're right, most of them are simple success rolls where you don't need more than 26-30 since TDMs for most tasks top out at about -10.

[gmillerd]

Having base skills near or above 20 is absurd for most the games I am in. Though getting there with trait modifiers and beneficial conditions isn't that hard for mundane characters within their sphere of specialization and outside heroic conditions.

When I visit base skills near or above 30, I find it hard to conceive of that skill in a useful manner. It seems like the skill blends into so many other aspects at a certain point. When the characters are actually challenged, the modifiers are truly absurd.

Too often the modifiers also seem to combine skills, such as stealth and the skill or what have you seem to introduce another problem. But who with a 30 History really is lacking in Research skill.

The entering doors you lockpick in realtime by touch alone in absolute darkness (or whatever the forum example of old was.)

[pawsplay]

Some silly examples:

History (20th century Military)-30 with no Strategy skill
Politics-30 with no Current Affairs skill
Sex Appeal-30 with no Erotic Art skill
Soldier-30 with no Guns or Melee weapon skill

[Ed the Coastie]

Originally Posted by gmillerd

...entering doors you lockpick in realtime by touch alone in absolute darkness...

*g* I've done that once, just to see if I could do it. It took me about 10 minutes, counting the time necessary to find the door.

I guess I rolled a critical success...

[Mgellis]

One issue is usefulness.

With most skills, the default "This is IMPOSSIBLE! Only an idiot or a genius would even attempt it!" penalty is -10. So, for most skills, 26- is all you are likely to ever need because your effective skill level is 16- and rolls of 17 or 18 are failures no matter what.

With other skills, where penalties can exceed -10 (combat, ritual magic, etc.), having a skill level of 30- or even 40- could conceivably be useful. If, for example, I want to make a skull shot (-7) at someone 1,000 yards away from me (-14) in poor light (-5), then even if I've got a really good rifle and stop to aim, etc. (about +8, depending on the rifle), I would need a skill of 28- simply to have a 50% chance of hitting.

Another issue is plausibility. But this is going to vary from group to group, depending on how the rules are interpreted. In general, though, I assume that skill levels above 20- are somewhat cinematic, although there are exceptions.

Mark

[Witchking]

On the theme the highest skill I ever had in 22 yrs of using GURPS was a 23 in Physician (M/VH). That was with my second character. He had an IQ of 10, 28 pts in Physician, and first level Eidetic Memory (30 pts back when Eidetic doubled the points put into mental skills). I found it interesting, I never lost a patient, and I eventually worked up a cure for the local equivalent of cancer (mostly to save my wife). Overall I found it to be more that a bit of overkill, especially seeing as it was off of a 100 pt build with 40 pts in disads and 23 was my level at roll up and I never increased it from there....

[vicky_molokh]

Two words: Regular Spells.

[Zed]

Thanks for all the feedback. :D

Comments:
At some point you do throw realism out the window. That's ok to do in some game styles (with or without using GURPS).

Seems like 2 issues:

Mechanically, in many skill areas, its pointless to be above a certain skill level as the possibilty of encountering a situation that would give you anything short of maximum possibility of success is nil.

Conceptually, I still wonder what would an absurd skill score represent?


Silly example:
A super awesome sniper should be around skill 35 but a super awesome surfer should be around skill 25. What if I want to play the best surfer in the world who happens to be a his city's best police sniper? The skill levels would not describe his abilities very well relative to each other (and I like stats to decribe as well as rate abilities). Take it one step further in cinematics: what if said dude is the a demi-god (ala Hercules) of combat surfing? How do you make the character sheet paint a picture that this guy is a god-like surfer with god-like sniper as a second best ability?

From the responses it seems to me that skills in GURPS have to be kept in a certain range. Access effects desired should be gotten through advantages instead?

~Z

[Maz]

Originally Posted by Zed

Silly example:
A super awesome sniper should be around skill 35 but a super awesome surfer should be around skill 25. What if I want to play the best surfer in the world who happens to be a his city's best police sniper? The skill levels would not describe his abilities very well relative to each other (and I like stats to decribe as well as rate abilities). Take it one step further in cinematics: what if said dude is the a demi-god (ala Hercules) of combat surfing? How do you make the character sheet paint a picture that this guy is a god-like surfer with god-like sniper as a second best ability?

Not true. The best sniper would still only need 25 skill. he might gain higher penalties, but a sniper also gets higher bonuses, Acc, aim bonusses and the additional rules from High-Tech all takes care of this.

My point was that in combat you are more often running into opposed rolls, and so high high a skill is "enough" depends on how high a skill your opponent has.

[JAW]

Originally Posted by Zed

Silly example:
A super awesome sniper should be around skill 35 but a super awesome surfer should be around skill 25. What if I want to play the best surfer in the world who happens to be a his city's best police sniper? The skill levels would not describe his abilities very well relative to each other (and I like stats to decribe as well as rate abilities). Take it one step further in cinematics: what if said dude is the a demi-god (ala Hercules) of combat surfing? How do you make the character sheet paint a picture that this guy is a god-like surfer with god-like sniper as a second best ability?

From the responses it seems to me that skills in GURPS have to be kept in a certain range. Access effects desired should be gotten through advantages instead?

~Z

Whyt the skill level for super awesomens should be lveor for surfing than sniping?

I mean there are surfing contest where contest of sills could determin who is mowe awesome. And the conditions penalties goulfd go up to wherever - surfing in a hurricane with a piece of scrap wooden board?? For sniping the maximum range of the guns sort of limit the useful skills - and really long range gunst usually comes with scopes and such.. Well if you eed to snipe those pixie size biotech midget soldiers from the orbit with nothing but regular hunting rifle...

But to me it seems surfing is muh cmore open ended than sniping. With snipign you point the gun to axactly rifght direction and keep it there - you cnat do better than that. With surfing one could ad about amount of super awesome tricks. Ie if you make a sniping toll and succeed by 10 - wel you hit where you wantd thats it - but if you make a surfing roll with and suucceed by 10 - you took the waves like nobody else and wil get reaction bonus for any surf enthusiastist and maybe some beachbaes not totally clueles about surfing etc etc maybe a potentional sponsor recognises you etc etc..

Of course surfing ain a hurricane wit scrap pieces of wood and sniping biotech midget soildier while doing it would be doubly super awesome..