Revisiting Talents for Combat

nanoboy · 06-21-2010, 11:03 AM

Note: This will be partially stream of consciousness.

I was thinking about how the canon rules for Talents generally disallow the use of Talents for combat skills, and I was thinking that if used properly, they would not necessarily unbalance a game but could add to certain character concepts.

The basic premise of my idea is that cross-training is not very encouraged in GURPS. Generally, it is better to simply buy up one or two weapons skills and stick to those weapons. The chances that a character will need to use another weapon in a game are usually quite low. However, in real life, a lot of martial arts teach cross-training in other weapons in order to improve fighting with all weapons.

I think that cross-training can be well-represented with talents using combat skills, if those talents are designed properly. If you think about point-costs, once a weapon skill has been very highly improved, defaulting skills are expensive to improve, and the chances are that the character will never use them anyway. For skills like Guns, this is rarely a huge problem, since the defaulting skills are at -2 and often not worth improving. For skills like Polearm and Two-Handed Axe/Mace, though, it gets expensive, and characters are very unlikely to want to improve the defaulting skill. I think that this is a problem, if the character would reasonably want to cross-train. In Martial Arts, some styles like Master of Defense could benefit greatly from such combat talents.

Anyway, it may be that others have playtested combat talents and found them to be very unbalancing. I haven't seriously tried it yet. (The only one I've seen in play is the Halfling Ranged Weapon Talent, and given the low ST of Halflings, it is far from unbalanced.) Any thoughts?

06-21-2010, 11:03 AM	#1
nanoboy Join Date: Aug 2004 Location: Edmond, OK	Revisiting Talents for Combat Note: This will be partially stream of consciousness. I was thinking about how the canon rules for Talents generally disallow the use of Talents for combat skills, and I was thinking that if used properly, they would not necessarily unbalance a game but could add to certain character concepts. The basic premise of my idea is that cross-training is not very encouraged in GURPS. Generally, it is better to simply buy up one or two weapons skills and stick to those weapons. The chances that a character will need to use another weapon in a game are usually quite low. However, in real life, a lot of martial arts teach cross-training in other weapons in order to improve fighting with all weapons. I think that cross-training can be well-represented with talents using combat skills, if those talents are designed properly. If you think about point-costs, once a weapon skill has been very highly improved, defaulting skills are expensive to improve, and the chances are that the character will never use them anyway. For skills like Guns, this is rarely a huge problem, since the defaulting skills are at -2 and often not worth improving. For skills like Polearm and Two-Handed Axe/Mace, though, it gets expensive, and characters are very unlikely to want to improve the defaulting skill. I think that this is a problem, if the character would reasonably want to cross-train. In Martial Arts, some styles like Master of Defense could benefit greatly from such combat talents. Anyway, it may be that others have playtested combat talents and found them to be very unbalancing. I haven't seriously tried it yet. (The only one I've seen in play is the Halfling Ranged Weapon Talent, and given the low ST of Halflings, it is far from unbalanced.) Any thoughts?