Revisiting Talents for Combat

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Not another shrubbery

That DX is more efficient than a 15 pt weapon Talent does not mean that the latter cannot be abusive, and you do not have to allow either as a GM.

I would prefer to have players pay the cost for desired levels of skills directly, rather than use optimization techniques *shrug*

But high levels of multiple related skills, especially skills that characters can't really use at the same time, are not balanced in terms of cost with anything else in GURPS.

Hasn't it ever occured to you that the skills might cost too much rather than everything else being off?

[DouglasCole]

I kind of like Blade Talent, but I'd defnitely not lump Axe/Mace in with all the balanced slicing weapons.

Balanced Blade talent probably would work. Unbalanced weapons with reach C, 1 is probably good too. Balanced reach 2,3 is probably good, but I'm not sure if unbalanced polearm weapons would cross over very well. One could easily put in some of the unarmed skills in with the balanced weapon skills, esp Karate and Boxing.

[Ze'Manel Cunha]

Originally Posted by Icelander

But high levels of multiple related skills, especially skills that characters can't really use at the same time, are not balanced in terms of cost with anything else in GURPS.

Hasn't it ever occured to you that the skills might cost too much rather than everything else being off?

The skills have always had a hard time being point balanced...

One point skills are balanced for 5 point stat/talent costs.
Two point skills are balanced for 10 point stat/talent costs.
Four point skills are balanced for 20 point stat costs.

The thing is since DX is a 15 point stat and IQ is a 10 point stat, the system pushes us towards higher stats.

[aesir23]

Originally Posted by Kelly Pedersen

I don't believe that's the case. Basic has the Artificer talent, which gives a bonus to all specialties of Electronics Repair and Engineering. If it counted each specialty separately, Artificer would be far more than the 10/level it's listed at. What you may be thinking of is that some talents only give their bonus to one specific speciality within a skill, in which case it still counts as a single skill.

You misunderstand me, we're making the same point.

You can have all specialties of Gun for 1 slot in a talent, so there's no reason that Nanoboy's shooting talent should cost 15/level instead of 5.

[aesir23]

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

I kind of like Blade Talent, but I'd defnitely not lump Axe/Mace in with all the balanced slicing weapons.

Balanced Blade talent probably would work. Unbalanced weapons with reach C, 1 is probably good too. Balanced reach 2,3 is probably good, but I'm not sure if unbalanced polearm weapons would cross over very well. One could easily put in some of the unarmed skills in with the balanced weapon skills, esp Karate and Boxing.

The problem with this is that not every Axe/Mace is unbalanced (I'm looking at you knobbed club and hatchet) and not every weapon that uses Short Sword or Broadsword is a blade. If you have a talent called "Blade" and you're using it to wield a baton, it's a little bit of an issue.

[Infornific]

Originally Posted by aesir23

The problem with this is that not every Axe/Mace is unbalanced (I'm looking at you knobbed club and hatchet) and not every weapon that uses Short Sword or Broadsword is a blade. If you have a talent called "Blade" and you're using it to wield a baton, it's a little bit of an issue.

You could call it a Balanced Weapon Talent. Blade Talent just sounds cooler.

Looking at the listed Talents, they don't all add up. Technically a six skill Talent like Unarmed Combat should be 5/level. On the other hand, I'd be reluctant to put a weapon talent at only 5 points.

I'd organize them like:

Close Combat [10/level]: Brawling, Boxing, Judo, Karate, Knife, Main Gauche, Sumo Wrestling, Wrestling

Balanced Weapons [10/level]: Broadsword, Knife, Main Gauche, Rapier, Saber, Short sword, Smallsword, Two Handed Sword

If you wanted to really bend the rules, you could allow a Talent with all skills in a Martial Arts Style provided the character is trained in that style. Justify it as skill synergies learned from the style.

- DW

[nanoboy]

Originally Posted by Infornific

Looking at the listed Talents, they don't all add up. Technically a six skill Talent like Unarmed Combat should be 5/level. On the other hand, I'd be reluctant to put a weapon talent at only 5 points.


- DW

Whoops. I had incorrectly remembered the cutoff to be five instead of six.

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by Infornific

You could call it a Balanced Weapon Talent. Blade Talent just sounds cooler.
- DW

Balanced covers most of it; I'd probably default blades from balanced weapons with either a small default (-1 or -2) or a Familiarity, though. While you can use the same moves, using a blade well, getting the edge on, not just hitting but doing the most damaging kind of cut, is not always as easy as one might assume.

[Polydamas]

Originally Posted by nanoboy

I don't think that's quite right. On some level, learning how to fight is all the same. That is, the skills for understanding where to attack, when to defend, and so on are very similar from weapon to weapon. If someone has trained heavily with one melee weapon and has to pick up a completely unrelated melee weapon, he should be better at it than an identical person who never trained in any melee weapons. Also, these are things not represented by Combat Reflexes either.

Also, most martial arts which cover several weapons forms encourage students to see similarities between them. More generous defaults would be good, as would be trimming the list of weapon skills, but I think a “Liechtenauer talent” (Two-Handed Sword, Broadsword, Spear, Polearm, Knife, Brawling, Judo and possibly Buckler and Wrestling) or “Wushu talent” could be balanced. But I bet this was considered and rejected during the Martial Arts playtest.

[Infornific]

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

Balanced covers most of it; I'd probably default blades from balanced weapons with either a small default (-1 or -2) or a Familiarity, though. While you can use the same moves, using a blade well, getting the edge on, not just hitting but doing the most damaging kind of cut, is not always as easy as one might assume.

I'm going by GURPS rules as written, where a billy club and gladius both use the short sword skill. However, I could see a difference in real life use of a billy club vs a gladius. That suggests the possibility of allowing specialized versions of short sword and broadsword that are Easy skills, but blunt weapons only and suffering a -2 penalty when using edged weapons.

- DW