Quote from: jhkimSimilarly, if the party is hunting down fugitives and there is a lot of tracking going on, it would be very attractive for the sage to spend 1 point on Tracking and thus give the party an extra chance to stay on the trail if the Ranger fails.

And again unexplained is how the sage is to learn Tracking.

And again ignored is that a ranger is more than someone with Tracking; the sage can get a single rangerish skill without really stepping into the ranger's niche; saying that a sage learning Tracking ruins a ranger player's fun is like saying that Buffy is no fun to play because Xander can use a sword, too. He can, but a Slayer is more than someone with a sword.

And again unexplored is just how much better a dedicated ranger of the same point total will be at Tracking alone than any sage, just as Buffy will be better with her sword than Xander.

Since jhkim is persisting in ignoring 3/4 of my responses, it seems pointless responding further.

As I said earlier, it's quite alright to just dislike a game for no real reason. You don't have to make up reasons and ignore people's explanations of that game.

Quote from: Elliot WilenWell, I think John is making some good points here, especially given the level of effort I'd be willing to put in, either as a player or as a GM, in ensuring that a character build makes sense and includes all the skills that ought to be there.

I think that Kyle has more than adequately de-bunked most of John's points.  But I do agree (and Kyle's answers re-iterate this) that keeping GURPS working smoothly takes a dedicated GM.  If you aren't prepared to put in the effort, flaws will become apparent.  Some systems are more forgiving of a slack GM, but GURPS isn't one of them.

But I don't think it is much of a criticism to make.  SJ Games can hardly be accountable for crappy GMs.

Quote from: Kyle AaronAnd again unexplained is how the sage is to learn Tracking.

And again ignored is that a ranger is more than someone with Tracking; the sage can get a single rangerish skill without really stepping into the ranger's niche; saying that a sage learning Tracking ruins a ranger player's fun is like saying that Buffy is no fun to play because Xander can use a sword, too. He can, but a Slayer is more than someone with a sword.

And again unexplored is just how much better a dedicated ranger of the same point total will be at Tracking alone than any sage, just as Buffy will be better with her sword than Xander.

Since jhkim is persisting in ignoring 3/4 of my responses, it seems pointless responding further.

Look, you posted a 1300 word response in little more an hour to my post before last, which was just a few hours ago.  I'm not going to try to go word-for-word with you and respond to every sentence you post.  Sorry.  I'll try to cover the broad points, but that's it.  It seems to me that you're taking a minor criticism of GURPS personally, which seems screwy.  

I never said that a sage learning Tracking "ruins the ranger's player's fun".  That depends the player and on the general group dynamic.  The ranger's player might like having another tracker, or simply not care.  I have no strong predictions about that.  Some people don't care much about niches at all.  

However, if you do care about niches -- as Pierce Invarerarity indicated he did in his original post -- then this is one case of mixing.  Obviously, the one example isn't a game-breaker, but it's also only 1 point spent.  If he's bothered by that, then there are liable to be other things that bother him about the game.  

You give the impression that lack of niche protection means that the sage will be better than the ranger in everything.  i.e. That the problem is abusive super-characters by munchkin players that break the game.  That's not what I'm talking about.  I'm talking about just characters that don't have sharp distinctions between them.  For example, you gave example stats of characters as:

Quote from: Kyle AaronSage, IQ 16 [120], Per 16

• , Tracking (A) Per-1 [1] - 15 = [121]

Ranger IQ 10

• , Per 16 [30], Tracking (A) Per+2 [8] - 20 = [38]

So you're postulating that the ranger has 8 points in Tracking, which means he is deliberately specializing in that.  If he put 8 points into all his ranger skills, he'd be simply throwing points away because of the inefficiency.

That's not my point.  Obviously if a character is specialized in tracking, he's not going to be overtaken in it.  But if the ranger has a variety of outdoor skills (climbing, survival, camouflage, etc.) -- then on any particular one other characters are likely to have comparable skill.

Why not just TRY the game instead of arguing and nitpicking numbers?


- Ed C.

And again, jhkim, you give me no genuine response.

Again, you don't need to pretend to have a rational reason to dislike a game. Your own website records at my last count 989 first editions of English-language rpgs. No-one can possibly look at even a tenth of them thoroughly, we have to go on personal whim about them. Let's just not pretend it's anything more.

I think it's been pretty conclusively shown that there are a number of builds possible for different charaqcters with similar levels in particular skills, and that a character which specialises in skills along a certain theme (ranger, animal handling, pub quiz trivia) can attain high levels of competence by using specific advantages at a fraction of the cost of the guy who puts all his points into IQ.

It's also true that a character with a high IQ stat will be able to pick up a strong academic understanding of many skills with minimum tuition, albeit that his knownledge will remain largely theoretical and often fall short under duress (i.e. when the skill is applied to an attribute other than IQ).

What I don't understand is where the problem is. It is a fact of life which is sadly infrequently found in many games that significantly more intelligent people generally find it easy to pick up a superficial level of understanding in new areas. That many games overlook this fact and instead impose various standards of equality is a feature of those games. Likewise, the ability of a very intelligent GURPS character to learn new skills quickly is likewise a feature of GURPS.

What is important is the earlier observations that this IQ based approach is not the most cost effective way to build a character who specialises in a particular niche, so it should not be the case that most characters are abnormally intelligent. If a player frequently takes the high IQ approach to chargen to gain some sort of minmax skill boost then he is displaying the deficiencies in his minmaxing skill since this in not the most cost effective way to build anything but the most bland and generalist character.

There is a post somewhere where Kromm very clearly explains why specialization is always superior in GURPS and that generalization will only make you strategically less effective over time.

I don't know how your games when JHKim because it sounds like you played in quite a few sessions, but I found myself as a player constantly agonizing where to spend my points.  We were approaching 500 point builds and I never had enough points where I could just crank out IQ and/or DX and suddenly supercede any of the other 4 players in their niche.  We played a steady 3 points per session award system, plus big chunks of points when we got powers and extra points here and there for long training periods.

I also think you are overemphasizing the impact of skills.  Once you get advantages and advantage-based powers into the mix, the impact of skill levels (and the points you put into them) become less significant.

Maybe your GM was a long time 3rd edition player and was carrying over those biases in the way character development was influenced?

Quote from: KoltarWhy not just TRY the game instead of arguing and nitpicking numbers?

Agreed
Or the least he could do is show us a broken build. It not like a GURPS character is hard to post. If GURPS 4th is so broken then the poster should stop lecturing us and post some builds.

Quote from: walkerpThere is a post somewhere where Kromm very clearly explains why specialization is always superior in GURPS and that generalization will only make you strategically less effective over time.

I'd be interested to see the post.  It's not like this disagrees with my point by itself.  It says very little until you specify how broad or narrow the specialization should be.  For example, I would completely agree that trying to make a do-everything character, or even a do-half-of-everything character is a losing proposition.  

What I am saying is that it is common for a character to have, say, one 8-point skill and then twenty or more 1-point skills.  Those 1-point skills may cluster some in a theme, but you'll have a scattering of other 1-point skills -- especially after some adventures.  The out-of-theme 1pt skills will be at the same level as the in-theme 1pt skills.  

Yes, a talent or certain other advantages can technically change that -- but from what I've seen they aren't generally worth it.  Some players may spend a few points to get one for flavor, but it isn't encouraged by the system because they cost a lot.  

Quote from: walkerpI don't know how your games when JHKim because it sounds like you played in quite a few sessions, but I found myself as a player constantly agonizing where to spend my points.  We were approaching 500 point builds and I never had enough points where I could just crank out IQ and/or DX and suddenly supercede any of the other 4 players in their niche.  We played a steady 3 points per session award system, plus big chunks of points when we got powers and extra points here and there for long training periods.

I also think you are overemphasizing the impact of skills.  Once you get advantages and advantage-based powers into the mix, the impact of skill levels (and the points you put into them) become less significant.

I would completely agree that if there are superpowers, then the overlap of skill niches becomes largely irrelevant.

However, I'm puzzled by your statement.  By "supercede", do you mean you couldn't do everything better than the other character?  If so, then yeah, that's obvious.  But conversely, I find it hard to believe that with 500 points, you couldn't get even one out-of-niche skill higher than another PC.  

For reference, here's two of my 4th edition characters (the only ones I have online):

Captain Emily Clarke
The Mouth

Quote from: jhkimYes, a talent or certain other advantages can technically change that -- but from what I've seen they aren't generally worth it.  Some players may spend a few points to get one for flavor, but it isn't encouraged by the system because they cost a lot.  

If you think it worth it to boost IQ/DX rather than the several skills under them, then you must think it worth it to boost a Talent rather than the several skills under them. After all, IQ/DX are 20/level, while Talents are 5-15.

Talents and other similar Advantages answer the comment you made, that there's just IQ and DX, and no niche-specific "intelligence." There actually is. You can have a Talent with a group of related skills. That's a kind of smarts that's specific to a niche, and it's much cheaper than IQ or DX.

Quote from: jhkimBy "supercede", do you mean you couldn't do everything better than the other character?  If so, then yeah, that's obvious.

That's not what you've been implying. Let's revisit the original quote.

Quote from: jhkim, in his review of GURPS 3eSince so much rests in the 4* attributes, it can be hard to maintain skill niches in a group of PC's, beyond mental types vs physical types. For example, suppose a PC group has a sage has a 16 IQ but no outdoor skills of any type, and ranger who has 10 IQ and 8 points in tracking and lots of other outdoor skills. For just 1/2 point, the sage can get "Tracking" skill better than the ranger.

This tells us that you think a single skill is enough for a "niche". It's not. If someone's character is defined by a single skill, that's a pretty boring character. An able character will have a range of skills, and be able in a group of related skills. A ranger is not just someone with Tracking, an IT person is not just someone with Computer Programming, a leader is not just someone with Leadership, and so on.

You've been talking about "niche protection." A "niche" is more than just one skill. A ranger does more than Tracking.

Quote from: jhkimBut conversely, I find it hard to believe that with 500 points, you couldn't get even one out-of-niche skill higher than another PC.  

Which would be why in my first post to this thread, the fourth one here, I said,

Quote from: Kyle AaronSo while someone who's a specialist in one area may have a particular skill better than a specialist in another area, they won't have the range of skills required to do the job. The sage can't be a replacement ranger. They can replace them in one or two skills, but not in the job as a whole.

You don't even need 500CP for it, it can be done at any character power level. It's trivially easy to get an out-of-niche skill at a higher level than some other character whose niche it's in. But they'll still be better at their job overall - you won't have but a toe in their little niche.

Let's make this as clear as possible. A character with a "niche" has more than one skill in it.

Once you realise that, all the other stuff about attributes not being way superior to skills, Talents being useful, etc, all fall into place.

Just for the record: I don't consider one point skills to be 'broadening my niche' or what have you.  You consider yourself an expert? You gonna have at a minimum a +0 skill, Minimum. That's a 2 or even 4 skill points.

I know that the 1 point difference isn't looking like much, but we are talking over potentially a dozen skills.

Those 1 pointers (or 1/2 pointers in ye olde dayes) were for things you knew but weren't your area of expertise. You know, the ranger who happens to have a working knowledge of the Cult of Set or whatever.  

GURPS being what it is, you can have a huge raft of 'out of niche' skills, and probably should. Unless you want to be an expert at everything, you only put the minimum in there and hope it's enough if it ever comes up.

but yeah: ONE skill with 8 points in it does not a niche fill.

And at 500 points? I expect to see many 8's on that sheet.

But I will leave this to the experts. Damn lazy players, no good GURPS games goin' on... grumble grumble :mad:

Quote from: jhkimHowever, I'm puzzled by your statement.  By "supercede", do you mean you couldn't do everything better than the other character?  If so, then yeah, that's obvious.  But conversely, I find it hard to believe that with 500 points, you couldn't get even one out-of-niche skill higher than another PC.  

Well I don't have their sheets in front of me and I don't remember them well enough to say.  Certainly we had many skill overlaps.  But it never got to the point where it made any strategic sense to try and poach their niches.  I tried.  Not because I wanted to steal their spotlight, but I couldn't really commit to a niche myself, so I kept spreading my points all over the place.  The other players were all hardcore GURPS experts and were focused right from the get-go.

What ended up happening is that I would try and get in on their area of expertise and either flail or make a minimal impact.  This happened with trying to be stealthy, trying to be ass-kicking in a fight, doing face stuff.  It was very unsatisfying (and actually led me to my own personal frustrations with GURPS).  When I finally cottoned on and started listening to the other players' strategic suggestions for my point-builds, and focused on making my guy's niche be survival, then I started seriously having an impact in the game.  I could soak damage and go anywhere (outside of the space ship, underwater, inside a trash compactor, etc.).

Again, we were dealing with powers here, so the specialization manifests itself in very complex Advantage builds.  But in my own game, where the players were working with around 150 points, all 3 players started to branch out into their areas of specialization. There was skill overlap (things like Stealth and some gun skills) but in most systems these are baselines anyways and none of the other players felt that their niche was being trampled on.

Kyle, you're simply repeating exactly what I said.  I'll say it again:  I never claiming that GURPS 4th edition is totally broken, and that the sage character build beats all others at their own game.  That's a straw man that you constructed.  

Also, you should make clear that you were quoting my review of 3rd edition GURPS.  I did say that 4th was different, but that it still had a lesser form of the same feature.  Let's go back over what niche protection is...

Quote from: Kyle AaronYou don't even need 500CP for it, it can be done at any character power level. It's trivially easy to get an out-of-niche skill at a higher level than some other character whose niche it's in. But they'll still be better at their job overall - you won't have but a toe in their little niche.

Let's make this as clear as possible. A character with a "niche" has more than one skill in it.

Let's make this as clear as possible: You don't need to be better than a specialist at all skills of his specialty for niche protection to be an issue.  The case of tracking is indeed just one skill, but it was also just one point spent.  

You just said it yourself:  In GURPS, it is "trivially easy" to be better than someone else at one skill in their niche.  Some people don't like that feature of GURPS.  Different people will different feelings about how easy it should be for someone to put a toe in someone else's niche, and/or what constitutes a toe versus a foot.  However, I don't think one has to be an irrational wacko to dislike that feature.  

Now, that could potentially be offset by 4th edition talents, but I don't think that is true in practice with their implementation.  

Quote from: Kyle AaronIf you think it worth it to boost IQ/DX rather than the several skills under them, then you must think it worth it to boost a Talent rather than the several skills under them. After all, IQ/DX are 20/level, while Talents are 5-15.

Talents and other similar Advantages answer the comment you made, that there's just IQ and DX, and no niche-specific "intelligence." There actually is. You can have a Talent with a group of related skills. That's a kind of smarts that's specific to a niche, and it's much cheaper than IQ or DX.

In principle, I agree that a similar system could address the issue.  I did write up an aptitude system for 3rd edition GURPS for exactly this reason.  However, the costs assigned are key.  Obviously the lower cost has to be considered relative to what you get.  I don't have a copy of the rules handy, but what I remember is that the cost for talents was quite high relative to what you got.  I know that I found the 5pts per +1 Musical Talent little help, for example.  i.e. Spending 10 pts got you a lot less than half of what +1 IQ got you.  

On the other hand, maybe I missed something.  Let me ask you and anyone else here:  Within your last PC party, how many points were spent on DX+IQ versus how many points on talent advantages?  In my GURPS Traveller party, I was the only one who took a talent advantage, which was a 5 point Musical talent compared to over 300 points in DX and IQ among the four PCs.  Do you find in practice that players take them instead of DX/IQ?

Quote from: SpikeThose 1 pointers (or 1/2 pointers in ye olde dayes) were for things you knew but weren't your area of expertise. You know, the ranger who happens to have a working knowledge of the Cult of Set or whatever.  

GURPS being what it is, you can have a huge raft of 'out of niche' skills, and probably should. Unless you want to be an expert at everything, you only put the minimum in there and hope it's enough if it ever comes up.

but yeah: ONE skill with 8 points in it does not a niche fill.

And at 500 points? I expect to see many 8's on that sheet.

Well, as GM you can run things however you like in your game.  

Mechanically, if you have five skills at the 8 point level, you can instead raise all your other skills by +1 as well as your Will and Perception for free.  (And yes, Kyle, I realize that it's possible to call for skill rolls on an alternate stat -- i.e. like rolling IQ + Broadsword skill to talk about swordsmanship.  So there would be a -1 to talking about your swordsmanship and such, but it has to be weighed against the gain.)

Quote from: jhkimWell, as GM you can run things however you like in your game.  

Mechanically, if you have five skills at the 8 point level, you can instead raise all your other skills by +1 as well as your Will and Perception for free.  (And yes, Kyle, I realize that it's possible to call for skill rolls on an alternate stat -- i.e. like rolling IQ + Broadsword skill to talk about swordsmanship.  So there would be a -1 to talking about your swordsmanship and such, but it has to be weighed against the gain.)

If, by chance, all your 8 point skills fall under IQ? Sure.  And again, I put that at 500 point gaming.

Of course if you want to go 'straight super optimal', any time you collect more than twenty points in skills on your character sheet there is the possibility of 'wasted points' by that mentality.   Sounds not unlike the guys who played every champions game with all their characters being 'super strong guys'... not because they wanted to play 'super strong' but because every five points in STR gave you (as I recall...) seven points back in derived attributes.  STR therefor was 'optimal'.

Not everyone sits down and streamlines their characters that far. Sometimes ya just want to be 'that really good ranger guy, the expert, ya know?'. and not 'that really smart guy who knows a little about rangering' even though their dice rolls play out identically.