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Thursday, December 16, 2021

Melee Academy: Expanded Melee Weapon Defaults for GURPS

I don't think it's actually possible to learn to fight in one way, without learning enough to help you fight in others.* The fact is many concepts, principles, and abilities overlap.

Fechtbuchen and Japanese martial arts schools are a good example of this - you don't spend X years working on unarmed, then X years working on swords, then X years working on spears, then X years on knives - taking 4X years. You spend X years on swords, then fraction-of-X on spears, then even-smaller-fraction-of-X on knives, etc. - and you learn much of it concurrently. Or you learn unarmed for X years, then when you add weapons you find the odd choices of the unarmed moves are actually perfectly sensible if you expect to be armed, instead or in addition. The footwork overlaps (if it's not actually identical, which it often is). The fight awareness overlaps. The principles are exactly the same. You don't re-learn it all from scratch. There may be differences between culturally different styles, but within a culture, or a broader system, it's rare that you aren't better off with some basis of combat training when you learn another.

GURPS goes a ways towards this with defaults - but really, all weapons should default to all weapons in some fashion.

A quick-and-easy fix for this is to give every melee weapon a default to every other melee weapon at -5 if they don't have one already.

This effectively makes a weapon skill a substitute for DX for most weapon skills.

For example: Conrad is DX 13, with Broadsword+6, for Broadsword-19.

That gives Conrad Broadsword-19, Shortsword-17, Rapier-15, and all other melee weapon skills-14.

Any holes in this I'm seeing?

I think this may go a short distance toward addressing a larger issue. In my opinion unfortunately, GURPS also assumes skill development is linear. A guy with 8 points to spend can learn Broadsword at DX+2, or Broadsword at DX+1 and Spear at DX+1. But that same guy with 48 points to spend on weapons who puts it all in Broadsword gets Broadsword @ DX+11. If the guy wants two weapons, say, Broadsword and Spear, those 48 points split evenly get DX+5 in each skill. Nice, but he's substantially better off in actual play if he does the former, and needs to put in real work to make the latter approach make any sense at all.

But in real life, it's much easier to get from "beginner" to "very good" in a series of weapons, even 2-3-4 of them, than it is to get extremely advanced in just one. It should be easier to get multiple skills to DX+5 than one skill to DX+11. Learning more takes more and more time, it is harder and harder to find practice that is challenging enough to improve you, and even those improvements are marginal and mostly show only against other masters . . . sometimes. The longer you spend on something, the longer the time you need to spend for each increment of improvement. High-level practicitioners of styles are often the ones who most benefit from cross-training in another style, which, in GURPS, is merely taking points from the style you want to actually improve unless the core skills are all identical. All that does is make "cross-training" taking Broadsword from someone who calls it the blade something different.

I don't have an easy solution for this. It's something that is more systemic.




* I realize that there are differences between styles, stances, etc. I could go on forever about them, but for all of the differences in footwork, fist positioning, stick usage by style and length, etc., etc., there are fundamental similarities. It can be hard to teach another, different stylist not to use what they know from another style in this one, but it's not like it's harder to teach an expert than a newbie . . . it's just different. I reject the idea that knowing too much of X messes up related skill Y. You wouldn't take someone who speaks a couple languages and say they should struggle more to add a third than it is for a new learner to learn a second.

30 comments:

  1. You haven't mentioned GURPS Martial Arts, which has rules for fighting styles, and does cover some of this.

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    1. Peter (of ye olde Peter V. Dell'Orto fame) wrote large sections of the book... and yeah, if I recall Martial Arts doesn't really get into expanded defaults for combat skills. It does talk about Wildcarding Styles though.

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    2. You're quite right, though, I should have at least mentioned some of the other options:

      Wildcard Skills for Styles (MA p. 60)
      Weapon Adaption (MA p. 52)
      Feint (MA p. 101) (specifically how it is resisted by your best skill)

      I can't think of others off-hand but we did a few things to expand what one combat skill really gets you.

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  2. Long post alert!

    OK, I like where this is going and it makes sense to me. Right now, in unmodified GURPS, Conrad has: Broadsword-19 (DX+6) [24], Shortsword-17 (DX+4)* [0], Rapier-15 (DX+2)** [0], Knife-9 (DX-4) [0], Axe/Mace-8/Polearm-8/Spear-8 (DX-5) [0 each], and Flail-7 (DX-6) [0]. *Default Broadsword -2 **Default Broadsword -4

    If Conrad had 1 point in all those other skills, his skills would be Broadsword-19 (DX+6) [24], Shortsword-17 (DX+4) [1], Rapier-15 (DX+2) [1], Knife-14 (DX+1)*** [1], Axe/Mace-12 /Polearm-12/Spear-12 (DX-3) [1 each], and Flail-11**** (DX-2) [1] *Default Broadsword -2 **Default Broadsword -4 ***Default Shortsword -3, **** Default Axe/Mace -4

    It takes Conrad 4 points in Shortsword to go to Shortsword-18 (DX+5) because of defaults. Same thing with Rapier to get to 16. Makes sense—with no training, Conrad is already pretty darn good. It takes quite a bit more training to get better at that particular skill, I suppose, because he already knows so much from being so good at broadsword.

    Using a default of Highest Weapon Skill -5, Conrad has 14 skill in Axe/Mace, Flail, Spear and Polearm. Not bad. With 4 points in any of those, he goes up one level to a 15 (DX+2) instead of 13 (DX+0) with no default.

    The defaults *could* be Highest Weapon Skill -6, and that would give him a 13 (equivalent to DX-0) in all those skills where he has 0 points. An investment of 4 points gets him to DX+1, and 8 points is DX+2. That might not be enough “credit” given to your high weapon skill in Broadsword.

    Now, if Conrad had DX 16, and he had 24 points in Broadsword for a 22, he’d have defaults of Shortsword-20, Rapier-18, and everything else 17. Not bad. But if Conrad were not as *relatively* skilled in Broadsword, and only had Broadsword-19 (DX+3), he has the same defaults as Conrad with DX 13 and 24 points in Broadsword. I think that seems OK to me… A guy with incredible DX and a lot of training is pretty good with most weapons, and a guy with good DX and tons of training is equally as good.

    The interesting thing here is that neither DX 16 Conrad nor DX 13 Conrad get damage bonuses or rapid strike penalties halved if they have Weapon Master (All Weapons) because “none of the benefits apply to default use.” But at least those guys can pick up any melee weapon and be quite competent (Skill 14) with it. Your basic knight with Broadsword-20 has a 15 in all melee weapon skills. Seems fair. They can’t rapid strike as well or get the +2 per die damage bonus, but they’re still quite deadly. For those guys with Skill 22 in one weapon, they can pick up anything and have a 17 skill with it, better than many starting delvers.

    I suppose the only question that it raises is whether or not it incentivizes focusing on one weapon instead of taking the knight package where they know three weapons at Skill-16 (or whatever that package gives). But it’s not like most people choose that now anyway. But that might be OK because it seems weird that a DX 14 guy who has lots of fight training and knows Broadsword, for example, at a 22, is only Flail-8 when he picks that up.

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    1. "... knows Broadsword, for example, at a 22, is only Flail-8 when he picks that up."

      I think what's going on here is GURPS treats many skills a narrow focus, because really, Broadsword and Flail are very different when discussing the mechanical usage (are they "no default" different? No, but...) and what a lot of Peter is talking is "holistic skill" application.

      I don't know if a flat -5 Default works, especially when you start talking about vastly different weapons, like Knife versus Pole-axe, net versus any rigid weapon, Flails v any non-flail.

      I'm leaning a lot more towards something I mention in a post below, Combat Talent (or Combat DX, if people prefer to further separate Attributes, which is what a Talent really is at the end of the day). Instead of dumping 48 points into Broadsword, Johnny One-Skill should be splitting it between Broadsword (his personal "specialization) and Combat Talent (or DX and Per and Tactics and Enhanced Defenses, etc), but still "getting 48 points in Broadsword" ... somehow? Or not.

      But I'm still kicking this idea around, like, how much should it cover, should it step down for radically different skills? Or should it just be a Talent, treated like a regular talent, and maybe a sea change in how Johnny One-Skill's points get spent needs to be addressed?

      Because I really feel ya with the Knight's "One Skill vs Three Skill" disparity. I mean if you're going Sword Knight, there is no reason not to take Broadsword 20 [24] (unless you're going Two-handed and are allowed to trade in those points in shield).

      But do Flail, Axe/Mace, Knife, Staff, and Sword really overlap as much as -5 default*?


      .* And I'm not even talking about Fencing skills which I think GURPS does wrong, //kinda//, but that's a longer rant.

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    2. "I suppose the only question that it raises is whether or not it incentivizes focusing on one weapon instead of taking the knight package where they know three weapons at Skill-16 (or whatever that package gives). But it’s not like most people choose that now anyway. "

      First, think broader than DF. This is GURPS in general. But also . . .
      "But it’s not like most people choose that now anyway."

      No one chooses that one. It's not a good choice, because 9 times out of 10 you can just use your weapon of choice and the other 1 time you don't have any weapon in hand because you dropped your weapon of choice with a Critical Failure. That's basically it. It's such a fundamentally good choice to specialize that people will use a weapon that doesn't work very well against a foe rather than swap weapons because they hyper-specialize in that one weapon. Anything that encourages a broader selection of weapon skills is probably helpful at this point.




      "I don't know if a flat -5 Default works, especially when you start talking about vastly different weapons, like Knife versus Pole-axe, net versus any rigid weapon, Flails v any non-flail."

      I think there can be enough overlap to speed learning of and ability with another weapon. If you end up choosing which weapons are "too different" then players will - appropriately - glom their skills around a) their best weapon choice or b) the best default-providing weapon choice if they want to use multiples. You already get some of that, but at least this way no skill is ever a truly bad choice.

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    3. Yeah, I can't say when it comes to melee weapons, but I think that knowing how to fight in general makes a huge difference. I know that in standard GURPS the Karate skill would probably cover both Tae Kwon Do and Muay Thai, and I guess Judo would cover Jiu Jitsu (mostly), but after getting a black belt in Tae Kwon Do at 17, I can tell you that after a few hours of training at Jiu Jitsu the difference between where I was and a high DX guy who'd never taken martial arts but had the same number of hours (or, actually, quite a few more) was enormous--the high DX guy was nowhere close to being as good. To be sure, I wasn't as good as any of those folks who trained for a long time in Jiu Jitsu, but I was kind of "instantly competent" (not instantly "great"). Same with Muay Thai, although that's far closer to TKD. I have to imagine it is similar for a guy who's amazing with a sword who picks up an axe.

      For a good example of that, take a look at Tod Cutler's YouTube video where he gives Matt Easton a flail, and Matt and his longsword HEMA guys give it a whirl. Within a few minutes these guys are using them pretty effectively despite never having used them before. They're definitely not at Two-Handed Flail-6 or 7, that's for sure. Were they effectively Skill 12, 14, 16? That's all subjective. But after a few minutes I would say that they were "instantly competent." Nowhere near as comfortable if they had to run out and fight for their lives using that instead of their longswords, but surely not looking at it like, "Hmm, do I have at least a 50/50 chance of hitting a guy if I try to hit him, or parrying?" It's at https://youtu.be/MpIPX30v62c. Spoiler alert: defense was harder than offense.

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    4. For DF I can definitely see it. I might go that way as well in DF, just to keep things simple...

      But then I start thinking about knock on effects, and if Johnny On-Skill can do this with weapons... why not with other broad categories of skills, Like Social Skills or Spells... which then leans me back towards the Talent route.

      It's definitely something to ponder.

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    5. ((sorry guys, mildly bored at work and this is smecking hard up against the 'further abstracting of things in 4e that I thought worked just fine in 3e))

      "Spoiler alert: defense was harder than offense."

      Oh yeah. I've always felt that GURPS vastly undersells just how difficult some weapons are to defend against. Anecdote time, I did train in naginata and dueling halberd (as well as a small time in Tai and Kung Fu, it was a Wai Lum temple, go figure), and I was the crazy boy who'd happily spar nag or halberd versus kusari and manriki, and even with all the insane reach of a naginata once they breach that outer perimeter and move in closer than your maximum thrust area, it was just impossible to block or parry.

      But I can't imagine my years with polearms would translate very effectively over to picking up a whip and knowing what to do with it.

      Okay, it does, but it's in the footwork, familiarity with just getting out of the way (Dodge) of another weapon, reading your foe... but none of that to me is [Mechanics Alert] frex, Polearm 16 lending to Whip with a decent default. I really feel that's all in Combat Talent, or totally different skills entirely (Tactics†, Inc Dodge‡, etc, and not so much in "and this is how to use this vastly different weapon to strike your foe".

      I know I'm carping on about really outside weapon cases, but...

      Ans yeah, I've watched that video before, and this time it really did stand out when I'd see someone (particularly the guy in yellow) go into fencing footwork, almost like he was trying to move back and forth on the line and initially treat the flail like a fencing weapon. Interesting, which loops back around to my thoughts on how fencing is "done wrong" in GURPS (again, really is another topic).

      Which also wraps around to Tod Cutler, he's a proficient archer and crossbowman, but he's rubbish with melee weapons. So that vast disparity in weapon usage comes in, in regards to defaulting.

      .

      End result, I think I'll go with using Combat Talents over an upgraded default, but I do see the value in say defaulting similar enough weapons, like all one-handed melee, all two-handed melee, all unarmed, all thrown... maybe not all muscle-powered ranged though. They are really dissimilar, as different as knife is to whip or poleaxe.


      .* I think this isn't so much "undersells" as the abstraction begins to break down with my own personal 'reality settings'. Like I mentioned above, I spent a few years off and on "learning how to parry" chain/rope weapons with a polearm... and I never felt I got better at 'parrying' so much as 'kinda parrying but mostly dodging'. Or as my personal favorite defense, Stop Thrust with a Dodge, IE, see the hit's windup, get in, jam on that hand, arm, or shoulder (or controlling leg) and then immediately get back out of their reach.

      But is that a Stop Thrust/Stop Hit? Or is that more properly a Parry of their body? Or even an Aggressive Parry (as the hits were lighter than a full 'kill' shot due to getting in and out fast, but even, it was sparing not "murder the other guy' training)? And I fall up my rabbit hole of making combat grittier and grittier, instead of simpler and more abstracted...

      .† I've really been contemplating the old 3e Body Language skill and how it's been absolutely neutered in 4th ed. I've been thinking about bringing it back to the glory usage of 3e, but as a flat bonus of 1/2 the MoS to skills. But I'm also thinking this should involve Tactics somehow... and that's about as far as my brain usually gets before I'm sidetracked onto more pressing things.

      .‡ I really do think a bunch of the "skill overlap" we're seeing is in maneuvering and Dodging, which I'm thinking of how to implement with a Combat Talent... +1/4 to 5 levels?

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    6. "But I can't imagine my years with polearms would translate very effectively over to picking up a whip and knowing what to do with it."

      If there is a specific skill you don't like to have a default from others - it seems to be flexible weapons - just make them an exception. You could also say that it doesn't apply to specific weapons, or which require the Exotic Weapons Perk to use without penalty, or something of that sort. That way there is always some crazy crap - nets, whipswords, knife-wheels, whatever - that you need a basic grounding in to really be good at.

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  3. My go-to on this one would be to start with "weapon use is a Talent" or create a Weapon Use! wildcard skill. Then specializing would be bought off as techniques, starting at -5 or -6 (I like -6 because...) and maybe going up to Wildcard+4 (...that makes a nice pentophilic 10 points to get from default to maximum).

    I have no idea if the math works out on this one. But "here's a core ability, or even a target skill that represents all fundamentals, and here's a low-cost Technique progression to cover details" feels right to me.

    But the way you describe learning weapons - we're going to teach you sword, a nice versatile, balanced weapon and then say "here's an axe, tweak this way; here's a spear...this is really much harder in one hand" and so on is precisely how I've been learning Western Martial Arts.

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    1. I think a Weapon Talent is fine, but you shouldn't need to buy it to simulate this. Being a master of one melee weapon should provide some benefit to all melee combat, in my opinion. Having another route to improve ability broadly without improving DX - a Weapon Talent - is good, but isn't the whole answer to me.

      Same with Weapon Use! as a wildcard. Nice, but a single weapon skill is 1/3 the cost and the raw number matters the most in combat. 48 points in Weapon Use! would get you, what, DX+2? I'd take Broadsword @ DX+11 over that any day in a fight, unless we had to fight with flails or nets or something.

      A broader base combat "skill" sounds nice but the implementation would matter a great deal. I'd like to see you play around with the numbers you have above in a post or something. Otherwise I'll do it - I've had similar ideas about buying a base weapon group and then paying to specialize further.

      "[ . . .] is precisely how I've been learning Western Martial Arts."

      The thought to write this was occasioned by some looking into WMA, but it's also exactly how you learn other martial arts. Some teach stick and then knife and then hands, some do hands then sticks then blades, some do blades then sticks then hands, etc. but traditionally, they look more alike than different around the world. At least to me. Only the fashion of pajamas you fight in seems to really change. ;)

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    2. The comment about WMA wasn't meant to be exclusive, just that we are very deliberately training in sword all the time, and then also deliberately saying "how to modify sword to do X," where X has thus far been both shield and sword. One-handed spear actually has many differences, and a lot of the sword, shield, and axe stuff does NOT work.

      But all of the distancing and timing and secondary stuff I learned in Hwa Rang Do made me really dangerous for a long time, until specific training expertise overcame my broad foundation.

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    3. Also I presume that you'd not really be allowed to just take the weapon skill. What I think you're talking about here is more or less an edition-level change, in my view. So you're really not saying "Oh, EITHER buy a weapon talent OR buy pure skill at 4/level, to infinity and beyond." This would replace, I presume, the old way of doing combat skills.

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    4. I think a reasonably priced talent will appeal to some but not all characters. You can for instance have a character who would want to use say Shield, Sword, and Thrown Weapon / Axe. That character might well be willing to spend points on such a talent.

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    5. "Being a master of one melee weapon should provide some benefit to all melee combat, in my opinion."

      I kinda agree, but I'm also wondering if 22 points isn't a little too cheap to have every single weapon skill at DX. And then being able to raise them all to DX+1 for 4 points...


      "I think a reasonably priced talent will appeal to some but not all characters."

      The minimum I allow Talents to go for in my games is 5 points, the Player picks three skills, I pick 2*. Next step up is 10 points, they pick 6 I pick 4*, and then 15 where I stop caring about interfering with picks and sometimes let them exceed 15 skills (why not, the 'power' Talents do).

      I do allow Talents to stack... to a limited degree. I'm more strict on Talents stacking than I am on Talent design.


      * Or more, or less. Depending. I really do aim for "5 skills for 5 points", especially at the 5 point level where you're raising a skill //and four others// for only slightly more than the cost to raise one. At the 10+ cost breaks I get less concerned about tossing o a few "dud" skills, I tend to see far less abuse once the Player is dumping 40 points (or more) into one Talent unless they're doing it into magic, which is a munchkin's paradise, but no saving it now. I just let Magery go.

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    6. Doug, I'm not sure who you're replying to in that last comment.

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    7. to you. I got the feeling that you were saying "why would you do the new broad-skill way when you could just dump all the points into one skill?" And I'd say "you can't, because the 'only one skill' way would presumably go away. An edition-level change.

      I might have to take to my own blog to lay this out in my head, but given how favorable dumping all the points into a single skill is right now, I'm not sure it's possible to structure a pricing scheme where getting a broad fightin' skill on top of which you put some points into particular weapons is going to ever compete with the current method.

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    8. A 5pt talent will almost always be desired if someome really wants one of the included skills. Unless all the other skills seem deadweight.

      10pt and 15pt are more iffy

      I am a fervent believer in 'any round without an attack roll is a round wasted' and look in dismay as my players will do things like Move and such when they could instead do fast draw move and Attack throw weapon to actually attack and move, so talents like Pick Axe Penchant and Master of Arms feel pretty desirable to me, but clearly are duds as my players are concerned

      My first two Dungeons on Automatic characters and my Nordlond Saga character for instance would have been absolutely all over Master at Arms if DtGr had been published before those games died there horrible miserable ends

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  4. @Dave check the name of the Author for GURPS Martial Arts.

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  5. So what's your opinion on weapon talents? They could go a way to alleviate this.

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  6. I don't know how much Poleaxe and Knife really overlap.

    I get where you're coming from on footwork, tactical comprehension, combat awareness, etc all tying in and being better overall regardless of the weapon (or unarmed) skill the highly trained Single Skill warrior is using... but I think a lot of that is better represented through raising Tactics, DX, Per (for combat? Maybe a Per based Tactics for combat awareness checks/OODA loop), Enhanced Defense (broad or single depending on Style), etc, than resting it all on a single 4 exp point per level skill raise.

    I mean, is Johnny One-Skill really better at Tactics, Per, and broad defenses with his 48 points in Broadsword, than Luke Spread-Points who has points in Broadsword, Tactics, Enhanced Defenses, Per, etc?

    Yes, in a infinite plain mano-a-mano duel, Luke is so much toast, and probably should be, but outside of that infinite plain and mano-a-mano he's still toast... and perhaps that needs to be better addressed somehow... but how remains elusive to me.


    The only thing I can think of is to perhaps further separate the Attributes, I know people who are adroit at many 'dexterity' things, juggling, dancing, lockpicking, etc, but hand them a weapon and they fumble and bungle, and likewise I know highly skilled martial artists who fumble combination locks and need 2+ attempts to open a lock they've been opening for years...

    Or maybe a shift over to more Talents, I can see a lot of what we're talking about being taken up in a Combat Talent. But requires a fundamental shift in how think of and price Attributes.

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    1. "I don't know how much Poleaxe and Knife really overlap."

      I don't either, but guys like George Silver and his ilk seem to think they did.

      I wouldn't want to add more rolls to combat just to keep from giving a default out. The default is neat and easy and simple. Adding a new skill with a new roll with nebulous but broad effects would mean a big shift in combat rules overall, I think.

      "Or maybe a shift over to more Talents, I can see a lot of what we're talking about being taken up in a Combat Talent. But requires a fundamental shift in how think of and price Attributes."

      I agree. I actually think tiering up the cost of attributes, especially IQ and DX, 3e-style, had a lot to say for it. If you want to recost attributes, there is a fantastic book for that.

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    2. I have that book... and it's something I've poked at on my own, I have (had) a thread on the forums where I was getting into a Hard Attribute cap of 16 for defaults and skill dependency, where after 16 DX and IQ costs dropped radically (because IQ becomes nigh "useless" if it's not adding to defaults or skills) and further skill bonuses were meant to come from Talents.

      I've also looked at stripping Skills from Attributes entirely and going right to 10 + Talent + Skill Level...


      But none of that really addresses Johnny One-Skill v Luke Spread-Points and how much work that one skill that costs 4 exp/level is doing. I like the Talent route, but it comes down to the fidelity each us wants to tune into... and if one skill is allowed to carry an omni-combat master or not.

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    3. "But none of that really addresses Johnny One-Skill v Luke Spread-Points and how much work that one skill that costs 4 exp/level is doing."

      No, that's a systemic issue. All you can easily do at this point is a skill cap, and use the Rule of 20 for defaults, too, if you prefer, so even Broadsword-30 guy gets no more than Shortsword-20.

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    4. New post as we passed 4096 words int he last one...

      It's not in DFRPG, but do you still do Purchasing Up From Default in your Felltower game? Because that also adds into my 'dislike' of "All weapons default at -5 from each other" (especially noting that Flails and Kusari default at DX-6).

      Will your "-5 default all weapons" supersede the standard default values for weapons?

      I ask these two above questions because there are really only 4 weapon skills (if you allow Training up From Defaults into play) that matter; Broadsword, Garrote, Shield, and Two-Handed Axe/Mace. Every other melee weapon skill (and one ranged weapon skill) have a default chain from one of those skills. Garrote is alone in the world, Shield goes Shield>Cloak>Net, and Broadsword and Two-Handed Axe/Mace have pretty full chains (2-handed Axe/Mace leads into the Flails which chains into Kusari then Whip).

      ---

      New side digression, but I literally did this for a PC once, the Player wanted to be the "Master of all Weapons" but didn't want to have to worry about buying up each weapon and was struggling with Buying Up From Default, so I just gave them Combat Wildcard at 20 points per level (it's almost, but not really, equivalent to buying every weapon* and unarmed skill at one point and then buying up DX instead of individual skills). Why didn't he 'just buy DX'? Because I wasn't allowing Attributes to affects skills past 16 (it was an experimental game where I was trying to entice Players into wanting to buy Talents).


      .* There are only 27 melee weapon skills, one of which is also a ranged weapon skill (hello Net, yes we're talking about you).

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    5. Yes, we allow buying up from defaults in DF Felltower.

      "Will your "-5 default all weapons" supersede the standard default values for weapons?"

      I'm not sure what you mean "supersede." You get a -5 from any weapon to any other if there isn't already a default between them. I'm fine with saying "only if the weapon gets a default from something else in the first place" so you don't get Shield and Garrote without learning them.

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  7. THIS COMMENT IS A JUMBLISH MESS OF THOUGHTS
    - APOLOGIES FROM THE PEANUT GALLERY


    "You wouldn't take someone who speaks a couple languages and say they should struggle more to add a third than it is for a new learner to learn a second."

    Today my eyes caught this line again and sparked several new 'arguments/line of thoughts'...

    Right now (by RAW) it is no cheaper to get your tenth language, than your second. But your default proposal very much makes it cheaper to get your second skill up very high (even matching the first), if you already have a first skill very high... and this absolutely something I (kinda) do for languages (hence why it sparked again with me).

    I have few different language purchasing "subsystems", but they all share one thing in common, it is cheaper (sometimes free even!) to get the 11th language than it was getting the 2nd. That's a truism across all 'three' of my language purchasing systems (in the 'most expensive' case it's because after they've paid for ten languages I give the PC my version of Omnilingual* for free).


    But what the base system doesn't do is allow for your fifth language to cost less than your second, and it's the same with almost everything else (there are few very attractive notable exceptions, the generous defaults between swords for instance).

    Now I'm thinking about my trick of giving out Perks for every level of Talent someone buys as an alternative to the Reaction Modifier... and I'm thinking about a free "point" in Combat Talent (Defaulted Skills Only) for every different combat skill taken to a certain level... mmm complicated.


    New track. As I noted, it's 24 points (with your Default -5) to have "every" weapon† skill at DX. That sounds an awful lot like a 25 point advantage "Combat Master". This would keep Johnny One-Skill with a skill of 25+ from having every weapon skill at 20+ (unless their DX was also 20+, in which case shine on you crazy diamond) but also allow them to 'just pick up any weapon and go to town', as most frontliners have a DX of 14-15.

    Yeah, I think a 20 point/level Melee Master Talent might just work for what I'm doing, tack a bonus to combat awareness rolls into it... and then smaller groupings like "Blade Master", "Axe/Mace/Flail Master" (1 and 2h Axe/Mace and Flail, Spear, Polearm), "Knight Weapons", etc...


    Hmmm. That has a lot of appeal to me. On one hand it's far, far more appealing than watching PCs raise DX every 4-5 sessions. On the other it ain't free (the biggest problem I have with your default idea). On the griping hand it's generally going to be of value to the "combat master" PC. I need to let this percolate a bit more.



    .* My version is leveled Omnilingual, three levels, 20 points/level (or 10 or 5/Region depending on the genre, the less important languages are, the cheaper) and gives the comprehension level for "all languages in the game baring some for plot/GM fiat reasons". Sometimes it's a laundry list of lingos, usually 10+ languages (it's always "cost of Omni" x1.5 # of languages at a minimum).

    Language Talent works differently, instead of giving a level for free, it reduces comprehension penalties by one, increases learning languages speed, and reduces the cost for "rare" languages to being a Perk at the level of your Omnilingual (with Familiarity penalties which don't last long due to Language talent).

    .† I know you say 'weapon skill' and you mean weapon skill, but I don't really differentiate 'weapon' and 'unarmed' when I'm thinking 'combat skill' and to me, this "should be" combat skill... however, for DF's niche protectionist purposes I can fully understand making it //melee// weapon skills, and then crafty a cheaper priced Unarmed Master Talent and maybe Thrown and a Ranged Master Talents as well.

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    1. The expanded defaults idea above is unapologetically a "free" expansion to what you get, yes. I used the analogy of languages in the real world, not the game system. It should be true there, too, in a perfect game system.

      And yes, I do specifically say melee and weapon, so it doesn't apply to unarmed and doesn't apply to missile weapons.

      I'm not terribly concerned with the effect of making people think the best route is to choose a "main" weapon and spill off of that. Right now, they pick a "main" weapon and try to use that to solve all problems unless they absolutely have to use another weapon. Even then, people are more likely to try to adapt their current weapon - get a wooden sword for when you need a club, a sword with "C" in the reach so they can fight better in close, a sword with 1,2 reach so they can fight longer, etc. Opening the door wider to people getting good at multiple weapons, even by giving them free stuff to encourage it, is a way of balancing the guys who choose to be good at multiple weapons against the *everyone else* who realizes that's a point-inefficient choice.

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