{"id":2052,"date":"2015-10-08T16:00:47","date_gmt":"2015-10-08T23:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.themook.net\/gamegeekery\/?p=2052"},"modified":"2016-10-26T11:47:02","modified_gmt":"2016-10-26T18:47:02","slug":"intermediate-skills-and-contests","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themook.net\/gamegeekery\/intermediate-skills-and-contests\/","title":{"rendered":"Intermediate Skills and Contests"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Another Thursday, another peek into the wonderful world of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sjgames.com\/gurps\/\">GURPS<\/a>!<\/p>\n<p>Today we&#8217;re looking back at skills. The sections to read for\u00a0everything about skills are pp. 167-173 in <em>Characters<\/em>\u00a0and pp. 343-361 in\u00a0<em>Campaigns.\u00a0<\/em>The &#8220;Task Difficulty&#8221; section on pp. 345-346 is particularly delicious.<\/p>\n<p>The main difference between using skills as explored in\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.themook.net\/gamegeekery\/your-first-skill-checks\/\">the two<\/a>\u00a0original\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.themook.net\/gamegeekery\/your-first-skill-contests\/\">basic posts<\/a> and here in\u00a0the intermediate post, is that your options <strong>explode<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>In GURPS Lite, there are 66 skills to choose from; in the\u00a0<em>Characters<\/em> book of the Basic Set, there are more than 250! \u00a0GURPS Lite also doesn&#8217;t have much in the way of skill modifiers outside of combat.\u00a0The Basic Set has a <em>ton<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.themook.net\/gamegeekery\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/skills.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-2064\" src=\"http:\/\/www.themook.net\/gamegeekery\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/skills.jpg\" alt=\"skills\" width=\"175\" height=\"171\" \/><\/a>Here are some of the many skill roll modifiers a GURPS GM might take into account:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Language Comprehension<\/strong> (p. 24): Some skills (Fast-Talk, Research, Teaching, etc.) can be affected by how well you know the language you are using.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Tech Levels<\/strong> (p. 168): How using the skills your character learned at her native Tech Level might be affected when using them amidst higher or lower TLs.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Familiarity<\/strong> (p. 169): Modifiers for using equipment that differs from what you&#8217;re familiar with, like a .357 Magnum when you&#8217;re used to a .38 snub-nosed, or a bitchin&#8217; Camaro when you&#8217;re used to an Audi. (This may be one of the crunchiest bits in all of GURPS-dom! Probably belongs in the advanced skill post, but I wanted to keep the list cohesive).<\/li>\n<li><strong>Geographical\/Temporal Scope<\/strong> (p. 176): Some skills (Area Knowledge, History, etc.) can be affected by unfamiliar times, places, and distances.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Planet Type<\/strong> (p. 180): For planet-hopping games, the type of planet can affect certain skills (Biology, Geography, etc.).<\/li>\n<li><strong>Physiology<\/strong> (p. 181): Still other skills (Body Language, First Aid, Surgery, etc.) \u00a0are affected when used on non-human characters (or, non-whatever-type-you-learned characters).<\/li>\n<li><strong>Equipment<\/strong> (p. 345): A lot of skills (things like Disguise, Mechanic, Surgery, etc.) assume you have access to at least a bare minimum of equipment. If this isn&#8217;t the case, using those skills becomes much harder (or easier, if the equipment you have is top-of-the-line).<\/li>\n<li><strong>Time Spent<\/strong> (p. 346): Taking your time to get things done right can give you a bonus on skill use&#8230; but having to (or choosing to) hurry will give you a penalty.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>As you can see &#8212; there are a <em>lot<\/em> of potential skill modifiers! The kind of game your group enjoys will dictate how many of these actually come up at the table. A very gritty, realistic science fiction game could easily\u00a0use all of them in various situations, while a quick and light game where the PCs are all dolphins in the same pod is unlikely to use any.<\/p>\n<p>For an example, let&#8217;s check in on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.themook.net\/gamegeekery\/downloads\/#ggm\">Kerna<\/a>. During\u00a0a recent battle to drive a mated pair of Trolls from the environs of the outpost, her armor was damaged by acidic Troll blood &#8212; the right shoulder joint has all but dissolved. The availability of qualified smiths at her remote billet is spotty at best, so she has learned it&#8217;s often faster to do your own repairs if you&#8217;re at all capable. So, once back at the outpost she removes her damaged armor and heads for the smith&#8217;s shop. He and all of his assistants are, indeed, up to their eyeballs and beyond with projects being worked; they barely even notice her come in. She grabs an out of the way corner and sets to work.<\/p>\n<p>Kerna&#8217;s base skill is 11. Right off the bat, the GM suggests the repair will be at -2 because of its location on a critical joint, lowering her effective skill to a 9. The shop itself does have (most of) the standard equipment, but much of it is old, worn, and cobbled together, so the GM imposes a further -1 (equivalent to &#8220;Damaged Equipment,&#8221; p. 345), lowering Kerna&#8217;s effective skill further from a 9 to an 8.<\/p>\n<p>On the other hand, she is determined and patient, so she chooses to take a full 8 hours to complete this normally 2-hour repair (by the way, I am completely pulling that number out of the ether. I have no idea how long it takes to repair a damaged scale armor joint. I suspect it&#8217;s a lot longer than 2 hours, but for the purposes of example I didn&#8217;t want to strand poor Kerna without functioning armor while she spends days working on it). Since this is 4x the usual time needed, it gives her a +2 bonus, raising her effective skill from 8 to 10.<\/p>\n<p>If Kerna rolls a 10 or less, she will successfully complete the repairs; otherwise, it might just be beyond her skills, and she would be better off waiting for one of the actual smiths to have time for it.<\/p>\n<p>Skills and contests don&#8217;t work any differently between GURPS Lite and the Basic Set&#8230; they just have a greatly expanded pool of possible modifiers that come into play. In a Lite game, there is no functional difference between using a katana or a cavalry saber &#8212; they both use the Broadsword skill. Basic Set allows the option of a -2 familiarity penalty. In a Lite game, a character could use First Aid to tend to wounded Humans, Elves, and Dwarves. Basic Set allows for a -2 familiarity penalty.<\/p>\n<p>As with most things GURPS&#8230; it all depends on the kind of game you want!<\/p>\n<p>Next week, we&#8217;ll get to see Kerna layeth down the smacketh in the intermediate melee combat post, throwing in a few more options from the Basic Set that aren&#8217;t in Lite. See you then!<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Note:<\/strong> If you are curious about the\u00a0new Patreon button at the top of the navigation pane, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.themook.net\/gamegeekery\/patreon-the-virtual-tip-jar\/\">details are\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div class=\"mh-excerpt\"><p>Another Thursday, another peek into the wonderful world of GURPS! Today we&#8217;re looking back at skills. The sections to read for\u00a0everything about skills are pp. 167-173 in Characters\u00a0and pp. 343-361 in\u00a0Campaigns.\u00a0The &#8220;Task Difficulty&#8221; section on pp. 345-346 is particularly delicious. <a class=\"mh-excerpt-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.themook.net\/gamegeekery\/intermediate-skills-and-contests\/\" title=\"Intermediate Skills and Contests\">[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2064,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,12,6],"tags":[],"series":[23],"class_list":["post-2052","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gurps","category-new-to-gurps","category-rpgs","series-new-to-gurps-intermediate"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themook.net\/gamegeekery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2052","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themook.net\/gamegeekery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themook.net\/gamegeekery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themook.net\/gamegeekery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themook.net\/gamegeekery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2052"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/www.themook.net\/gamegeekery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2052\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2076,"href":"https:\/\/www.themook.net\/gamegeekery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2052\/revisions\/2076"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themook.net\/gamegeekery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2064"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themook.net\/gamegeekery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2052"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themook.net\/gamegeekery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2052"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themook.net\/gamegeekery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2052"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themook.net\/gamegeekery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/series?post=2052"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}