the basic argument is about whether or not grouping vaguely similar skills, such as "all melee attacks" or "nearly every ranged weapon" into single groups is more or less realistic than keeping things relatively discreet--edge weapons as opposed to clubs, rifles as opposed to pistols, etcetera.

my stance is that neither route is truly realistic; true realism, in skills, would require such a horribly complex system that it wouldn't be worth playing, even to me. so shortcuts have to be taken. SR, to pick the system that most users here are familiar with, takes the route of making skills largely discreet; Savage Worlds takes the route of making skills largely grouped. i'm putting this out as a point of reference, not so this can devolve into an "SW's dad can beat up SR's dad" argument--though doubtless, it will.

the reason i believe that grouping skills is a valid approach is that many skills share a large base. the basic tenants of unarmed combat--stance, striking points, blocking, taking hits and not bitching out--are formed on the same principles no matter what style you use, and are also shared with the basic tenants of armed melee combat. if Joe trains in karate for four years, and then he finds himself in a fight where he's armed with a knife, he's going to fuck shit up with that knife. he doesn't need to know any fancy moves, he doesn't have to have trained against knife attacks, he just has to know how to stand and how to throw a punch. is he going to be as good with that knife as someone who's trained with knives for four years? no, and that is where skill groups are admittedly unrealistic.

in a discrete skill system, those basics are ignored--and that is just as unrealistic as the way the grouping system ignores the differences between skill types. to use an extreme example, an SR3 master of kung fu (skill 10) who takes a week of classes in muay thai (skill 1) will suddenly get his ass handed to him by anybody who's got any experience in fighting (say, skill 3+)--as long as the kung fu master tries to use his muay thai. there's no cross-training, no addition of previously-learned principles, no synergy. that's just plain retarded. it's at least as retarded as being able to use a blowgun after training in pistols.

The lack of cross training comes from your GM not letting you train faster when you pick up a simliar skill, say black belt karate guy takes muay thai and spend just as much time learning muay thai as he did karate, like you said basics are the same. Its also retarded of the person fighting with muay thai and not using his karate skills. I mean if I was playing and my kick boxer threw a flying knee I would roll my muay thai dice, but when I landed and wanted to use a karate round house kick I would use my karate dice. Its no more complictaed then what SR players already do if they use a pistol and an assualt rifle in the same round of combat.

So with considration to training and using the proper skills dice at the right time youd be ok. :)

You can find more here http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?showtopic=13453

EDIT: Just to push the limits of your logic and maybe illustrate it a bit more. My friend is a auto mechanic, but the airport wont let him work on airplanes. I wonder why, he can fix piston driven cars, how much different are they then jet engines? I mean they both burn fuel to make parts move and drive vehicles.

except that you won't be okay. you have to spend a fuck. ton. of karma to bring your muay thai skill up on par with your kung fu skill.

In SR3 some weapon classifications are absurdly broad while others are absurdly narrow. It is absurd for a street ganger who's insane (statless) shanking skills come from back ally brawls and prison assassinations to stand his own against Mr. Har'lea'quinn in a formal fencing match. It is equally absurd for a guy who has gone hunting ever Saturday for the past 30 years and can hit a bullseye from a mile away with his barret suddenly doesn't know which way to point the Ak-47 or which of those new-fangled switches to pull to make it shoot thunder.

I think the good ol' skill web is the best approach. If you have the specific skill you can use it. If not, you can default to a similar skill for a penalty. Exactly what that penalty translates to can be handled in narrative. Defaulting to katana for a fire axe could be a +1 TN and the naritive could show that the weapon's top heavy nature and smashing (rather than slicing) nature made it unwieldy for the character.

eh, maybe. the problem with that is, a +1 TN in melee combat is very often a death sentence. +2 or more, and you're in very serious trouble. i think dice penalties--or dice bonuses, perhaps a deeper specialization system--would work better.

Yeah? People still spend fuck tons of time mastering new forms of martial arts. I know many wont believe me when I say this because it fits the arguement too well, I dont give a shit if you believe me or not. But my father is a martial arts instructor. He holds black belts in three forms of martial arts. Three distinct styles. While yeah, you can learn basic moves to make the other forms easier to learn, you will not be a master of one then by defualt master the other two.

Same goes for pistols and other firearms. I could hit a bullseye at 100 yards with a 22 rifle at the age of 10. For years I learned rifles, then when I got older I was allowed to fire pistols. Guess what, I couldnt hit a paper target for a while at a distance with a pistol. I could shoot the pistol fine, I knew how to take it apart, clean it, load and all that, but hitting a target was somethign completely different.

I also learned to shoot a bow, I can kill a deer (target) at about 30 yards, not very impressive I know, but I can barely hit my garage with the neighbor kids blow gun. Which just baffles me, I mean I can hit a man in the heart at a 100 yards with most long arms, but risk wounding myself with a blowgun, go figure.

Christ man, flyig a plane is a task in it self, and all planes are pretty close to beign the same, but the FAA requires you have ass loads of flight time in a different craft before you can solo it or cross country fly it. Why does the DMV make you take tests for each style of vehicle? Im a pretty good car driver, but to drive a vehicle over 26000 pounuds I need a new liscense, if it pulls a trailer over a certain length I need a new licsense, or a motorcycle, again a different liscense.

A +1 target number is a death penalty but a -1 to the amount of dice you have isnt?

in a real fight, does your father stick with a single style? or is he able to combine techinques from multiple styles into a greater whole? most multi-style fighters i've ever talked to do the second. and that's what i'm talking about: just because you've only spent a week in muay thai doesn't mean you haven't learned something that will make your kung fu more effective. they're not seperate disciplines, they're different applications of the same discipline.

every +1 TN, in SR3, roughly doubles the difficulty of the roll. if you're fighting me at TN 4, and i'm fighting you at TN 5, you are going to whup me till i cry for mama unless my dice total (skill + pool +/- modifiers) is roughly and consistently double yours.

Both techniques lack the granularity be be effective. As mfb statd, you'd really need a complex system to work out the aproperiate skill values and penalities. People could write mathmatics doctoral theseses (thesi?) on such a system.

A big problem is that skills aren't linear and skill translation isn't either. A person who has practiced with a katana of specific dimensions for decades may not be able to perform his most impressive and astounding feats with a weapon just a few milimeters shorter or longer or a few miliggrams heavier or lighter. However, his most specialized abilities are all that he would lose in such a transition and he should be able to adapt them with practice. On the other hand, a student who is just begining may be less comfortable with a different weapon but should be able to apply basic skills to all weapons of the same type with ease.
To be realistic in this regard you need absurd numbers of dice with absurd numbers of sides and absurd formulas to determine the actual results of those rolls.

quite so. it's a question of how you want to portray the world, in the end. in discrete skill systems, characters tend to be error-prone and fallible, especially outside their specialties. in grouped skill systems, characters tend to be very capable in a broad variety of areas. discrete skill systems tend to err on the side of making things dangerous and difficult; grouped skill systems tend to err on the side of making things swashbuckly and fast.

YAY blow gun = 105 howitzer. Or is that related to heavy weapons? :wobble:

They should just remove grouping all together. Reduce the cost for raising skills in character creation and with karma and then customize your guy however you want.

Your never gonna satisfy everyone by suggesting what should be in a group and what should not.

With grouping some people get screwed over because they want to be unique and use different weapons. Why should they be penalized??

they're not. that's the point of grouping--anything that is even vaguely related uses the same skill. the ability to use a three-section-staff proficiently, when you've trained as a knife-fighter your whole life, is not a penalty. it's simply the lack of a bonus. removing grouping altogether would be a penalty.

The question isn't about being perfectly realistic. Quite honestly, everyone's got an opinion on what's most effective, and they're probably all equally right.

Overly specific groupings isn't inherently more realistic than extremely broad ones. Basically, once you've learned an art well enough to have thouroughly broken it down, you come to realize that they're all basically the same. Every fighting art depends on effective body mechanics, and there are only so many efficient ways to move. what differentiates arts isn't the moves, it's in how they're used.

For example, picture the classic, "Wax on, Wax off, Daniel-San" block. On the one hand, it's a effective upper body block. But if you use an upright closed fist, it can also be a backfist to the jaw. Add just a touch of torso-twist, and angle it out somewhat, and you've got a nice elbow strike. Use more wrist snap, and open the hand so you're leading with the first two fingers, and you've got the classic Wing Chun eye strike. Grab the guy at the end, then include some follow through, and you've got the start of a throw. With only a few minor alterations, it's the lead-in for an arm bar, a takedown, a choke... the list goes on and on.

Bruce Lee was the biggest proponent of this theory in our time, and he proved it quite solidly. As he advanced in his skill, he no longer saw things as techniques; he saw them as movements. There's a classic story about him taking ballet lessons, trying to see if he could integrate the leg movements. Once you're good at combat, you're good at all forms of combat. Strict monostylists are best represented as having a lower level of overall skill, while people with a broader knowledge base would end up eith a higher effective skill.

In my opinion, the best system is one that offers a good general level of skill, with the option for a specialization of some sort. For example, there's not a UFC fighter who isn't trained in both grappling and striking these days. To show someone at that level of skill, making them buy striking and grappling separately is ludicrous. Instead, you can offer them a specialization bonus for one or the other; this rewards them for roleplay, makes the game much easier to track, and generally lends to faster gameplay.

Here's where I have to disagree. Some things don't translate well, including the difference between being a boxer and Indiana Jones' whip. Or being a rifleman and picking up blowguns, slings, and bows. Or being able to throw shuriken really well and translating that to a lasso or bola.

Grouping everything under 3 banners doesn't make for faster game play. If I have 3 different melee skills and you have one, we're still taking the same amount of time rolloing dice. If I don't know my stats very well I might lose a fraction of a second glancing down at the sheet.

It definitely makes book keeping simpler, but that's not necessarily a good thing if it causes a system where you have to divide someone's skillset out through GM Fiat of "I'm sorry, you can't use every weapon on the planet at olympic levels just because you've trained really well in Tai Bo."

So I have to buy a "setting" book to get generic rules rather than a "campaign book. The reply is still no thanks.

Ah, then it must never matter, since it's never intruded into Cain's world. :)

What about the guy that wants to be able to defend himself well but would rather get his edges in his primary field? I guess that never intrudes on your world either.

How old do you think I am? You've made several comments about turning 16, but I assumed those were intended as insults not actual guesses about my age. I've mentioned my age here several times, and I can assure you it's old enough to have played Chainmail quite a bit more than "once at a con".

and some things do translate well, such as using a knife instead of a fist. there are issues with both systems at their extreme ends.

Yep. I'm not disagreeing with that. I'm not saying that SR's way is hyper realistic, or that SW's way is hyperunrealistic. I just think that SR's way is a better model to use.

Someone mentioned a skillweb and I agree that's really a good way to model it, but too complex for most purposes. Groupings of similar weapons (clubs, firearms, etc.) with an ability to default between them would be close enough to that if it was done well enough. It would still be really complex though, and I doubt most players want to go back t the old days of SR's skill web.

It seems like a better solution would be to use a skill break down like SR, but within a skill group, all related skills have a rating based on some portion of the highest skill. So if you have Shotguns 6, you have pistols, SMGs, rifles and assault rifles at 2 (1/3 of the highest skill) by default. Raising SMGs to 4 has no effect on the others because then we're making loopholes that will be massively abused. Specializations have no effects and the defaulting to a skill rules are ignored.

Thoughts?

That could work.

I agree that perfect realism would require a hideously complex system. Within limits, I don't think variations in the length of the list of skills (such as going from Pistols/Machine Pistols/SMGs/ARs/Rifles/Shotguns to Small Arms or vice versa) has much anything to do with realism, although changing the way the different skills relate to each other can (e.g. no grouping vs. skillweb).

That doesn't seem like a bad idea at all. 1/3 the highest skill would be quite low, however, at least when dealing with a group as large as the SR3 firearms skills -- I'd rather make that work at a rate of 2/3. For example, if you have mastered the use of assault rifles, I think it's more likely you would be skilled with rifles, shotguns and SMGs as well rather than having some practice with them (borrowing descriptions from SR3, pp. 98-99). Depends on exactly what kind of skill groups you have in your game, of course.

I chose 1/3 also out of mechanics considerations, and to deal with the wide list of skill groups we're talking about. To borrow from SR4, shadowing doesn't lend much to palming, but the basic ideas of misdirection, using cover, etc. still apply. The second problem is that it throws a wrench into chargen. Certainly if every three skill points spend award about 4 points for free (in the case of firearms, using 1/3 rate), 50 skill points becomes absolutely ridiculous. If 3 spent rewards the PC with 8 points for free, I don't think you even COULD spend 50 points, and in fact the focus on skills will be greatly shifted (maybe skills should be made more expensive? Of course, the skillpoints at the beginning should be far more limited). 1/3 just keeps things a little less crazy without making the math too painful.

The skill groups for SR4 or the defaulting groupings from SR3 would work well to determine actual groups of skills. Some skills would be noted as unlinked for whatever reason. Alternatively, you could bring back the skillweb from SR2. One jump away means a bonus of 1/3 the skill of the dominant skill. Two jumps is 1/6. So on and so forth.

If anyone has ideas on how to actually change chargen to keep things balanced, I'll give this a try in my game and see what people think.

Well, damn, I have to be some sort of natural born gunslinger, then, because after years of shooting nothing but air and .22 target rifles, I was actually able to put most of my shots into the target the first time I picked up a pistol. And so could most of the other people I went shooting with that time, and some of them were girls. ;)

Guess you just suck. :P

That's the problem right there, then. I was talking about a different list. :)

In SR3 canon, you've only really got 3 serious skill groups: melee weapons (edged, clubs, polearms), small arms (pistols, SMGs, shotguns, rifles, ARs) and aircraft (winged, rotor, vectored thrust, lighter-than-air). Then there're the 4 pairs (cyberimplant/unarmed, gunnery/launch weapons, computer/electronics, motorboat/ship). Nothing else would gain from such a rule.

Since SR4 includes a system of purchasing whole skill groups as well as individual skills, it's got plenty more groups. I haven't studied the SR4 skills at any length, so I can't really comment on what highest skill/group rate fits them best.

Apart from 1 person (who was an utter moron), my whole MP platoon hit a 50cm diameter target at 25 meters with nearly all shots the first time they ever fired a pistol (beaten up >25-year-old Browning HPs). The more probable explanation is indeed that Frag-o Delux simply sucks. :)

Did you ever give them blowguns and hand-held bola catapults? ;)

No. I do not consider exotic (read: stupid ass) ranged weapons in the same skill group as most small arms. They did well with Mossberg 12G pumps, KK62 LMGs and NsV 12.7mm HMGs, however.

(And to be clear: "my platoon" as in "I was in it", not one I trained or led or anything.)

This post has been edited by Austere Emancipator: Jun 28 2006, 04:14 PM