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> skill grouping, another thread
Frag-o Delux
post Jun 29 2006, 03:18 AM
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LOL I was only making a point at how SR skills are divided. I know a carbine isnt all that different then SMGs or ARs. A carbine was at first just a short rifle for cavalry. Now its just a short version of the AR for special forces basically. Which a SMG is also. I didnt divide the skills up. And this is just beating a dead horse, which is again happens here. Im done.
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mfb
post Jun 29 2006, 04:50 AM
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QUOTE (Shrike30)
I don't understand what's so hard about saying that if your skills wash over into nearby areas, you should represent that by having a point or two of skill in that area.

because a) nobody in any reasonable game is going to have enough build points and/or karma to realistically represent the bleedover, and b) that doesn't really address the fact that you can't be skilled in some areas without also being skilled in others.
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Shrike30
post Jun 29 2006, 08:41 PM
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With all honesty, most of the skills in SR that "bleed over" (like Intimidation might bleed over into Negotiation, or Computers might bleed over into Vehicle B/R) would do so if the GM were to decide to have things like Negotiation actually be a chain of about 20 rolls involving the various skills that are implemented in the process of a discussion. I think the most times I've ever seen a roll involved in a single negotiation has been 4 times, 2 Negotiation, 1 Con, and 1 Intimidation. Applying the system in such a way that it accurately reflects this bleedover is a pain in the ass. Honestly, if a player asked to use his Intimidation or somesuch as a complimentary skill to his Negotiation, I'd be happy to let him, and change the nature of the interaction accordingly.

Things like shooting, on the other hand, are very precisely broken down into single-step processes. There's no "well, we really should have rolled Negotiation 8 times, Con 2-3 times, and Intimidation at that one point when Torg leaned against the window and grinned at the Johnson"... combat has been broken down into single bullet increments.

Yes, some skills carry over when you train in firearms. Proper trigger technique, getting a good sight picture, understanding deflection shooting... these are things that carry over between different weapon types.

And then there are the things that really do not carry over. Firing a handgun/machine pistol/pistol-type SMG is unlike firing pretty much any other type of weapon because your weapon is at arm's length, not being fired from the shoulder. Shotguns firing shot behave differently from most any other kind of firearm you're going to use. Simply because of what they're built to do, there are techniques for employing machineguns that do not exist for SMGs and ARs, and a skilled user of the lighter weapons will find he's got some advantage over an untrained shooter handed a machinegun... but that his advantage disappears fairly quickly if the untrained shooter is trained on the MG for a while, and the light automatics shooter isn't re-exposed to it until their next competition.

When you start talking (in SR4 scales) about representing weapon skills beyond 2 or so (that is, you begin to approach the "trained to a professional level, but not a veteran" level of skill), practice and familiarity with that particular class of weapon (if not that exact make an model) is what lets you actually perform with it in a stress environment, with people shooting back at you, without those little half-second hesitations and misses all over the place that get you killed.

The flaw in character generation of it being cost-inefficient to adequately represent crossover knowledge is just that... a flaw in character generation, not the actual game system. The game system that is used in play demonstrates crossover knowledge just fine, when it's running a character whose skills are adequately represented.
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mfb
post Jun 29 2006, 11:16 PM
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QUOTE (Shrike30)
And then there are the things that really do not carry over. Firing a handgun/machine pistol/pistol-type SMG is unlike firing pretty much any other type of weapon because your weapon is at arm's length, not being fired from the shoulder. Shotguns firing shot behave differently from most any other kind of firearm you're going to use. Simply because of what they're built to do, there are techniques for employing machineguns that do not exist for SMGs and ARs, and a skilled user of the lighter weapons will find he's got some advantage over an untrained shooter handed a machinegun... but that his advantage disappears fairly quickly if the untrained shooter is trained on the MG for a while, and the light automatics shooter isn't re-exposed to it until their next competition.

this entire paragraph is, in the experience of myself and every person whose ability with firearms i respect, almost completely incorrect. a good shot with a rifle is a good shot with a pistol is a good shot with a machine gun. i, myself, was able to score pretty damn well the first time i fired my M-249 (a light machinegun), because the principles hammered into me when i was learning to fire the M-16 applied directly to this new task. nor was i unique--everyone i went to the M-249 range approximated the shooting scores they achieved with their M-16s.

the only real caveat is that a person who starts out shooting shotguns often has a hard time picking up rifles. this isn't because they're different skills so much as it is that a person can be a "good" shot with a shotgun (ie, they can bring their targets down) while using crappy firearms technique. shotgun spread makes up for poor sight picture, improper breath control, yanking the trigger, and all manner of other sins. a person who has a hard time moving to rifles after learning shotguns is having problems because he is a bad shooter, as evidenced by the fact that people who start out on rifles can become fine shotgunners.
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Cain
post Jun 30 2006, 05:58 AM
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QUOTE
But if you want a system where weapons can do what they're designed to do (entangle to use your example) you need exceptions. If someone in a unified system is capable of grapplign via whatever method, you'll need grappling rules. That doesn't change based on the number of subgroups of combat skills.

Not really. Savage World, for example, handles this all through the use of Tricks. Instead of coming up with a special case for each and every item, a ruleset can instead assign a general set of bonuses. This leads to faster and smoother gameplay.
QUOTE
The entire UFC also operates under quite a few rules that don't happen in an actual fight. I'm by no means saying that someone trained in boxing since birth (d10+2) should be world class with fencing (d10), but Savage Worlds rules do.

Incorrect. If you've trained in boxing since birth, but somehow have managed to avoid training in any other combat form whatsoever, your overall skill is going to be d6 or so, with an Edge in boxing.

Once again, you're stuck in the concept that fanatically studying one style, to the exclusion of all others, will make you into a good fighter. That is not the case, and there's a lot of real-world fighters who prove it.
QUOTE
Including weapons that don't act like firearms and you've never even heard of.

If you've "never heard of them", you have no call in buying the skill that high in the first place. You're better off buying edges.
QUOTE
Close. It's impossible to start with someone noticably above average in all firearms, but you can certainly get them there with karma.

True as far as it goes, but you still can't go super high. It costs so much to increase a group, your overall advancement is going to be slower. Additionally, you're effectively banned from buying Aptitude until you break the skill group, and you still can't buy specializations until you've broken the group. Under SR4, it's impossible to have as high a dice pool with skill groups as you can get by buying them separately.

The concept is nice, but the way it works out is poor. The sheer fact that raising a skill group costs so much karma is balance enough; there's no need for additional artifical arbitrary capping on them.
QUOTE
Character sheets are abstractions of something that theoretically exists. If your character's familiarity with rifles allows him to shoot handguns alright, then give him a low pistol skill and a decent rifle skill to reflect that. On the other hand, if you're one of those people who can shoot rifles fine but can't hit a damn thing with a handgun because of how they handle, how they fit, how they recoil, and how short the sight radius is, you could easily have a rifle skill and shoot pistols based solely on Agility-1.

The first problem with this is the fact that you have to pay for that low skill. In a more realistic model, that proficiency comes for free. The second problem is that under the SR4/NWOD mdoel, skill is almost totally nerfed by attributes. If your Quickness is high enough, you don't ever need the skill at all; you can have a world-calss firearms instructor, at skill 6 and quickness 3, who's outclassed by a barely-competent elf with Quickness 10 and skill 1.

If you want to model this under SR3, you can buy an Incompetence in pistols; this shows that you've never got the hang of them, but have a good skill with rifles.
QUOTE
I do agree there is a limited cross training factor to consider with like weapons. But only at the rudimentory level. Sure most martial art are close in formand movement, but a guy with 20 yellow belts will still not be a competition for a guy with 1 or 2 black belts.

This is not the case. In many cases, I'd place my money on the guy with 20 yellow belts, although I do admit it would depend. Someone with a black belt in American sport Tae Kwon Do and tournament karate would get massacred by someone with beginner rankings in 20 street-combat arts. With such a variety of arts, the yellow belt guy has a much higher chance of learning how to counter many different styles.

Also, you have to realize that in every art I'm aware of, you learn about 90% of what it has to offer by the time you finish the beginner belts. From there onward, you're just learning refinements and strategy. Much of what was once considered to be "secret techniques", reserved for advanced-level students, really only amounts to what we'd call "applications" nowadays. Upper-level training really only involves putting the basic techniques together into a coherent style. Our monostylist has learned to understand 100% of one style. Our well-rounded beginner has learned 90% of 20 different styles, and may or may not have integrated them into a unique style all his own. That "may or may not" is why there's room to question the results of a fight, but the yellow belt is still better off.

And if you need proof, think of this: Bruce Lee only ever had a high ranking in one style, Wing Chun. And for that matter, there's an ongoing controversy as to exactly how much he knew; it's pretty clear that he didn't have a sifu certification, which is the equivalent of a black belt. He had only the equivalent of a yellow belt in most every other art he studied. And yet, Bruce Lee was probably the best fighter of his era, and has left a legacy on the entire practice of modern martial arts. "20 yellow belts" describes Bruce a lot better than "One or two black belts"; who would *you* want to put your money on?
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Kagetenshi
post Jun 30 2006, 06:04 AM
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QUOTE (Cain)
Once again, you're stuck in the concept that fanatically studying one style, to the exclusion of all others, will make you into a good fighter. That is not the case, and there's a lot of real-world fighters who prove it.

There is not a single real-world fighter that proves it. There are a number of real-world fighters who study a number of styles, and a number who study just one style, and there is a tendency for the former to overpower the latter in direct combat, but such things do not "proof" make.

~J, more pedantic than usual
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mfb
post Jun 30 2006, 06:09 AM
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the tendency is strong enough that i think it's pretty accurate to represent it that way in game mechanics. we don't need to know why things are the way they are, in order to model them accurately, we just need to know what the results are. that tendency could have arisen because magical invisible pixies think that multiple disciplines are sexy, and therefore shoot tiny painless invisible pixie arrows at single-discipline fighters. it wouldn't matter--all that would matter is that the game mechanics model the tendency for multi-discipline fighters to win more often.
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hyzmarca
post Jun 30 2006, 07:52 AM
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QUOTE (Kagetenshi @ Jun 30 2006, 01:04 AM)
QUOTE (Cain @ Jun 30 2006, 12:58 AM)
Once again, you're stuck in the concept that fanatically studying one style, to the exclusion of all others, will make you into a good fighter.  That is not the case, and there's a lot of real-world fighters who prove it.

There is not a single real-world fighter that proves it. There are a number of real-world fighters who study a number of styles, and a number who study just one style, and there is a tendency for the former to overpower the latter in direct combat, but such things do not "proof" make.

~J, more pedantic than usual

There is a statistically significant correlation between poly-discipline training and victory in unarmed combat. Is that accurate enough for you, definition Nazi?
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mfb
post Jun 30 2006, 07:57 AM
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he dissects words AND KILLED SIX MILLION JEWS
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SL James
post Jun 30 2006, 08:06 AM
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Zionist lapdog.
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James McMurray
post Jun 30 2006, 03:00 PM
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QUOTE
Not really. Savage World, for example, handles this all through the use of Tricks. Instead of coming up with a special case for each and every item, a ruleset can instead assign a general set of bonuses. This leads to faster and smoother gameplay.


How does grapplling with a lasso work?

QUOTE
Incorrect. If you've trained in boxing since birth, but somehow have managed to avoid training in any other combat form whatsoever, your overall skill is going to be d6 or so, with an Edge in boxing.


Which is it? First you said that olympic level abilities are 1d8. Then you said that training all your life in boxing is d6. do you have to train more than all your life to reach Olympic levels in boxing? Or perhaps you have to train with a few melee weapons to get to olympic levels in boxing?

QUOTE
If you've "never heard of them", you have no call in buying the skill that high in the first place. You're better off buying edges.


so which is it that enforces that limit, GM Fiat or Player Restraint? Either way it's a flaw in the rules IMO.

QUOTE
True as far as it goes, but you still can't go super high. It costs so much to increase a group, your overall advancement is going to be slower. Additionally, you're effectively banned from buying Aptitude until you break the skill group, and you still can't buy specializations until you've broken the group. Under SR4, it's impossible to have as high a dice pool with skill groups as you can get by buying them separately.


So what you're saying is that someone who specializes on a single weapon is going to be better than someone that practices every weapon in that similar category, but only with their weapon of choice. Sounds about right to me.

QUOTE
there's no need for additional artifical arbitrary capping on them.


Skill caps IMO work well. They're certainly not broken or even bent, and they're the easiest thing to house rule if you want to remove them.

QUOTE
If your Quickness is high enough, you don't ever need the skill at all; you can have a world-calss firearms instructor, at skill 6 and quickness 3, who's outclassed by a barely-competent elf with Quickness 10 and skill 1.


What is this quickness of which you speak? :)

That elf has an agility of super(meta)human proportions. It makes sense to me that he's going to be astounding with anything involving agility. YMMV

QUOTE
If you want to model this under SR3, you can buy an Incompetence in pistols; this shows that you've never got the hang of them, but have a good skill with rifles.


I could be mistaken, but Incompetence also exists in SR4.

QUOTE
There is a statistically significant correlation between poly-discipline training and victory in unarmed combat. Is that accurate enough for you, definition Nazi?


Sorry hyz. You lose the thread.
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Kagetenshi
post Jun 30 2006, 04:26 PM
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QUOTE (mfb)
he dissects words AND KILLED SIX MILLION JEWS

C'mon, I also killed about five million other people. Why do people only remember the Jews?

QUOTE
Skill caps IMO work well.

Care to explain? Extraordinary claims and all that.

~J
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mfb
post Jun 30 2006, 05:32 PM
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QUOTE (James McMurray)
Which is it? First you said that olympic level abilities are 1d8. Then you said that training all your life in boxing is d6. do you have to train more than all your life to reach Olympic levels in boxing? Or perhaps you have to train with a few melee weapons to get to olympic levels in boxing? ...so which is it that enforces that limit, GM Fiat or Player Restraint? Either way it's a flaw in the rules IMO.

neither. unless i'm mistaken, it's cheaper to buy, say, a d6 skill and a +2 edge to a single application of that skill than it is to buy a d8 skill. other, less... dedicated fighters go straight for the d8 skill because they want the advantages that come with it. for those advantages, they pay extra.
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Kagetenshi
post Jun 30 2006, 05:41 PM
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Edges cost one entire improvement. Skills cost one improvement for two skills that are above 0 and below the linked attribute, or one improvement for one skill point in a new skill or a skill higher than the linked attribute.

Assuming whatever the skill is started at d6, buying to d8 will cost at most the same as the edge, and possibly half that.

~J
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mfb
post Jun 30 2006, 05:43 PM
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whoops. consider me mistaken. see, this is why you should forget that Savage Worlds crap, and just play Deadlands. it's so horribly complex, you can't tell if it's broken!

regardless, this just goes back to my original statement on grouped skill systems versus discrete skill systems: grouped systems exaggerate the fact that lots of skills have a common basis, and discrete systems exaggerate the differences between skills. the fact that a boxer-only d8 is good with swords is an exaggeration--just as the fact that a kung fu master turns into a clumsy retard when he picks up a knife is an exaggeration.
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Shrike30
post Jun 30 2006, 08:15 PM
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QUOTE (mfb @ Jun 29 2006, 04:16 PM)
this entire paragraph is, in the experience of myself and every person whose ability with firearms i respect, almost completely incorrect. a good shot with a rifle is a good shot with a pistol is a good shot with a machine gun. i, myself, was able to score pretty damn well the first time i fired my M-249 (a light machinegun), because the principles hammered into me when i was learning to fire the M-16 applied directly to this new task. nor was i unique--everyone i went to the M-249 range approximated the shooting scores they achieved with their M-16s.

I'm sorry, what I was trying to say may not have come across clearly.

Sitting at the target range, bench rest or offhand, and plinking away at a target is something that's hard for anyone to screw up if they can shoot. What you're talking about carrying over from the M16 to the M249 are the same things I'm talking about carrying over: how to pull a trigger, how to breathe, how to sight properly. These are the things that carry over quite easily, as every type of firearm out there uses these skills. You could duplicate this effect in SR4 by having defaulting pay a little more attention to skills in the group... ignoring the -1 to the Attribute if you've got a skill in the group, and/or giving a +1 if you've got a skill in the group at 3 or higher. Something like that.

Having actual skill with a weapon type (in SR or RL) represent having spent time using that weapon in it's intended role.

Take someone who's fired bench-rest .22 target rifles, hand him an M-249 SAW, and toss him into a firefight, where he's got no skill at things like handling recoil from an automatic weapon, how to fire an 18 pound automatic from the shoulder while moving, proper techniques for suppressive fire, and avoiding the classic new gunner problem of clenching your hands to hold onto the recoiling automatic (thus continuing to hold down the trigger), and his skills with the .22 aren't going to do him a lot of good.

Take someone who's only been trained on long guns like the M16 and the M249, and give them a Glock, you're going to see similar issues. Muzzle flip is practically nonexistent on an assault rifle... not so much with a handgun. The center of gravity of the pistol appreciably changes as you run through the magazine. The ranges at which you can effectively put the front sight over the target and squeeze the trigger (do they still train that as "front sight press"?) are drastically reduced because of the shorter sight radius... the shooter's training and familiarity with the long gun is not helping him in this case. In a controlled environment, he'd be able to apply those skills he already knew from the other weapon, because they're basic to any shooting. The minute he's into a serious firefight, that extra fraction of a second to get the sights back on target, that extra care he's got to take pulling the trigger because it affects handguns a lot more than rifles when you jerk them... it's unfamiliar territory. His basic shooting skills should carry over, but actually getting his skills up into the ranges where most of the kinds of characters we care about have them requires more than a passing familiarity with those firearms.

My impression from what you posted is that you'd been firing the M16 for a while before you tried out the M249. If the first time you'd ever seen an M249 had been when you were offered a hypothetical choice of carrying it (a brand new weapon to you) or your M16 (a weapon you'd trained with to the point where you at least had the basics of shooting down pretty well), would you have picked the arguably more powerful M249, or stayed with the weapon you had skill with? That's all I meant to get at with my post. I did not mean to imply that the basics of accurate shooting had no cross-platform usage, just that there's a lot of skills unique to each platform that you aren't going to get from shooting something else.
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mfb
post Jun 30 2006, 08:30 PM
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i'd have chosen the M-16 even after spending time on the M-249, because i'm a lazy bastard and the 249 is heavy.

what you say is correct--an unfamiliar weapon is, well, unfamiliar, and that can be a problem. however, i don't feel that making it harder to hit targets with an unfamiliar weapon is an accurate representation of how unfamiliarity affects you. offhand, i'd say that maybe reducing combat pool would make more sense, but that's partly because combat pool is a nebulous concept to begin with.
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James McMurray
post Jun 30 2006, 10:48 PM
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QUOTE
neither. unless i'm mistaken, it's cheaper to buy, say, a d6 skill and a +2 edge to a single application of that skill than it is to buy a d8 skill. other, less... dedicated fighters go straight for the d8 skill because they want the advantages that come with it. for those advantages, they pay extra.


That makes perfect sense, but Cain said that Olympic level was 1d8, not 1d6+2. A guy that's d6+2 is going to tear the floor up with someone that's straight d6 in a TN4 system. It would also mimic reality better.

I assume, given his quote, that most olympic athletes would be d8+2, the base level of olympic caliber plus the edges. Perhaps someone with the book can say whether Cain's statement about what the book considers Olympic caliber was true or not?
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mfb
post Jun 30 2006, 11:20 PM
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*shrug* see above. it's a given, to me, that a grouped skill system is going to make characters competent in areas they've never specifically trained in or had direct experience in.
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SL James
post Jul 1 2006, 12:36 AM
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QUOTE (Kagetenshi)
QUOTE (mfb @ Jun 30 2006, 02:57 AM)
he dissects words AND KILLED SIX MILLION JEWS

C'mon, I also killed about five million other people. Why do people only remember the Jews?

liberal Jew-run media.
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Cain
post Jul 2 2006, 08:56 AM
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QUOTE
There is not a single real-world fighter that proves it. There are a number of real-world fighters who study a number of styles, and a number who study just one style, and there is a tendency for the former to overpower the latter in direct combat, but such things do not "proof" make.

One is never proof, but large numbers do become proof. Once you've repeated an experiment enough times, you can call your results "conclusive proof".
QUOTE
How does grapplling with a lasso work?

You mean, using a lasso or grappling or other Fighting move as a Trick? Let's pretend you're using a flail: you tell the GM that you're going to entangle the other guy's weapon, then you roll an Agility Trick. If you win, your next attack against the guy will have a +2; if you win with a Raise, he's Shaken as well. So, in-game, you've lassoed his weapon and yanked it so far out of line, it's useless for a while. If you got a Raise, you also pulled him out of position, forcing him to stutter-step and leaving him struggling to remain upright.

You can do the same thing with any other weapon. If you want to pull off an Agility trick with a rapier, for example, you might describe it as slicing his forehead open and letting the blood pour into his eyes. On a success, he drops his guard; on a raise, he completely loses sight of you and flails blindly. You might reflect the sunlight into his eyes, pull off the classic of throwing dirt into his face, use a super-secret martial arts nerve strike, and so on and so forth. You just pick the appropriate description; the mechanics are all the same. This is how a truly unified system handles things.

QUOTE
Which is it? First you said that olympic level abilities are 1d8. Then you said that training all your life in boxing is d6. do you have to train more than all your life to reach Olympic levels in boxing? Or perhaps you have to train with a few melee weapons to get to olympic levels in boxing?

"Olympic level" skills do not necessarily translate into real-world ability. I've ripped apart national-level tournament fighters in full contact sparring, and I don't even have a single trophy. If all you have is boxing, then you don't have Fighting at d8; you've got Knowledge: Boxing at d8.
QUOTE
so which is it that enforces that limit, GM Fiat or Player Restraint?

Neither. GM and player intelligence does it. In Shadowrun, you can't have a character who's got Pistols 6 and has somehow never even heard of a revolver before. Same idea, just broader categories.
QUOTE

So what you're saying is that someone who specializes on a single weapon is going to be better than someone that practices every weapon in that similar category, but only with their weapon of choice.....
Skill caps IMO work well.

No, what I'm saying is that no matter how hard you try, you can't have equalized high-end skills. If you're one of the best in the world with your trademark pistol, you're not going to be totally incompetent with every other pistol, let alone all firearms. Skill caps work poorly at best, but skill group caps are what really make skill groups worthless; you can't buy a skill group aptitude.
QUOTE
I could be mistaken, but Incompetence also exists in SR4.

Yeah, and it's totally unworkable in this model. In Sr3, it represented additional difficulty you'd have in using a pistol: no matter what, you simply could not ever be as good with pistols. In SR4, you're magically incapable of pulling the trigger on a pistol, even if you're a living god with machine pistols and SMG's. There's no "increased difficulty" mechanic in SR4, it's an all-or-nothing tradeoff.
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Take someone who's fired bench-rest .22 target rifles, hand him an M-249 SAW, and toss him into a firefight, where he's got no skill at things like handling recoil from an automatic weapon, how to fire an 18 pound automatic from the shoulder while moving, proper techniques for suppressive fire, and avoiding the classic new gunner problem of clenching your hands to hold onto the recoiling automatic (thus continuing to hold down the trigger), and his skills with the .22 aren't going to do him a lot of good.

The same thing would happen if you tossed him into a firefight with a 22LR. In all honesty, the skills required to make it through a live combat are noticeably different than the ones you need to score points in a competition, or hit target rings on a paper target. This is why James' "olympic level boxer" gets creamed by inexperienced street fighters who've never stepped into a competition ring; real combat is always a better teacher than simulated combat.
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I assume, given his quote, that most olympic athletes would be d8+2, the base level of olympic caliber plus the edges. Perhaps someone with the book can say whether Cain's statement about what the book considers Olympic caliber was true or not?

It's not that specific, but it can be assumed based off of certain calculations. For example, your Swimming Pace equals 1/2 your skill. At a d8, that gives you 4 inches of movement per round, which translates into 8 meters; at 10 rounds per minute, that's 80 meters. The Olympic swimming records for the various 100m styles are all around 1 minute, so the average Olympic athlete will have a skill of about d8+2 or so; Olympic champions and record-holders will be at about a d10.
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James McMurray
post Jul 2 2006, 11:54 PM
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QUOTE
You mean, using a lasso or grappling or other Fighting move as a Trick? Let's pretend you're using a flail: you tell the GM that you're going to entangle the other guy's weapon, then you roll an Agility Trick. If you win, your next attack against the guy will have a +2; if you win with a Raise, he's Shaken as well. So, in-game, you've lassoed his weapon and yanked it so far out of line, it's useless for a while. If you got a Raise, you also pulled him out of position, forcing him to stutter-step and leaving him struggling to remain upright.


Ummm... What makes you think my question about using a lasso can be answered with a flail example? I guess "grappling with a lasso" was too generic for you? I'll clarify: how does one go about roping someone with a lasso, involving tossing the lasso onto them, and drawing it tight, preferably with the target's limb(s) entangled?


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"Olympic level" skills do not necessarily translate into real-world ability.


Doesn't answer the issue. You yourself said that olympic level was d8. Are you now saying that it is not?

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Neither. GM and player intelligence does it.


That's not "neither" it's "a combination fo both." Of course, when others say their games use a combination of both to fix problems you call it being a nazi GM. LOL

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Yeah, and it's totally unworkable in this model. In Sr3, it represented additional difficulty you'd have in using a pistol: no matter what, you simply could not ever be as good with pistols. In SR4, you're magically incapable of pulling the trigger on a pistol, even if you're a living god with machine pistols and SMG's. There's no "increased difficulty" mechanic in SR4, it's an all-or-nothing tradeoff.


Not true. You can become good with that pistol. You can even become world class. But first you'll have to buy off your incompetence. The "increased difficulty" comes from having to spend 10 karma to start learning the skill. Someone without incompetence could put those ten karma towards the skill itself.

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This is why James' "olympic level boxer" gets creamed by inexperienced street fighters who've never stepped into a competition ring; real combat is always a better teacher than simulated combat.


I'm not talking about olympic level boxers in fights against world class MMA people. But as usual, you like to twist a discussion to a point where you feel confident in arguing it rather than actually respond to the post. What I said was that someone with Olympic level boxing skills (d8) will also have olympic level skills in all other forms of combat without some sort of GM Fiat or player self-limitations.

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It's not that specific, but it can be assumed based off of certain calculations.


You said d8. People aren't usually that specific without a rule behind it. Does it or does it not specifcy soemwhere what each die level equates to: d4 - average, d6 - trained, d8 - olympic, etc.?

And I'll repeat my Savage Worlds cChallenge. Mail me a copy of the rules. I'll play it with my group. If we like it I'll pay you back double and buy every SW book out there. If I don't like it I'll mail it back to you.

Or do you not think your game is good enough?
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mfb
post Jul 3 2006, 03:20 AM
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speaking of twisting things towards your own ends, this thread is not about whether or not SW is a good game system. it is about whether or not grouped skill systems are viable as a realistic mechanic. mailing the rules to some random player, especially a player as predisposed to disliking it as you are, McMurray, is hardly a test of how 'good' the rules are.
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Cain
post Jul 3 2006, 08:18 AM
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QUOTE
What makes you think my question about using a lasso can be answered with a flail example? I guess "grappling with a lasso" was too generic for you? I'll clarify: how does one go about roping someone with a lasso, involving tossing the lasso onto them, and drawing it tight, preferably with the target's limb(s) entangled?

For the third time. Call for a Trick. On a success, he's distracted enough that he can't defend himself properly. On a Raise, he's Shaken; you represent this by leaving him helpless until he can manage to get loose. Just like I said in the last two posts. ;)
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That's not "neither" it's "a combination fo both."

It's neither. It's based on having a workable system.
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You can become good with that pistol. You can even become world class. But first you'll have to buy off your incompetence. The "increased difficulty" comes from having to spend 10 karma to start learning the skill. Someone without incompetence could put those ten karma towards the skill itself.

Assuming a SR4 elf with Quickness 10, he spends 10 karma, and immediately jumps from "incapable of pulling the trigger" to: "Better than trained marksmen". He hasn't even started learning the skill yet. This is still an "all-or-nothing" model.
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What I said was that someone with Olympic level boxing skills (d8) will also have olympic level skills in all other forms of combat without some sort of GM Fiat or player self-limitations.

Do you ever get tired of being wrong? If you only have a Boxing skill, you can't have a d8 in all other combat skills. You'd maybe have a Knowledge: Boxing skill at d8, but not Fighting. You could also have a Fighting skill with edges in Boxing, representing the fact that you actually know how to use Boxing in a real fight.

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And I'll repeat my Savage Worlds cChallenge. Mail me a copy of the rules. I'll play it with my group. If we like it I'll pay you back double and buy every SW book out there. If I don't like it I'll mail it back to you.

Sorry, but every hardcopy of Savage Worlds in my area has sold out, and my FLGS is backordered on it. But, instead, I'll make you an offer. Buy a copy of Savage Worlds, and do a Grubman challenge: play nothing but Savage Worlds for 101 days. If at the end of that, you don't agree that it's faster and smoother than any version of Shadowrun, I'll take Kremlin's joke out of my sig.

I think what you'll discover is this: less skill groupings makes for faster game play, and doesn't sacrifice realism to nearly the degree you seem to think it will. There's a lot of heavy detail in crunchy systems that aren't really necessary to have a fun and believeable game; they lend themselves to a certain style, but that style isn't necessarily more realistic. What ultimately matters is how well the game runs, how well the mechanic holds up under player stress, and how much fun you're having in the process. And when it comes to fun, less is more. 8)
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James McMurray
post Jul 3 2006, 02:27 PM
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QUOTE
mailing the rules to some random player, especially a player as predisposed to disliking it as you are, McMurray, is hardly a test of how 'good' the rules are.


I dislike the problems I see in the test drive rules. PEople have made some good points about unified skills systems here and I'm not downright opposed to the game. I would probably us GM and Player collusion to determine what sorts of weaponry a charater's Fightin / Shooting / Throwing skills represented, but I don't think I'm predisposed to disliking it, at least not the entire game. The only problem I have with the test drive rules is the overgeneralization of the combat skills. The rest of it looks to be fairly smooth.

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For the third time. Call for a Trick. On a success, he's distracted enough that he can't defend himself properly. On a Raise, he's Shaken; you represent this by leaving him helpless until he can manage to get loose. Just like I said in the last two posts.


Silly me. When you answered my specific question with a completely different specific example I just thought you were being stupid. :)

So you're saying there are no rules for grappling other than doing a trick with a possible raise?

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It's neither. It's based on having a workable system.


Call it what you like, but you've already said that the GM and player combine to determine what is appropriate for the character. You can ignore the fact that it is therefor a case of GM and player collusion if you want, but that doesn't make it go away.

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Assuming a SR4 elf with Quickness 10, he spends 10 karma, and immediately jumps from "incapable of pulling the trigger" to: "Better than trained marksmen". He hasn't even started learning the skill yet. This is still an "all-or-nothing" model.


So? He's got a higher agility than the vast majority of beings on the planet. It makes sense that he'll be great with agility based skills. He won't be better than the best of the best with those skills, because they'll have both high agility and high skill. He will be able to eventually join their ranks though, despite your assertion that "he is incapable of pulling the trigger."

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Do you ever get tired of being wrong? If you only have a Boxing skill, you can't have a d8 in all other combat skills. You'd maybe have a Knowledge: Boxing skill at d8, but not Fighting. You could also have a Fighting skill with edges in Boxing, representing the fact that you actually know how to use Boxing in a real fight.


So you can beat people up with knowledge skills? LOL

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If at the end of that, you don't agree that it's faster and smoother than any version of Shadowrun, I'll take Kremlin's joke out of my sig.


I'm not disagreeing that it's faster than SR4. I never have. The system rolls a single die against what is normally a TN of 4. By virtue of that alone it'll be faster. I'm assuming there are die roll modifers and/or TN modifiers that will slow it down somewhat, but if there aren't as many of them as there are in SR then it'll still remain faster and smoother. My point has never been that it isn't smooth.

Smoothness and speed only goes so far in a game. WoD LARP with it's rock papers scissors is incredibly fast and smooth. That doesn't make it a great system.

And besides, why would I care about your sig? My response to his original post was that if it kept him out of my game I was happy to do it. It being there is just a constant reminder to me to never have Luke shoot at the Death Star if I run Star Wars, because otherwise Kremlin KOA might magically appeear at my doorstep wanting to play. :D

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I think what you'll discover is this: less skill groupings makes for faster game play,


I think the reason the game runs faster is not because of the unified skills but because of the simplicity of the rules. As I said earlier, I've never had a problem with multiple skills slowing down a game. YMMV

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doesn't sacrifice realism to nearly the degree you seem to think it will.


Having discussed it with people on this thread I see now that it doesn't give up as much realism as I thought it would, but it still gives up more than I want it to.

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There's a lot of heavy detail in crunchy systems that aren't really necessary to have a fun and believeable game; they lend themselves to a certain style, but that style isn't necessarily more realistic.


Thank you for reiterating my earlier posts. :)

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What ultimately matters is how well the game runs, how well the mechanic holds up under player stress, and how much fun you're having in the process.


True.

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And when it comes to fun, less is more.


I don't think that is always the case. You are free to disagree, but you already knew that. :)
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