[UA] (no subject)

[David M Jacobs]

At 03:18 AM 5/03/02 -0800, Brian Covey wrote:

>Seems like one benefit of the current system is that it doesn't encourage 
>the proliferation of a whole bunch of low-level skills the way a "cheap at 
>low levels, expensive at the high end" system would. What are the others?

That's not necessarily a Bad Thing.

My science teacher in high school once said, "specialise and die".  My 
players tend to overspecialise their PCs, particularly with regard to 
combat-related skills.  It doesn't matter that most encounters can be 
resolved through peaceful means; they insist on packing metal.

In CoC, in particular, this can be a problem.  Even when they got into an 
unnecessary standoff with a frightened sorcerer and his goons (and the 
sorcerer and friends thwapped the PCs with Call Ithaqua), they saw it as a 
failure of firepower, rather than attitude.

Once, they even managed to drop a hovering shantak with automatic fire... 
too bad it was hovering above them (scratch off two PCs).  Admittedly, I 
haven't thrown a shoggoth at them yet, but even then, two PCs with 
automatic weapons will polish off a shoggoth in two rounds!  (Ithaqua 
squashed 'em like bugs, though.)

With all of their skill points packed into firearms skills, they have 
little left over to cover the investigative skills that form the core of 
the game.  As a consequence, they often fail to find clues that either act 
as a shortcut or are even essential to solve the problem of the 
week.  They're forced to use muscle to solve problems, and the body count 
is unusually high for a CoC campaign (both in terms of PCs and NPCs).

In Vampire, they take a similar tack, but tend to pump a fair amount of 
their experience into Obfuscate, because they acknowledge that they're dead 
meat in a fight against something really big (which, IMO, should be more 
the case in CoC).  Still, they wonder why everyone hates the PCs (hint: 
Charisma 2/Etiquette 0, +1 difficulty for lacking appropriate Skill).  *sigh*

These are two systems wherein spending for starting skills progresses 
arithmetically (i.e., the ratio of points spent to resulting score remains 
constant).  On the other hand, in Dream Pod 9's Silhouette games, the 
number of points spent on skills is equal to the square of the skill's 
value (i.e., the progression is geometric).

Combined with Sil's rules on fumbles (BOHICAs in UA terms), in which an 
unskilled schmuck will fumble one time in six, a successful character tends 
to have a fairly broad range of skills at low-medium rating, and a couple 
with high ratings; only long-lasting characters tend to have skills at 
ludicrous levels, and even then, only once the basics are 
covered.  Otherwise, they simply don't survive very long, and combat 
monster PCs aren't quite as common as in other systems.

Of course, it all depends on campaign and player style.  Nonetheless, 
characters with a broad range of skills will tend to be more successful 
than those that overspecialise.



David M Jacobs
dmjacobs at zipworld.com.au
http://www.zipworld.com.au/~dmjacobs/
ICQ UIN: 17027598

"'Kevin,' David interrupted, 'what the Germans should have done
was show the Russians a dead cat and ask them to explain it.'

"'That would have stopped the Soviet offensive right there,' I said.
"Zhukov would still be trying to account for the cat's death.'"

— from Valis, by Philip K Dick
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