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Starshade
2009-05-14, 05:27 PM
Ive had a set of GURPS books sitting on my book shelf unused for a time now, and started looking at it again, and its something im not shure of. The cost of raising skills is found in a table in the skills section, and shows costs for raising skills in relation to its controlling attribute.
Do this mean, it dont cost anything to raise skills up to, say, 2-3 points under the atribute? Just the time? so a "clever" player could buy a ton of skills for free below the cost limit?

InaVegt
2009-05-14, 05:32 PM
1) No, you can't. You either have invested points or you're at the default.
2) GURPS is not designed for people who try such things, while it has made some effort to keep things roughly equal, real balance was never a design goal.

warmachine
2009-05-14, 06:51 PM
I presume you are referring to the Skill Cost Table in Basic Set Characters (B170). The dashes mean not applicable, not zero.

However, a similar trick is to buy IQ as high as possible and use skills at default. Buying IQ 17 [140] means most IQ-based skills default to 11 or 12. This would represent a super genius who's learned and understood so much from basic education that he's competant without effort. Whether this is allowed depends on the campaign genre and style and is determined by the GM, not the core rules. A super genius might merely be a handy supporting character in a kung fu campaign but a game breaker in a murder mystery.

As omniproficient polymaths are usually annoying concepts, limit IQ and devise Talents (B89) appropriate for the campaign. They encourage specialisation around team roles.

Halaster
2009-05-15, 01:07 AM
Generally, it is better to invest in DEX and IQ attributes when creating a character, than in skills. During the game you will get a few CP after every game. If you have high attributes, you can pick up skills at impressive levels rather quickly (1 or 2 points will often buy you a skill at DEX/IQ or DEX/IQ-1), while raising your attributes is going to take time (15 points for a 1-point increase.
Everybody with more than 5-10 skills on his character sheet should spend the majority of his creation CP on attributes. As a rule, creating a 100CP character (effectively 140 CP with disadvantages), I tend to spend between 60 and 90 points on attributes, and roughly 20 on skills, with the rest buying advantages.

All the above comments concern the 3rd edition, I haven't played 4th yet, but it doesn't look so different in that regard.