*shrugs* Picking up new skills in GURPS was always hideously expensive, and should be, because it is the difference between the autodidact learning on the fly and a youth intensively training, usually with a tutor. No, an active character will probably never be as good with a newly acquired skill as one that began with it, but in the real world a 40 year old who has never held a football will never be able to throw, catch or run with it as well as a 20 year old who has been playing since his Pop Warner days. By the time the older person has spent as much time on it as the younger one he will be pushing 60, and still not have invested that time when his brain was far more plastic and his muscles still growing into shape.

On the other hand, skills a character has at creation can be developed as much or as little as any other, though it does take longer because, once again, it is not being done intensively in a controlled environment with a tutor. One of the strengths of GURPS, IMHO, was that it discouraged over-specialization in anything except primary weapon skills (which I think we can agree characters in most campaigns will want to hone anyway.) I have made many (probably most) characters with dozens of skills, often investing a single point, or even half a point, because I knew I would need many of them, and spending even minimal points both avoided the costly penalty of having to use a default (which in a few cases, mostly technical skills, is not even an option) as well as allowing the opportunity to further improve them later. On the flip side, since defaults ARE available in most cases, skills seldom used could be safely ignored without making the character incompetent, particularly for characters with high scores in the DX and IQ on which all skills are based.


I was rather averse to White Wolf from its debut with the Storyteller system, which minimized dice to the point of being a "rules optional" system. It presaged modern message board "roleplaying" where characters can do anything moderators permit. That sounds nice until one recalls the prevalance of munchkins and realizes that the absence of rules and dice produces players stating their characters picked up a Chevy and hit an opponent with it, forcing the GM to say, "No, you cannot do that, because your character 1) is NOT in a supers campaign and 2) IS in 13th Century France." So, yeah, I do not expect much from White Wolf, but consequently do not consider their institutional failures an indictment of other systems that happen to share some common features.


The minimalist attributes in GURPS largely defeat that sort of thing; there is no such thing as a "dump stat," and even marginal attempts at finding them have hazardous consequences. All skills are based off IQ or DX, so characters need high scores in both, though fighters can get by with relatively low IQs (thieves cannot, because things like appraisal, streetwise and trap detection are based on IQ.) However, one cannot shirk ST, because most weapon damage is based on it (it is a little more negotiable in high tech campaigns where weapons are more than just levers for the wielders strength.) The only other stat is HT—but that is a characters hit points, so skimping on it is a REALLY bad idea, especially since it does not go up with experience (unless, as with all attributes, one is willing to pay double price to raise it, but with only a few character points per campaign and attributes starting at 10 points, then climbing quickly, that is seldom feasible.) That is one of the many things I like about GURPS: No matter how long and successfully you a play a character, a .45 slug to the temple will kill him just as effectively as on the day you created him.

So most characters increase DX as much as possible, unless they are mages, in which case they increase IQ as much as possible because spells are Mental Hard, or in some cases Very Hard skills, and grimoires are built with prerequisites. Though there are a couple ways to get to Fireball, both require, IIRC, learning four spells first; fortunately Shape Fire and Create Fire have obvious utility in themselves. Few of any type of character will have a ST more than 2 points below normal, and HT even 1 point below normal is uncommon; 2 points is unheard of, for obvious reasons.

Fighters and thieves still cannot afford to be complete morons, because Survival, Streetwise, Fasttalk, Appraisal etc. all default to IQ, and Will/Fright checks use IQ. Mages cannot afford to be completely clumsy, both because a few critical skills (most notably Spell Throwing for missile spells and Flame Jet for spray spells) are DX based, as are all weapon skills (GURPS mages can be quite competent with weapons, though the need to build up spells limits the points available for other skills.)


I prefer skills and character points, but done right; I think GURPS, at least in 3rd edition, did a pretty good job (I have not tried and cannot vouch for 4th edition.)


You surely know AD&D 2nd ed. rules well enough to know what I mean:

A 10th level fighter has 10d10 HP, so even without a Con bonus he has about 55HP on average, 10 THAC0 and is AC 10 naked (assuming no Dex bonus.)

Kobolds are 0.5 HD creatures, so a dozen have about 20 HP total, 20 THAC0 and are AC 7 (I will be generous and give them studded leather.)

The fighter will be specced at LEAST once in bow, so he gets 5/2 at 10th level; he will drop half the kobolds in the first two rounds unless he rolls a 1 for damage (if he melees with his sword he will be sweeping them and it will be equally bad.) In that time they should hit him for about 10d6 worth of damage, leaving him with 20 HP facing 7 kobolds. He wastes a couple more and they hit him for 10 HP; then he wastes three more and the last 5 hit him for 3d6. That might be enough to finally kill him; if not, his two attacks the next round will finish off the last of them.

If a single stark naked 10th level fighter faces a dozen kobolds he has about a 50/50 shot of killing them all. An average fighter would be more than slightly wounded, but that also unrealistically assumes he has no Con or Dex bonus; if he has even a 16 or 17 in either the kobolds' plight is hopeless unless they get perfect roles.

In GURPS, the fighter probably has no more than 13 HT, MAYBE 15 if he sold out on and dumped a hideous amount of points into it over years of real time. It does not matter, because the puny kobolds will swarm and shred him in the first round regardless, as they should. No naked person wins a 12 on 1 melee with weapons.


I like AD&D 2nd ed. rules primarily for the nostalgia effect, and because I know them well enough to abuse the Hell out of them min/maxing characters (which I try to avoid in genuine roleplaying, but AD&D was always hack and slash, and so is PC gaming, so I play with that in mind.) I nothing about Diablo except that it is a computer game; like I say, I am not really much of a computer gamer. I mainly play games that I loved on tabletop (I downloaded a really nice online version of Axis & Allies a couple years ago) and Madden, though I suppose Civ I&II count as non-pen-and-paper inspired games if you believe Sid Meiers claims he never heard of the Avalon Hill game (which I do not.)