Skills levels of starting player characters

[Ssendam]

Greetings one and all ...

Just a question to canvas a few opinions ...

If I roll up a new player character and looking at their stats see a person who is more of a strongarm than a thinker, then it's not too hard to get a weapon skill of 70%+. Admitedly you would have to stick 30 of your 100 free points into the weapon skill but it's not a big sacrifice.

To me this seems a bit over powered for a starting PC. Do your players roll up like this? Do you restrict the maximum free points to put on a skill from 30 to say 20? Is this sort of level right for a strongarm starting character?

Stay Frosty

 

[Swampy]

Whilst your character will have a great combat skill in their favoured weapon, other skills will suffer. Your character will have the best weapon skill in the group, but you run the risk of being a one trick pony.

 

[DigitalMage]

Also remember that armour penalties reduce the Weapon Skill, so although a character may have 70% in 1H Sword, if they are wearing a chainmail shirt, they suffer a -20% penalty and thus only have an effective skill of 50%.

 

[Utgardloki]

It looks to me like PCs should do the following when making a character:

1. Maximize Dodge. This should be priority number 1.

2. Pick another skill to maximise. This should be a combat skill for a combatant, a runecasting skill for a runecaster, a lore skill for a sage type, etc.

3. Divide the other skills according to priorities.

 

[IndicusSativas]

If you are using Pete Nash's combat rules than you shouldn't put a cap on their "free point" expenditure. The first reason is because after all they are the players points anyway and as a player you are not afforded many of these kinds of liberties. The second reason is that as the gamemaster you can ultimately ensure that his brute force won't always be enough.

 

[Ssendam]

Interesting comments, thanks.

Swampy: I think in practice putting a full 30 into combat isn't a big sacrifice, especially and combat is a main part of the game. I take the point however, it's not how I would roll up.

Digital Mage: Good point re: armour penalties, I had forgotten about that.

Utgardloki: Why does everyone focus on Dodge? Is the is part of the whole Dodge rather than Parry argument?

IndicusSativas: I agree with your comments, but a third reason puts me off limiting the points is that it forces all the PCs to spread their points out more ... which in my mind makes them all similar. I know there are lots of options but in my mind it seems wrong.