Game in the Brain

I was going over GURPS martial Arts and comparing martial arts to a mental and complex pursuit. After pulling back and trying to look at the realms of combat and professional, there seems to be a disconnect about how Techniques should be priced.

When Character Point Inflation happens the Value of a character point changes. In GURPS many of the vets know about the 200 hour rule. I’m taking mandarin classes right now and its really hard, in my studies being broken in mandarin needs at least 300 hours of practice. GURPS combat seems to suffere inflation where the hours spent mastering a hard technique (spending 5 points on a -4 hard technique) is like a 4 year course… and there are about a handful of techniques to master, not only that but there are skill levels that need to be reached.

If you start comparing Other skills and Combat Skills, the prices to get something done is so high with combat GM throw Points at it. Take for instance Dungeon Fantasy at 250cp + 50 cp of disads. A combat character has practically 90% of his points invested in combat… and the template builds have very little room for escape strategy – I will allow for this since DF is supposed to be DND, but it just illustrates how hard it is to master certain skills… harder than learning a language, to be a doctor, a lawyer, to learn to think critically, or other fairly complex careers.

My only problem with over inflation of combat skills is that it brings a narrow and super tight focus on combat. Is so focused in combat that problem solving-wise its myopic, solutions that would be economically more efficient are discarded. This is not the way a “warrior” goes, I mean if you follow the 5 rings or Sun Tzu then diplomacy, leadership, management (managing affairs well), is where good warriors spend their points. But I know its DnD, its fantasy and has no connect to reality… the first thing on one’s mind is slaughter and the sword, not the High Minded techniques illustrated in the Art of War, 5 rings, Machiaveli, Strategikon or other combat books.