Sacrificed Basic Skill For Awesome Training / Tabletop Games

• Practically a universal rule of all RPGs: since the mechanics usually enforce some kind of balance on the game, creating a character who is exceedingly proficient at one thing (be it magic, sword-fighting, unarmed combat, whatever) will usually result in sub-par abilities elsewhere. It is all too easy to slip into the realm of "Min-Maxing", where a character contains a ridiculous number of weaknesses or quirks (usually applying to everything but their chosen skill) because each optional weakness taken provides precious character points for strengthening their one chosen skill.
  • This can backfire very badly, depending of course on the GM's level of personal evil and the style of the campaign; more specifically, the "min" part leaves a very obvious Man of Kryptonite situation open to a GM that's tired of your nonsense.
• There's a peculiar physical-combat-based example of this trope in Anima: Beyond Fantasy involving ditching buying any Attack (and if taken to a more extreme level, any Block/Dodge either) at all and instead sticking the points in Martial Knowledge, Ki Pool, and Ki Accumulation. As all of the above stats draw from the same pool of points, some of them have to be sacrificed, as trying to do all of them at once often falls into Master of None territory. This results in one of very few character builds that can use incredibly complex combinations of ki techniques — some of which can turn a character into the most devastating practical artillery pieces in the setting, or dish out damage per round that far exceeds the health of anything in the game — within a combat-practical time period, but without said techniques and the energy to power them, these characters are actually more prone to ineffective flailing than most civilians.
  • On a more general level, either hyper-focused secondary skill spreads (sacrificing any pretense of competence in basically anything else non-combat, or even anything combat-related if focused hard enough) that can quickly get up to physics-breaking levels in their one area of expertise at the cost of potentially fouling up routine checks outside that area (like taking stairs two or three at a time) on a fairly regular basis, or forgoing secondary skills entirely to spend the points on other things like extra maximum health or monster powers (which tend to be great for raw stats but not so much for life skills).
• BattleTech: Clan Trueborns are raised from birth to fight. Their training programs produce some of the best warriors, tacticians and (for the more prominent bloodlines) leaders around but other areas get neglected. Trueborns generally don't perform well in other fields if they don't have the civilian castes to back them up and this can often be a problem for anyone (that is, around 90%) who washes out of the warrior caste.
  • The RPG system also enforces this for characters; everything is purchased with experience. A special forces operative isn't going to have room for negotiating prowess after he's spent his experience points on stealth, demolitions and marksmanship skills.
• Similarly largely averted in Fate-based games like Spirit of the Century or The Dresden Files, where a character who invests nothing in a skill generally still gets at least a Mediocre (+0) rank in it — meaning they can still roll for it, the skill just doesn't add anything to the dice — and it's not actually possible to lower this any further. In addition, because the skill system is pretty coarsely grained, most "regular" people will be only one or maybe two steps better than that in even their trained skills and likewise fall back to being Mediocre at everything else; player characters and major NPCs are already awesome just by virtue of being able to have more trained skills including some beyond that cap right from the word go.
• Games that use Point Buy for ability scores (such as Dungeons & Dragons) can fall into this. A player can maximise their chosen ability score but have so few points left that the rest of their ability scores are average at best.
• The Barbarian of pre-third edition of Dungeons & Dragons is a Lightning Bruiser, and is considered by some to be the best melee class. He has exactly 3 weaknesses: He has no resistance to magic whatsoever, he is illiterate and he isn't a spell caster.
• In Exalted, the Infernal Exalted have Charms that work like this — which makes sense, as their Charm trees are more about emulating the Yozi who gave them their powers more than anything else. Adorjan, for instance, has Charms that allow the Exalted to block all social influence attempts — by turning all noise into wretched, hateful discord; or communicate telepathically — by losing the ability to vocalize anything but laughter. Kimbery, meanwhile, has the Intolerable Burning Truths Charm, which covers a number of conditions the Infernal can buy into while at the same time losing the ability to do something else (such as making it easier to establish and protect an Intimacy to someone while losing the ability to hate someone for their betrayal).
• Several archetypes from Feng Shui, such as the Killer, the Techie and the Sorcerer, have no Martial Arts skill, with their only combat skills being in guns or sorcery, and thus have to default to Reflexes in order to do things that do not involve guns or sorcery that isn't covered by their other major skills.
• GURPS is a partial aversion, with "defaults" for skills; for example someone who has put all their points into combat or magic and none into the Housekeeping skill has a "default skill level" of IQ-4, and can probably prepare basic meals and keep their living space in decent condition, right up until they get a bad roll and Something Goes Wrong. Or they can take an Incompetence disadvantage and squeeze some extra points into those combat abilities.
• The rules for most Prose Descriptive Qualities games are explicitly written to avert it — anything you don't have a better rank in, you have automatically at Average [+0], which is general competence that anyone has. You might not be a gourmet chef if you don't take a cooking Quality, but you can at least boil water or cook meat without burning it. Though you can still hyper-specialize to your detriment by overlapping your Qualities as much as possible. In Swashbucklers of the 7 Skies, this may even be a good way to rack up Training Points quickly, by jumping in outside your area of expertise, because you only gain TP for failed rolls. Whether your party will appreciate it, on the other hand...
• Averted in Savage Worlds: While it is possible to min-max to the moon and back, Savage Worlds introduced the "Common Knowledge"-roll as a way to get a reasonably well-rounded character without having to spend a whole slow of experience points on a number of vaguely useful knowledge skills.
• Averted in Shadowrun and possibly others: the starting skill value of 0 just means no special training (eg. 0 in a knowledge skill represents what a high school student knows).
  • The above-mentioned universal rule still looms, however. Players can take the "Incompetent" flaw, which means their character lacks even the common knowledge that might apply to the skill. Zero skill in driving means you can't be a stunt driver. Incompetent: Driving means you don't have a driver's license.
• The Spycraft system, which runs primarily on skills and a skill-focus/proficiency system, hits this intentionally very, very hard. Not having full ranks in a skill places a flat cap on your total result, which can make advanced tasks literally impossible. Having no ranks in a skill lowers the cap to where it's barely possible to do basic tasks, and dramatically increases the likelihood of catastrophic failure. So players have to choose between extreme specialization and crippling mediocrity, with the first usually winning.
  • It's even worse with weapons, given that the non-proficient penalty to attacks is substantial and, for instance, the critical failure on a grenade is to pull the pin and drop it at your feet...
• Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, a setting that depends heavily on diversifying skills and gives even most combat-related careers some non-combat skills for roleplaying reasons (for instance, mercenaries tend to be decent at gambling and haggling), the Troll Slayer has only three skills, of which one is only useful in a fight (Dodge Blow) and the two others generally useful for starting one (Intimidate, Consume Alcohol). Justified because Slayers are disgraced Death Seekers who have put their past lives behind them to fight and die against a worthy enemy; you cannot leave the Slayer career once you start, except in death.
• Characters in The World of Darkness systems, especially those that are built toward combat, can often end up in this category — they still get raw attributes toward their rolls, but penalties can be insurmountable.
  • In Hunter: The Vigil, this is a frequent issue Slashers have; many focused so much on learning to kill and murder people they actually lost basic social skills, making them unable to empathize or interact with people in a peaceful way. The most outstanding example may be Masks, who gain the ability to resist any form of damage. Anything from a hit with a baseball bat to getting a full bursts from a flamethrower will do the minimum possible damage. The downside is that Masks lose the ability to read, speak, or truly understand humanity; in fact, one piece of fiction suggests Masks kill in a focused rage because the very presence of other people causes unbearable pain.