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For instance, GURPS assumes that a weapon skill speaks more of the "technique" of using that weapon than the weapon itself. For example, you use the Spear skill to use a spear like a spear (stabbing and thrusting), but if you were to grip the spear in two hands and use its shaft like a staff you would use the Staff skill.
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This reminds me of the MAC-Combat Styles.
IMHO (without knowledge how the Combat Styles really work) a spear is used 2-handed
the same way as a quaterstaff. In the attack tables there are also Krush-crits,
these crits might be interpretated as a stab with the blunt end or a swing with the shaft.
This might also be true with other pole-arms.
(In a martial-artist-movie a smith was in a fight with some agile guys and didn't hit until a
monk gave him the hint to strike with the shaft of his heavy 2handed-hammer.)
If you are fighting you use the possibilities you have.
The GM might interpret a low damage as an attack with the pommel, the off-weapon-
hand, a kick or even as a shild bash - without the need of another attack table.
(The goal is story telling not page flipping.)
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The idea would be that it would bleed out to non-combat skills as well. I think one prime example of a non-combat skill that falls into this catagory is the often mishandled aspects of computer use in skill systems. A lot of RPGs assume that all computer use is the same. You use your computer skill weather you're surfing the internet or playing a computer game or hacking into a federal building. Sometimes they even have you use your computer skill to work medical equipment or run an air traffic control system because, as the logic goes, they all use computers. Well, I'm pretty darn good at using a computer, but I would hardly consider myself qualified to land a 747.
Now, obviously you can't list absolutely every activity you might do with a computer as a separate skill, so you have to assume some abstract coverage. Where does the balance lie? I'm not really offering any solutions here. Simply discussing the topic and pointing out ideas. I'm also not speaking directly of Rolemaster skills. Just RPG skill systems in general.
Here my opinion:
In our today world the use of computer is wide ranged.
Imagine a modern bard: An author. She uses a computer for word-processing.
This use is part of the modern writing skill (aka "Tale Telling"). With it she learned
perhaps one rank in "Computer" because of system crash and program installing etc.
As a real life example I can tell about my mother: She is a retired tax counselor.
As such she used a computer network via a modem to calculate taxes for her mandates.
Nowadays she always tells me she can't understand how the internet functions. But she
used her computer that way long before anyone of us.
Her book-keeping-skill includes the appropriate use of a computer.
And this should be true for any modern skill.
It allowes the right use of the computer assisted system (747 or
BattleMech MIRC).
But the GM could demand a minimum rank number in "Computer" for proper understanding.
The "Computer" skill is for programmers, sysadmin and of course moderators