GURPSよろず

It’s rare for every skill appropriate to a cinematic role, profession, culture, or similar concept to be equally fitting. Age of Sail swashbucklers customarily know all there is to know about swords, but use Acrobatics mostly to swing from rigging and dodge attacks. Space Patrol captains have no difficulty justifying Shiphandling (Starship) and Strategy (Space), but their Tactics skill is meant for space combat, too ―― not for urban warfare and clearing buildings. And so on. Fortunately, wildcard skills can handle such variations in depth.

If every aspect of a standard skill suits the wildcard, then include it without comment. In play, someone with the wildcard truly knows that skill for all purposes. Find his level by adding the wildcard’s relative skill level to the appropriate controlling attribute; e.g., a hero with DX 14 and attribute+1 in a wildcard that includes Acrobatics and Jumping functions exactly like someone who bought Acrobatics-15 and Jumping-15 individually. Wildcards should consist mostly of unrestricted skills, or they’ll be less attractive than standard skills.

Required Specialties (p. B169): When a wildcard includes standard skills that require specialization, it should stick to specialties that match its high concept.
This might mean one or a small number of specialties, like Guns (Pistol) for a wildcard aimed at Old West card sharps; all but a few specialties, like Guns (all but Gyroc and Musket) for modern-day commandos; or every specialty, like Guns (all) for masters of gun fu.
Each included specialty functions like any other fully general skill; it’s “conditional” only in the sense that specialties cover particular subject matter, and faces no restrictions within its area.
As required specialties mutually default in most cases, including any of them allows the user to try some or all of the others at a penalty; see Defaults to Wildcards (p. 5).

Optional Specialties (pp. B169-170): Conditional skills (below) completely supplant these. See Conditional-to-General Defaults (p. 6) for an optional rule formalizing this equivalence.

　In a way, the technique is the ultimate in conditional skills, in that it specifies a skill use and permits heroes to spend points to become better at that one task without aiding everything else the skill covers. This suggests an interesting way to make wildcards more attractive for the points: Have them encompass not just skills, but also certain techniques that default to those skills, all at full wildcard level. For instance, a martial-arts wildcard that includes Karate might also work as Back Kick, Elbow Strike, Jump Kick, Kicking, Knee Strike, and Sweeping Kick ―― and someone who knows that wildcard at attribute+2 level can use Karate and all those techniques at DX+2. This lets him do much of what Karate normally allows without worrying about fussy default penalties.
　However, it isn’t a good idea to throw in techniques that buy off situational combat penalties ―― e.g., Ground Fighting ―― unless they’re an unusually apt fit to the wildcard’s high concept. Dealing with being knocked down, on bad footing, in the dark, etc. is an important part of the drama! Fancy “secret techniques” with massive default penalties should likewise be learned separately rather than included.
　Techniques included in wildcards cannot exceed their usual limits relative to the parent skill. For instance, the Ear Clap technique in GURPS Martial Arts is capped at Karate-1, so someone with a wildcard that gives Karate and Ear Clap would use the latter at wildcard-1, not wildcard+0.
　For more on how wildcard skills interact with techniques, see Counting Techniques (p. 10), Techniques for Wildcards (p. 12), Techniques in Style Wildcards (p. 15), and Wildcard Techniques (p. 20).