Crippling Shyness

Crippling Shyness (B154) functions the EXACT SAME as a collection of Incompetence quirks for these fifteen skills:

The actual rule is "skills that require you to deal with people, including" so there could possibly be others it applies to, to explain why it is worth 20 points instead of 15.

Crippling Shyness resembles having 4 levels of Anti-Talent per PU3. It would be "Large" per pg 20's "13 or more related skills" criteria, meaning 15 per level, meaning it should be worth 60 points.

The reason it is not is because it is not actually an anti-talent in every capacity. Of the "several drawbacks" on pg 19 it only has 1 (penalties) and 2 (inability to learn, function at default) but not pg 20's 3rd drawback (reaction penalties).

The lack of -4 to reaction rolls is the only explanation for why it is 40 points cheaper, meaning somehow that -1 to reactions is worth 10/level.

Another approach might be that each of these fifteen skills would not be worth incompetent alone, even though they are all distinct skills and not specialties.

Guns skills specialty relationships ("all guns" incompetent) could lead one to think as specialties as "skills with a default relation". B198 mentions "defaults involving GL, Gyroc, or LAW are at -4 in either direction" so it could more specifically require 2-way defaulting to be "effectively specialties". Based on that:

Acting defaults to Performance and Public Speaking, both of which default back
- Fast Talk and Intimidation default to Acting no reciprocate
  - Panhandling defaults to Fast-Talk or Public Speaking but no reciprocate
Diplomacy defaults to Politics
- Politics defaults back to Diplomacy
Performance defaults to Acting or Public Speaking
- acting defaults back, as above
Public Speaking defaults to Acting/Performance/Politics
- only the first two default back

Based on lumping diplomacy/politics together (-1) and A/P/PS together (-2) lowering the total from 15 to 12 just barely brings down the count (assuming no other skills) to MEDIUM (7-12 relatd skills) which is only a base -10 per level.

This makes the difference between -20 and -40 more manageable: the lack of a -4 reaction being 20 breaks down to 5 per -1, basically the price of Charisma.

So essentially Shy can be seen as having 4 levels of Charisma which offset the reaction penalties expected from an anti-talent. B41's "with whom you actively interact" conveniently covers all the skills/situations to which Shyness apply.

special note[]

Criteria 2 (inability to buy the skill, obligation to use it at default) which Anti-Talents inherit from Incompetent (at ALL levels) is absent in the lesser versions of Shyness. But Taboos are worth 0, right...?

taboos may not even prohibit Dabbler which can get higher than default and close to 1-point
when you can effectively spend 1 point for a "not incompetent" perk to buy off -4, doing so should be compared to instead spending 1 point in the skill and applying -4 to that
this ties with skills whose default is 4 less than it's 1-point level. That would require
- IQ-4 defaults for easy skills
- IQ-5 defaults for average skills
- IQ-6 hard skills
- IQ-7 very hard skills

Based on 1 point to buy off -4, using Dabbler to buy off Incompetent could be a sound gradual process.