[Skarg]

Originally Posted by Evadam

How is this an iconic and awesome character for a whole setting, if according to Biotech an average physician got IQ-13?

It's not. It's a half-joking reply about something else. I was imagining if a player were proposing your paragon as a Player Character. Sorry for the off-topic joke aspect of that post.

More importantly, how does the skills limit respect the learning rules introduced in Back to School?

It doesn't "respect" it, because it was written before it, and isn't in the same context or mindset.

The skills limit is just a suggested guideline for GMs to consider when for starting PCs or making NPCs. It's a rough milestone to see how exceptional the character you're statting is, compared to what's typical.

I think it is an interesting serious question though, how to reconcile such things. Though your example seems extreme and exaggerated, I always try to consider what the averages and limits are for NPCs and PCs, in starting points and in how quickly and how much abilities of all types can be increased.

It can be difficult too to scale things, particularly when GMs, campaigns, and source books can vary extremely in what levels and point totals they assign to things.

How do you treat a player character trying to attend to college or get any kind of education?

By scaling the base levels and rates of learning & other improvement based on what the averages and limits are in the campaign's reference points. GURPS Myth and GURPS Special Ops and GURPS Supers have drastically different point levels assigned to things compared to most historical source books (such as GURPS Rome or GURPS Who's Who or GURPS WW2), for example.

I think it does make sense to do something like you are doing and try to define who the most highly-rated characters in the world are, what they're like and how they got there. Your example seems extremely extreme to me, but I usually stick to modest fantasy settings, where the most powerful and exceptionally capable human characters are probably more like 300-400 points at most (not considering status or wealth or allies or whatever).