Attribute levels and their meanings.

[Alonsua]

Appearance.
11 - Attractive (+1 on reaction rolls), 12 - Very Attractive (+1/3 on reaction rolls), 13 - Beautiful/Handsome (+2/4 on reaction rolls), 14 - Very Beautiful/Handsome (+2/6 on reaction rolls), 15 - Transcendent (+2/8 on reaction rolls).

Strength.
11 - Brawny, 12 - Very Brawny, 13 - Strong, 14 - Very Strong, 15 - Herculean.

Dexterity.
11 - Deft, 12 - Very Deft, 13 - Nimble, 14 - Very Nimble, 15 - Extremely Nimble.

Intelligence.
11 - Brilliant, 12 - Very Brilliant, 13 - Gifted, 14 - Very Gifted, 15 - Genius.

Health.
11 - Resilient, 12 - Very Resilient, 13 - Healthy, 14 - Very Healthy, 15 - Extremely Healthy.

Examples with Intelligence (average population sizes).
11 - Smartest in the classroom (remarkable), 12 - Smartest in the school (admirable), 13 - Smartest in the city (celebrated), 14 - Smartest in the country (world-class), 15 - Smartest in history (transcendent).

Examples with Strength (average bodyweight being the lower ones appropriate for Skinny).
11 - (125 lb - 216 lb), 12 - (167 lb - 274 lb), 13 - (216 lb - 343 lb), 14 - (275 lb - 421 lb), 15 - (343 lb - 512 lb).

Skill Levels.
Up to 9 - Novice, Up to 11 - Apprentice, Up to 13 - Journeyman, Up to 15 - Expert, Up to 18 - World-Class, Up to 21 - Greatest in history.

[GWJ]

Appearance is not attribute, and has not score value

EDIT:
Also, about skill levels, I suggest more like:
Up to 9 - Layman
Up to 11 - Novice/Apprentice (I don't know what difference is between)
Up to 13 - Journeyman
Up to 15 - Expert
16+ - Master

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by GWJ

Appearance is not attribute, and has not score value

If someone wants it for an attribute in their game, then it is an attribute in their game. Your game your rules! is the eternal rule of all RPGs. And there have been articles that made Appearance a GURPS attribute.

Maybe a simple "In my GURPS game this is what the Attributes mean." would have been nice. But we can all do that edit.

Mod edit: Please don't use red text in your posts.

[Alonsua]

It works like an attribute:

Attractive +1 (11).
Handsome/Beautiful +4/2 (average +3) (13).
Very Handsome/Beautiful +6/2 (average +4) (14).
Transcendent +8/2 (average +5) (15).

And I added "Very Attractive" +1/3 (average +2) (12).

[AlexanderHowl]

Sorry, I work off different types of attribute and skill distributions because I do not believe in stat normalization. When it comes to attributes, I think that attributes above 15 are realistic, and I think that they occur in 1:1,000,000 people. When it comes to skills, I think that skills above '20' are realistic (I think that the functional maximum for a skill is Attribute plus/minus Advantage/Disadvantage modifier plus 10) and that 10% of the adult human population will have one or more skills above '20' (usually Area Knowledge, Current Affairs, Games, Hobby Skills, etc).

I also do not like having Appearance as an attribute because Appearance is not universal. I find many women that other men gush over plain in appearance and find a few women that other men find average in appearance ravishing. Without that universality, it should not be an attribute (now, Charisma could be an attribute, but I see no particular utility in changing the system to make Charisma an attribute).

[acrosome]

It has often been said regarding skills, that a level of 12 implies that one can make a living using that skill, for whatever that's worth. So a professional carpenter should have Carpentry-12, etc.

Also (and this will get me screamed at nowadays) a rule of thumb from way back in The Day was to think of IQ as IQx10. So IQ12 was an actual IQ of 120, etc. That was a very rough approximation of what is sometimes called "general intelligence", though, since GURPS 4e uses things like Talents and Empathy and other advantages now. Which is more realistic in most ways, actually- back when it didn't have those you needed ridiculously high IQ on characters like Leonardo Da Vinci or Thomas Edison.

A lot of Other Gaming Systems have something like an APP score, so you need to deal with that when converting material to GURPS. For instance, in my Call of Cthulhu conversion (using 6e stats, not the execrable 7e):

CoC APP should be converted to a GURPS Appearance equivalent. First treat APP as any other attribute, but then subtract 10:

GURPS Appearance = ((APP + 10) / 2) -10

This will give a score from -3 to +6, which is similar to the reaction modifier for various levels of GURPS Appearance and should translate thus:

-3 Hideous
-2 Ugly
-1 Unattractive
0 Average
+1 Attractive
+2 Attractive
+3 Handsome/Beautiful
+4 Handsome/Beautiful

Obviously, monsters without an APP score are Monstrous.

I can't recall if that was directly plagiarized from Dickerson's conversion or not. I started with that and Cthulhupunk, changed a lot, and added a lot. What I have so far runs 72 pages (and growing).

[Alonsua]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

Sorry, I work off different types of attribute and skill distributions because I do not believe in stat normalization. When it comes to attributes, I think that attributes above 15 are realistic, and I think that they occur in 1:1,000,000 people. When it comes to skills, I think that skills above '20' are realistic (I think that the functional maximum for a skill is Attribute plus/minus Advantage/Disadvantage modifier plus 10) and that 10% of the adult human population will have one or more skills above '20' (usually Area Knowledge, Current Affairs, Games, Hobby Skills, etc).

I also do not like having Appearance as an attribute because Appearance is not universal. I find many women that other men gush over plain in appearance and find a few women that other men find average in appearance ravishing. Without that universality, it should not be an attribute (now, Charisma could be an attribute, but I see no particular utility in changing the system to make Charisma an attribute).

Skills start breaking by level 20, with 21 being just a little over the top. Skill levels over 21 are better represented with techniques, penalty-absorbing advantages and perks.