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Old 01-02-2018, 04:48 PM   #71
whswhs
 
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Default Re: Realistic Point Gains

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Originally Posted by Evadam View Post
Yes, but I want to set up like a maximum limit for human potential, so to speak.
In that case I would set it well below the young woman you're describing, unless you are going for an out and out cinematic campaign.
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Old 01-02-2018, 04:50 PM   #72
sir_pudding
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Default Re: Realistic Point Gains

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Well, I thought about starting this campaign in the near future and I wanted some extraordinary characters to point at and say "Hey, thatīs the girl who invented Artificial Intelligences... Oh! And there goes the cancer cure inventor and by his side the designer of the cutting-edge spaceships we enjoy today!"
What role does she serve in the player character's story? Patron? Antagonist? Background detail?

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It helps very much, I dont want to break suspension of disbelief
Too late.
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Old 01-02-2018, 05:26 PM   #73
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Default Re: Realistic Point Gains

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Originally Posted by sir_pudding View Post
What role does she serve in the player character's story? Patron? Antagonist? Background detail?


Too late.
It depends. For some she is an antagonist, for others a patron, and for most of them she is just a background detail.
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Old 01-02-2018, 05:30 PM   #74
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Default Re: Realistic Point Gains

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In that case I would set it well below the young woman you're describing, unless you are going for an out and out cinematic campaign.
How should I set it? So long I implemented some code as for maintaining skills, depending on the skill level and difficulty, it can easily reach 1 hour of practise needed a day (Very Hard Skill over Stat+5) or more, but since Photographic Memory gives +10 and she has it plus IQ-14, that gives her a memorization capacity of 24, which is the limit for skills, so at worst (Very Hard Skill at IQ+10/Mem+0 (Skill=24)) she needs to practise 6 minutes a day per skill. I need an escalable method, since if I say something like "You cannot have more than double your age in skill points", then how would a "full" character learn anything? Would it be more realistic saying that a genius attending to classes eight hours a day is unable to learn anything about an easy skill, while her average mates raise their skills every month, even if the genius got 0 points in that skill and her mates got Stat+4 (12 points, or about three college semesters completely and exclusively dedicated to that skill, in average)? If so, how would a player character learn anything at all once they are "full"?

*And I am reading into some infinite worlds which gives time guides as for increasing tech level, which would then nullify the -5 at inventions and allow her to develop Biotech TL10 for an extra IQ+1 to her already large stats, so bringing the worst "practise time" to 3 minutes a day)
*It is important to note that according to Back to School you can train Eidetic Memory (Memo+5) so it is not too bad on regular characters with all tens across the board, since they can learn a Very Hard Skill up to level 15 (Elite levels, and corresponds with Contact Skill-21) and maintain it by practicing only for one hour a day.

Last edited by Alonsua; 01-02-2018 at 05:53 PM.
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Old 01-02-2018, 09:58 PM   #75
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Default Re: Realistic Point Gains

But exceptional people like Einstein were not above 500 points (and most of them probably were not above 250 points). The majority of the greatest geniuses in history could be built with IQ 16 and (Talent) 4, usually with Per 12 and Will 12 (as the majority of them did not have exceptional awareness or grit), and they also possessed more than a few mental disadvantages. A character with 1,000 points is not exceptional, they are superhuman.
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Old 01-02-2018, 10:20 PM   #76
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Default Re: Realistic Point Gains

Evadam: Before reading, remember that you're the one who wants it realistic.

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So she conducted the tests on cricetids, suids and hominids first, and then on voluntary and appropriate test subjects, and instead of amphetamines she developed some kind of safe and melatonin based drug, or something like that?
*The unsuccesful story chances seem pretty interesting though.
That's not the kind of thing you can do solo. About the best she could realistically do is get an internship at a professional research institute and try to smuggle home drugs and/or inject herself with tailored retroviruses or something after hours. Even that is going to have effects which are, at best, a shadow of what you envision.
Of course, you seem to be trying to make a younger, less-insane version of Lab Rat, so it might be easier to just introduce a "spark of genius" into your setting.

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Well, I want her to be like an important/main NPC, I am designing the setting based on the real world and trying to make her some kind of modern Leonardo Da Vinci/Hippocrates/Galen.
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I just want to be able to point at some hystorical character and say: "See, she is just another (insert Einstein, Nikola Tesla, Shakespeare, Mozzart)..." and I want them to be able to repeat her extraordinary feats if they want.
Someone's drunk on Great Man Theory.
One great genius does not invent an insane invention in a single generation. Great geniuses just slightly accelerate the normal process of iterating on past generations' iterations. Eventually, someone makes an invention at least a little practical, or overcomes a critical but acute obstacle, and gets credited with the whole thing. (That, or someone makes something which looks on paper like something which wouldn't be figured out for decades or centuries, and almost everyone quietly ignores the practical constraints which explain why it was never used.)
Cultural geniuses (e.g, Shakespeare and Mozart) might be closer to this great-man genius innovator type, but only because their chosen fields are so ridiculously fluid.

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Originally Posted by Evadam View Post
Well, I thought about starting this campaign in the near future and I wanted some extraordinary characters to point at and say "Hey, thatīs the girl who invented Artificial Intelligences... Oh! And there goes the cancer cure inventor and by his side the designer of the cutting-edge spaceships we enjoy today!"
A single person can't plausibly design an operating system or a car themselves (at least, not a good one and not quickly); they simply require too many man-hours in too many fields. One person is never going to be the inventor of AI or the designer of a spaceship. You might find one specific person who used pre-existing technologies to design the first AI which didn't terrify passing children, or one specific person who lead the first starship-design team, but you're not going to find one single person who invented AI or a new spaceship.
Again, not a problem if your setting includes a spark of genius. It's probably not a good idea to introduce such things into a campaign world if they're not going to be relevant...but if the PCs are going to be meeting famous inventors, your campaign is probably one in which super-intelligent people with super-science are very important.
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Old 01-02-2018, 11:26 PM   #77
AlexanderHowl
 
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What we are talking about is an Amazing invention using brand new technology at three TL higher, which is a -42 to skill for the conception roll for a 'realistic' inventor. While Gadgeteers may be cinematic because it is so broad, technology does advance much more quickly than possible by the realistic rules, so I would suggest that limited forms of Gadegeteer are realistic. A realistic form of Gadgeteer would be limited to the first level, would apply to a specific skill only, and would be purchased through the Unusual Training Perk (I would require a minimum level of 20 in the associated skill).

Even so, a realistic gadegeteer would still suffer a -23 to skill, meaning that she would have to have a skill of 25 and four assistants with skill 20+ to have even a 6 as her modified skill. Since the average time for conception for an Amazing invention is 3d months, she would probably spend seven years on her conception roll. She would also need $3.5 million worth of equipment of her own, which would be difficult to hide.
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Old 01-03-2018, 01:14 AM   #78
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Default Re: Realistic Point Gains

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Hi there,

I need some help backing my design, or, putting it simply, regard or disregard it as realistic.

Letīs say I am creating a setting, so I want some truly iconic characters, and start by creating an NPC in a modern setting. So this character is born at 2,000 to a lineage of geniuses and athletes, and starts with:

(Strength-13; Dexterity-13; IQ-13; Health-12)
(which turns to be (Strength-4; Dexterity-5; IQ-7; Health-11) at age 0, and increases by the years)

Advantages
(Ambidexterity; Discriminatory Hearing; Discriminatory Smell; Photographic Memory; Language Talent; Intuitive Mathematician; Sensitive Touch; Single-Minded; Versatile)

By "Back to School" she puts 150 hours/month to Education and 165 hours/month to Self-Teaching (4 hours a day from monday to friday plus 12 hours a day on weekends). Having born to a wealthy family, she is supplied with nootropics (TL8) and elite quality education, so final modifiers are as follows:

Single-Minded +30%
Elite Education +40%
Accelerated Learning +50%
Talent (from -30% to +30%, average +0% until 15)
Will (from -30% to +30%, average +0% until 15)

gaining 460.35 points by her fifteen birthday. She proceeds then to invest most of those points into "Pharmacy (Synthetic)", "Bioengineering" and "Surgery", which is roleplayed by having her following advanced programs and studying medicine, and then she research into cutting-edge nootropics (TL9, granting Accelerated Learning +100%), amphetamines (Less Sleep 4), horizontal gene transfer (ST+2; DX+1; IQ+1; HT+1; Beautiful; Combat Reflexes; Double-Jointed; High Pain Threshold; Longevity; Resistant (Acceleration+3; Disease+8; Ingested Poison+3); Voice) and surgery&biomods (HT+1; Fit, Very; Rapid Healing, Very; Pitiable) and by 2024 she has collected 1252.5 points to split among social benefits like wealth, reputation and rank, and skills. She also has (ST-15; DX-14; IQ-14; HT-14) and all of the other advantages. The maximum in any attribute is 16 (one in over a billion people, so there are six persons in the world with a 16 in any attribute).

Is this acceptable?
Since you're looking for realistic, don't forget the box on p.6, "Learning and Realism". In particular, Maintaining Skills is likely to be a significant issue that would slow this process down: the more skills she has and/or the higher her level in them, the more time she'll need to dedicate toward maintaining them and the less time she'll have to study.
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Old 01-03-2018, 04:23 AM   #79
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Default Re: Realistic Point Gains

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It helps very much, I dont want to break suspension of disbelief
Thing is since your not running this campaign for the people in this thread our sense of disbelief isn't the one you have to worry about. Does it work for you and your players? If so than it's all good.

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Yes, but I want to set up like a maximum limit for human potential, so to speak.
The problem here is the higher up the scale you go in one area the harder it becomes to do the same in another. Now there are some area that crossover compliment each other but some that don't, and some that are antagonistic.

Because ultimately in RL our "attributes", "skills" and "advantages" etc tend to come from a combination of lots of different factors working in conjunction. The thing is GURPS is an RPG not a reality simulator so the gamebly abstract guidelines it gives for training etc are not actually a great way to represent that very complex interplay of factors in reality, especially not with extreme outer limits stuff like maximum limit of human potential.

And another factor is GURPS attributes and advantages often have several different ways to get to the same end point in terms of ability. And as per the point above about combinations of factors a more realistic model is having those complementary factors working together to give a result than one single one.

Last edited by Tomsdad; 01-03-2018 at 04:29 AM.
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Old 01-03-2018, 09:51 PM   #80
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While Gadgeteers may be cinematic because it is so broad, technology does advance much more quickly than possible by the realistic rules, so I would suggest that limited forms of Gadegeteer are realistic.
Putting aside quibbles over which parts of gadgeteering are considered unrealistic and if those correspond with the parts which you say are realistic...I feel like "technology advances more quickly than is possible by the realistic rules" needs more qualification. I really want to provide counterarguments, but I kinda need to know your arguments first, you know?
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