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Old 06-05-2014, 08:00 AM   #1
RainbowFactory
 
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Default Buying up intelligence with money? Am I doing it right?

In the process of creating an android character I wanted to find a way to increase my intelligence without wasting a ton of points. My GM suggested that I purchase a Non-Volitional AI Chip from the ultratech book and process any IQ related tasks with the chip.

Couple Questions.

1. Is this feasible? am i breaking any rules that i am not aware of?
2. Does this effectively give my character two intelligence scores? If the chips gets broken or stolen do I default to 10 IQ?

Is there anything that I am missing?

Last edited by PK; 06-05-2014 at 01:18 PM.
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Old 06-05-2014, 08:15 AM   #2
Imion
 
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Default Re: Buying up intelligence with money? Am I doing it right?

If you want your charcter to have high IQ you pay for that IQ with Character Points. Period.

You could treat the AI as an implanted Ally as in Transhuman Space but the AI *is not* your character.
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Old 06-05-2014, 08:56 AM   #3
RainbowFactory
 
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Default Re: Buying up intelligence with money? Am I doing it right?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Imion View Post
If you want your charcter to have high IQ you pay for that IQ with Character Points. Period.

You could treat the AI as an implanted Ally as in Transhuman Space but the AI *is not* your character.
If I took this route and treated it as an implanted ally It would still be a Non-Volitional AI that would perform whatever tasks I assigned to it, correct?
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Old 06-05-2014, 09:03 AM   #4
Terwin
 
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Default Re: Buying up intelligence with money? Am I doing it right?

That sounds like an always available(x4) Minion with slave mentality(+0%) ally.
4 points for one of up to 25% of your point total and 8 for one up to 50% of your point total.
More if it has special abilities.

Note: this would primarily be useful for informational IQ skills(Area Knowledge), and not for active IQ skills(lock picking, diplomacy, acting, etc)

Some skills would require your character acting as the hands and eyes of the AI(diagnose, physician, first aid) and would have appropriate penalties(or just provide a bonus to your own skill for skilled supervision).
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Old 06-05-2014, 09:15 AM   #5
RainbowFactory
 
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Default Re: Buying up intelligence with money? Am I doing it right?

So there is absolutely no way to reduce the cost of intelligence?

I was asking this question as an afterthought when I thought my character sheet was done. It is a 250 point campaign and you are now telling me that my characters current IQ of 19 should be taking up 180 of my character points?
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Old 06-05-2014, 09:16 AM   #6
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Default Re: Buying up intelligence with money? Am I doing it right?

Quote:
Originally Posted by RainbowFactory View Post
In the process of creating an android character I wanted to find a way to increase my intelligence without wasting a ton of points. My GM suggested that I purchase a Non-Volitional AI Chip from the ultratech book and process any IQ related tasks with the chip.

Couple Questions.

1. Is this feasible? am i breaking any rules that i am not aware of?
If your GM likes it, does it matter? If you are playing with other people it might if they think it is unfair. But even if it were explicitly forbidden (which it isn't, though you probably should buy an implanted AI as an ally) the GM is allowed to change the rules if he wants. If he offers similar deals to the other players who aren't androids if they want, then it's probably fine.

Quote:
2. Does this effectively give my character two intelligence scores? If the chips gets broken or stolen do I default to 10 IQ?
Depends on how you implement it. As an Ally, no it does not, it gives your character a 10 IQ and your Ally some different IQ score. If you had a chip that just boosted your IQ that could be reasonably broken or stolen (which would be odd for an implanted chip but OK) then more or less yes. Normally you would be required to buy that with points as IQ with the Gadget limitation, which would still be fairly expensive.
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Last edited by PK; 06-05-2014 at 01:18 PM.
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Old 06-05-2014, 09:21 AM   #7
sir_pudding
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Default Re: Buying up intelligence with money? Am I doing it right?

IQ 19 is quite high and may not actually be what you want. It means that you'll have a 83.8%-95.4% chance of success on all IQ based defaults.

Last edited by sir_pudding; 06-05-2014 at 09:57 AM.
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Old 06-05-2014, 09:22 AM   #8
malloyd
 
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Default Re: Buying up intelligence with money? Am I doing it right?

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Originally Posted by RainbowFactory View Post
So there is absolutely no way to reduce the cost of intelligence?
Not unless it comes with some limitations.

Quote:
I was asking this question as an afterthought when I thought my character sheet was done. It is a 250 point campaign and you are now telling me that my characters current IQ of 19 should be taking up 180 of my character points?
Why not? That's the kind of thing points are for. It may be the character concept you want can't be done on 250 points, but that's a different issue.

Charging you less for your IQ is the same thing as giving you more points to buy it at the list cost. Would it be OK to let you play a 430 point character? If so letting you have the IQ for free is basically the same thing. And maybe it would be OK, if you are the only player, or all the other players are OK with your point total being higher than theirs, or the GM is willing to give them more points too.
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Old 06-05-2014, 09:51 AM   #9
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Default Re: Buying up intelligence with money? Am I doing it right?

Quote:
Originally Posted by RainbowFactory View Post
So there is absolutely no way to reduce the cost of intelligence?
Kind of there are some work arounds to the cost of IQ (which may very well be underpriced already at only costing 20 points a level).

1: Use talents instead if all you are trying to do is simulate hyper levels of skill in a narrowish rang of abilities like mathmatics or engineering then sub out some of your IQ levels for the corresponding talent instead which boosts your skill level in the specific skills rather than being really good at every IQ based skill in the game.

1B: Theoritically Talents at the 15 point level do not have a cap on the number of skills that they can inlcude. A very generous GM might and I cannot stress this enough might decide all IQ based skills is appropriate for a talent group because of option 2 below.

2: Purchase IQ! instead of IQ a somewhat popular house rule though not one that I am overly fond of myself. Essentially you bup of your Iq to the desired level in this case 19 and then at each level of IQ you sell down one level of Perception and one level of Willpower. This has a net cost of making IQ! worth 10 points a level. Officially by Raw though those points spent on reducing your Willpower and Perception should count towards the disadvantage cap though if you have one.

Quote:
Originally Posted by RainbowFactory View Post
I was asking this question as an afterthought when I thought my character sheet was done. It is a 250 point campaign and you are now telling me that my characters current IQ of 19 should be taking up 180 of my character points?
Keep in mind an IQ of 19 is a really powerful ability in a Gurps game and is easily worth the 180 points that it costs. Every IQ skill in the game that allows a default roll and you don't know for example you have between a 13 and 15 skill in.

For example you have effectively; Skill 15 Actor (making you as good as a proffesional actor) skill 15 carpenter, Skill 14 Connosoir (all types), Skill 15 Crewman (all types including sailing ships to space ships), Skill 15 Current Affairs (all types making you more of an expert of current popculture trends than most Joss Wheadon Characters), Skill 13 Dreaming (apparently robots do dream of electic sheep), Skill 13 Electrician (all types), Skill 13 Esoteric Medicine, and literally well over another 100 skills that you will never have to put a single point into in order to match most proffessionals in their field of study.

Any mental skill that you care about you can easily become best in the world at it with just a minimal expenditure of points and even spending one or two points on most skills will let you be considered a master at that skill. Especially consider any skill level past 16 is essentially their to pad against various penalties to your roll.

And that is is just IQs most basic function, because you also have a 19 willpower and a 19 perception making it nearly impossible for you not to notice something in your enviroment.
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Old 06-05-2014, 10:02 AM   #10
whswhs
 
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Default Re: Buying up intelligence with money? Am I doing it right?

In principle, you could treat IQ as having the limitation "granted by Ally." You would then need to buy the Ally that provided it, with Special Abilities (+50%) and probably Minion (+50%); and you would want frequency of appearance of Constantly (x4 cost). So that's a fairly expensive Ally.

Then you can buy IQ with a -40% Accessibility limitation, for 12 points/level. You can't get it free that way.

Bill Stoddard
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