Maximum Realistic Reaction Bonus

[Alonsua]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

No. She's not realistic. She's a cross between Taylor Swift, Little Orphan Annie and Galadriel. Really high social modifiers are just as "cinematic" as lots of social modifiers.

Now here are some considerations

1. What is her reputation for? Just having a reputation for being beautiful and a great singer doesn't cut it. The adulation for that is baked in. Actually if you want a trait for being generically well regarded because she's a successful entertainer, I'd go with Social Regard, not Reputation.

2. While people who actually make as big time celebrities usually do have a force of personality that makes them stand out a bit from equally or more beautiful and talented people the beautiful and talented celebrities generally don't have more than one or two points of it because they don't need it. Charisma 4 is the kind of force of personality that basically drowns out physical attractiveness.

3. On the flipside given these traits...isn't she rich? Being rich means +1 Social Status unless she's actually bought down her social status because her origins were really humble.

So if you wanted a realistic famous celebrity performer I'd go with

Beautiful +4/+2
Voice +2
Charisma +1 or 2
Social Status +1
Social Regard "Celebrity" +2

And of course Watched By The Media.

Any reputation she had would probably be specific and mixed to bad like "gay friendly", "unlucky in love" or "struggles with substance abuse"

Hi there everybody and thanks for answering,

this character is actually a (secretly) gengineered human, the result of a millenary eugenetics project (she secretly is a direct descendant of Alexander the Great) combined with state of the art biotechnology. Her reputation is due to being a world-famous former child prodigy, Nobel Prize winner (she programmed the very first Artificial Intelligence in the setting), founder/main figure of the "Exvolvere" (a revolutionary artistic and cultural movement that breaks with the traditional definition of reality with an emphasis on virtual arts, illusions and holography), and founder/leader of the "Transhumanist Church" (the fifth largest religion in the setting).

[Joe]

Originally Posted by Alonsua

should I assume that my character is realistic?

Originally Posted by Alonsua

this character is actually a (secretly) gengineered human, the result of a millenary eugenetics project (she secretly is a direct descendant of Alexander the Great) combined with state of the art biotechnology. Her reputation is due to being a world-famous former child prodigy, Nobel Prize winner (she programmed the very first Artificial Intelligence in the setting), founder of the "Exvolvere" (a revolutionary artistic and cultural movement that breaks with the traditional definition of reality with an emphasis on virtual arts, illusions and holography), and leader of the "Transhumanist Church" (the fifth largest religion in the setting).

I think you might just have answered your own question... :)

[Anders]

Originally Posted by Joe

I think you might just have answered your own question... :)

Yeah, but exceptional people are a reality. Geena Davis is a Mensa member, actress, former fashion model, and nearly qualified for the U.S. Olympics team in 2000. Still, I agree that this character may be cinematic. (I'm in a small minority on this, but I actually liked Cutthroat Island.)

[Alonsua]

Originally Posted by Joe

I think you might just have answered your own question... :)

Hi there,

sadly I dont really think so. Let me explain: the setting has been limited to human peak attributes of 18 (with only one particular character in the setting with IQ-(18), then only 7 characters with ST/DX/IQ/HT-(16)... and this particular one has got IQ-(15), having as many as one IQ-(15) person in every three millions and a half people in the world), skills are limited to 24 (having chances to become an historical figure on a particular craft starting on Whatever-(20)). Now I am unable to figure out how to realistically consider Reaction Bonuses from the background of a character, since while I can say that she is a top dog on social engineering and attracting people, I have no clue on what would the realistic maximum reaction bonus of a social engineering top dog be like xD

[Phil Masters]

To begin with; "very rare" is not, of itself, cinematic. It is, however, very rare. Someone with one-in-a-million abilities is extraordinary; quite possibly, no one reading this will ever actually meet someone with those abilities. However, there are hundreds of people with those abilities in the world. Playing them in a game is fine, because games are often about playing extraordinary people, but they're not people like you or I know in general.

One-in-a-thousand abilities are impressive, but most of us run into such things from time to time. However, a combination of three uncorrelated abilities in that range, in one person, is by definition a one-in-billions event. There may be people like that out there, but just a handful, literally, on the entire planet. Having several of them meet and work together is just about okay if, say, someone with massive resources is putting together a brains trust or something, but having it happen at random is statistically off-the-scale unlikely. How statistically unlikely something has to be for it to be called "cinematic" is a matter of taste, but there comes a point where the suspension of disbelief required is the same as for magic or whatever.

Very Beautiful people are defined as able to win beauty contests; probably in the one-in-thousands range, maybe a little more or less rare. Voice isn't just a nice singing voice (that's just a few free points in Singing skill), it's the sort of person who can make you favourably disposed to them just by reading the phone book aloud. I'd put that in the one-in-dozens, maybe one-in-hundreds range. Charisma is by definition more intangible and harder to discuss, but while one or even two levels aren't unduly strange, we clamped down a bit in the Who's Who books and said that four levels needed special justification, and five could let you found a religion; you're up in the one-in-thousands or tens of thousands range there.

Put all of them together... and you've got someone truly remarkable, who can get a Hollywood career with relatively little effort. (Or a Bollywood career; Bollywood seems to run on the fact that when you've got a population base of a billion, most of whom take cinema very seriously, you can rake in a remarkable number of one-in-a-million rarities.) I can think of a few Hollywood and pop music figures who have Very Handsome/Beautiful, Voice, and probably a level of Charisma as a tie-breaker, but many manage with a bit less but some actual Performance skill. I suspect that stacking multiple levels of Charisma on the other two things puts you into the "no actual extant examples" range, but others may disagree. That's "cinematic" in the borderline-case sense of "not actually impossible".

[Phil Masters]

Incidentally, the question of correlation gets fiddly too. To take an already-mentioned example, Geena Davis had the looks and basic performance skills to make it as a fashion model, but those are also attributes that can support a Hollywood career; as she and a number of other examples demonstrate, a little more Performance skill can take someone from high-end modelling to high-end movie acting quite easily. She's also academically intelligent, which tends to imply a bit of focus, while those looks tend to correlate to reasonable physical health and coordination. Now, combine focus and physical fitness, and you potentially have a competent athlete; in her case, that paid off in spades, as she hit national competition levels in archery with a bit of training.

So she's definitely impressive, but maybe not such a statistical exception as one might think, because there's some possible correlation in her abilities.

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by Anthony

To the degree reaction bonuses are realistic at all, they probably aren't strictly additive (so having all of those traits wouldn't add up to a +16). However, any such rule should probably also change the cost of those traits.

Quoted for truth.

This will also point out that most of the bonuses only apply in specific situations. But that's probably a theory question and a tangent of sorts.

On the specific character, you specified that they are the founder of a religion. This means they're pretty likely to have not only large positive reputations, but also huge negative reputations. If you're not doing that, you don't have a realistic character. And whether the reputation is true or not doesn't matter. As a matter of self preservation existing religions (and political systems, most of the time) will brand the founder of a rising rival religion (philosophy, political movement, ect) as a public enemy, charlatan, and so forth.

This doesn't just extend to religious leaders. All sorts of people with these talents get branded in order to protect (ironically or actually) others from the talk, the looks, and the influence.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Alonsua

this character is actually a (secretly) gengineered human, the result of a millenary eugenetics project (she secretly is a direct descendant of Alexander the Great) combined with state of the art biotechnology. Her reputation is due to being a world-famous former child prodigy, Nobel Prize winner (she programmed the very first Artificial Intelligence in the setting), founder/main figure of the "Exvolvere" (a revolutionary artistic and cultural movement that breaks with the traditional definition of reality with an emphasis on virtual arts, illusions and holography), and founder/leader of the "Transhumanist Church" (the fifth largest religion in the setting).

Doc Savage/Buckaroo Bonzai/Jubal Harshaw type characters are supposed to be absurd, so I don't see anything wrong with +16 reactions stacked onto the rest of this.

[evileeyore]

Originally Posted by Anders

Yeah, but exceptional people are a reality. Geena Davis ...

See also Dolph Lundgren, masters in Chemistry, martial artist, ultra rich, savvy businessman, b-rated actor (but well-known), producer, director, etc, and got busy with Grace Jones back in the day?

Dude is livin the dream.

[Kabufu]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

I'm strongly opposed to such an approach to a fairly-bought Advantage. It reminds me of Emily's story about how when she had a character very skilled in jumping, the GM interpreted that as jumping too high and overshooting the target. That's antagonistic.

I agree completely, that is a terrible and belligerent way to run a game.

However, I do feel that elements of what I said earlier can be used if the combination of advantages gets out of hand or starts breaking game so badly the other players are getting upstaged.