Pyramid #3/120: Alternate GURPS V

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by Kromm

Nope.

Yep. I think IQ comes close to being way too good a deal. However, I don't think Will-as-resistance-to-strange-powers is the sole reason for this.

I see IQ as being at least four things in one: mundane skill base, supernatural skill base, Will, and Per. Moreover, "mundane skill base" still feels over-broad, as personal experience suggests that social intelligence has little or nothing to do with the classic kind. If the latter were strictly its own thing, I'd have less difficulty using it for artistic, scientific, and technical skills.

What I've done is bust out Will and make it the base for all social skills except Diplomacy (still on IQ) [1] (along with the skills that are already based on Will). I didn't go over the skill list with a fine toothed comb for what else should be Will based, but I should have.

I charged 10/level for it for including all the socialness.

[1] As much as my players joke about Diplomancy I wouldn't base it on QN.

[dataweaver]

Originally Posted by Kromm

Nope.

Yep. I think IQ comes close to being way too good a deal. However, I don't think Will-as-resistance-to-strange-powers is the sole reason for this.

I see IQ as being at least four things in one: mundane skill base, supernatural skill base, Will, and Per. Moreover, "mundane skill base" still feels over-broad, as personal experience suggests that social intelligence has little or nothing to do with the classic kind. If the latter were strictly its own thing, I'd have less difficulty using it for artistic, scientific, and technical skills. Personal experience also suggests that while some people have narrow talents, smart money is on the person who's good with one of, say, astronomy, computers, drawing, household repairs, math, and writing being good at most of the rest; that's based on not one but several real people.

A case could be made for replacing Charisma with an Attribute and basing social skills off of it. I seem to recall a previous edition of Alternate GURPS addressing this?

[SilvercatMoonpaw]

Originally Posted by Bruno

What I've done is bust out Will and make it the base for all social skills except Diplomacy (still on IQ) [1] (along with the skills that are already based on Will). I didn't go over the skill list with a fine toothed comb for what else should be Will based, but I should have.

I charged 10/level for it for including all the socialness.

[1] As much as my players joke about Diplomancy I wouldn't base it on QN.

I think one could also make a case for Perception, seeing as how being better at noticing how people react makes you better at knowing what to say to them.

Though the fact that a "social attribute" can be interpreted as coming from so many different factors makes me wary of having one. (Technically I'd like this with all mental attributes. I would actually just rename IQ to "Mind" or something because it's better than trying to figure out which bits do and do not have knock-on effects with each other.)

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by SilvercatMoonpaw

Though the fact that a "social attribute" can be interpreted as coming from so many different factors makes me wary of having one.

Eh, that's just special effects. A high social attribute means 'good at social skills', the why you're good is character background.

[dataweaver]

Originally Posted by Bruno

What I've done is bust out Will and make it the base for all social skills except Diplomacy (still on IQ) [1] (along with the skills that are already based on Will). I didn't go over the skill list with a fine toothed comb for what else should be Will based, but I should have.

I charged 10/level for it for including all the socialness.

[1] As much as my players joke about Diplomancy I wouldn't base it on QN.

To me, basing social skills off of Will is akin to basing physical skills off of ST. Or HT, for that matter. You can do so sparingly; but it's not really what that type of Attribute is designed for. And conceptually, the idea that someone who's strong-willed is going to be more of a people-person than someone who's weak-willed makes about as much sense to me as saying that someone who's intelligent is going to be strong-willed.

[SilvercatMoonpaw]

You could base it off the new attribute. I'm imagining someone with the blazing power of a god being really, really hard to ignore.

[RyanW]

Originally Posted by Bruno

What I've done is bust out Will and make it the base for all social skills except Diplomacy (still on IQ) [1] (along with the skills that are already based on Will). I didn't go over the skill list with a fine toothed comb for what else should be Will based, but I should have.

I played with something like this, but wound up not using it. Per and Will both at 10/level, with Will covering more skills and Per replacing HT for calculating Dodge (but not Move).

[Vaevictis Asmadi]

Speaking from personal experience, social intelligence has no relationship to academic-type intelligence. I wouldn't say it's related to Will either, though.

Originally Posted by dataweaver

A case could be made for replacing Charisma with an Attribute and basing social skills off of it.

That seems like a good idea to me.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Vaevictis Asmadi

Speaking from personal experience, social intelligence has no relationship to academic-type intelligence.

I wouldn't say no relationship, people who are notably below average intelligence are generally socially disadvantaged as well, but it's not a very strong correlation, particularly in the range of intelligence likely to be found among PCs. Then again, neither social nor academic intelligence is all that correlated with perception, and and the correlation with will is pretty much 'high point value characters should have high will, because the way you achieve hit point values is by having high will'.

[Tyneras]

My experience is that social and academic intelligence are the same thing, but a LOT of people have the quirk "X Skill Set is too hard (or magical), so I wont try" [-1] and the skill set is virtually anything, math, social skills, writing, art, etc. They don't invest the points so they might have a high IQ but are operating at default or worse (self imposed mental disadvantages, ahoy!).

I've never seen anything to link Will with either intelligence or social skills. I'm in the camp of decoupling Will from IQ for that very reason.