12-11-2012, 09:05 AM | #21 | |
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Iceland*
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Re: What's with the modesty about stats?
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None of that means that there don't exist people who are much more competent and capable of surviving an adventure*. Or that among the ordinary folk some turn out to be strong-willed, courageous, quick-witted and decisive under pressure. It's just that this is less the average than it is the exception. Usually, the heroes or protagonists of any kind of story will be exceptional, in one way or another. Even when they are refered to in the context of their world as being just common people, ordinary folk in extraordinary circumstances, the truth is that where the average human fails to cope with extraordinary circumstances, stories are usually about those who manage them better, at least enough to fail entertainingly instead of abjectly and, most unforgivably of all, in the very beginning of the story. Both the former Navy SEAL honour-student who went into business after his military service and the heroin addict dying off a combination of Hep C and poor nutrition that he passes on his way to work in the morning are 'normal people'. It's just that the world holds rather more people like those who pass them both in the course of their own ordinary lives and would greet adventure with panic, mistakes and an early demise. *The way GURPS arranges skills, it is far more expensive to learn the basic skills of a soldier, scout, criminal or magician than it is to become an astonishingly broadly competent academic or a world-class expert in a variety of crafts less useful on an adventure. In reality, it takes far more time to learn many academic skills than the same amount of points of fighting skills, but that's glossed over.
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12-11-2012, 09:07 AM | #22 | |
Join Date: Nov 2009
Location: Albuquerque
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Re: What's with the modesty about stats?
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It's completely reasonable. Just because it's on paper and not testable in real life doesn't make it unreasonable by default. |
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12-11-2012, 09:09 AM | #23 |
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Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: Forest Grove, Beaverton, Oregon
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Re: What's with the modesty about stats?
Gurps IQ is really all things mental, which just includes what we call basic intelligence in common language.
Imagine the physical version, that includes fitness, strength, toughness, resistance to disease, poison, all forms of injury, healing, hand eye coordination, full body coordination, etc. No one is super duper at all those. I'm not even sure I believe in general intelligence in reality. It's all specialized modular forms, I think.
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12-11-2012, 09:13 AM | #24 | |
Join Date: Sep 2004
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Re: What's with the modesty about stats?
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Spider-man doesn't necessarily have an amazing DX since that's more of a skill base than anything else. Sure, he has a reasonably high DX and lots of raw potential for DX-based skills but his real claim to fame is being basically impossible to touch which translates to a really high Dodge/Speed score. There are plenty of skill DX based characters that work better with a higher DX than Spidey. In fact, other game systems (MSH) represent Spidey with decent skills and amazing dodging capacity while other characters like Cap and Hawkeye are much better at fighting even if they can't dodge as well. The Silver Surfer is a better model for absurdly high DX - he's inhumanly graceful, good at everything (even from default), has a lot of general experience (hundreds of years at trying things?), and quick but doesn't dodge as well as Spidey. Reed is known as being super smart but he only really displays a lot of academic prowess. Outside of the "nerdy" fields, he's been shown to be somewhat less than proficient even at things that would be IQ-based in GURPS. You could represent that with social incompetence but Reed isn't shy or clueless - he's just not as well rounded as a 20 IQ would suggest. There's a fair amount of evidence that the Thing has just as much willpower and that Susan is as perceptive at noticing things. Certainly if you're building Reed on a budget, I would go for a moderately high IQ and Talents/Science! rather than just IQ. |
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12-11-2012, 09:18 AM | #25 | |
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Iceland*
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Re: What's with the modesty about stats?
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A permanent injury, disease, disorder or any other form of affliction that imposes penalties to all uses of Attributes or prevent one from using Advantages are represented in game terms by lowering that Attribute or dropping that Advantage. People with a game leg lower Move. People who survive a wasting disease might lower ST, DX and HT. GURPS Attributes don't represent some innate, immuatable fact. They are a composite of inborn and accumulated gifts; not just potential, but actual, realised ability. A child that had the potential to become astonishingly intelligent, but suffered neglect and deprivation in childhood which seriously affected learning ability, self-confidence and practical living skills doesn't have a high GURPS IQ in adulthood. *Which may or may not be worth points, depending on whether the GM would ordinarily limit that.
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12-11-2012, 09:25 AM | #26 | |
Join Date: Nov 2009
Location: Albuquerque
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Re: What's with the modesty about stats?
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12-11-2012, 09:27 AM | #27 | |
Join Date: May 2012
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Re: What's with the modesty about stats?
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Thanks for the chuckle. "Majority of people are low-income service workers...and not particulalry succsesful ones neither" Made me smile and cry at the same time. |
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12-11-2012, 09:52 AM | #28 | |
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Iceland*
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Re: What's with the modesty about stats?
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You can certainly rationalise this as being the result of trauma or some other factor in your character's backstory. In fact, that's probably good characterisation, making the numbers on the character sheet mean something in terms of history and perhaps even personality and motivation. But that doesn't change the fact that until the point the character buys up his IQ, he doesn't have a super-high IQ. It doesn't matter what he could or should have, it only matters what he does have.
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12-11-2012, 10:03 AM | #29 | |
Join Date: Feb 2012
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Re: What's with the modesty about stats?
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Dai Blackthorn was a greenhorn burglar wearing tattered clothings. DX 15 and IQ 12 -.-" |
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12-11-2012, 10:09 AM | #30 | |
Join Date: Oct 2005
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Re: What's with the modesty about stats?
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As for tying Will and Per to IQ, that's a whole 'nother issue, but it's definitely possible to sell those back. |
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attributes, stats |
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