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Old 03-13-2018, 12:08 AM   #131
Gollum
 
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Default Re: Defining IQ

In my humble opinion, GURPS rules are very well designed here. To the question which has been posted a few pages aboves (can a mentally disabled guy become as bright as Einstein with time and training?), the sad but obvious answer sounds to be no. Even I, an ordinary man, won't ever. But exactly as I, the mentally disabled guy can improve from his current level.

Now, what do the numbers say? To raise IQ by 1 level, you need 20 CP. Which represent 4, 000 hours of training with a teacher or 8,000 hours of training without teacher. Since there is no teacher who teaches general IQ, it becomes very huge! 1,000 days, 8 hours a day. Who will ever stand such a training?

Of course, there are also CP gained during adventure. But if you follow GURPS rules strictly, there must be a good reason to improve something before doing it. And one good reason is experience. You can improve an ability that you used a lot during the adventure. And most often, you use skills rather than IQ.

So, yes you can raise IQ, or DX, or any other attribute. But if the GM pay a bit attention to what you do wit your CP, rather than letting you improve your abilities magically, like in D&D, they won't raise a lot.

Last edited by Gollum; 03-13-2018 at 12:14 AM.
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Old 03-13-2018, 12:33 AM   #132
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Default Re: Defining IQ

Also, note that Social Engineering: Back to School pp. 10 pretty much agrees with me that raising Dexterity, Intelligence, Will, Perception and Talents are hard to justify improving and it cites them as primarily being functions of the nervous system. I had not read this at the time of my earlier post, but it in fact repeats almost exactly what I said. Thus the official position of interpretation of realism and attributes in GURPS is pretty damn close to my own according to this supplement that deals specifically with intelligence, learning, training and character advancement.
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Dexterity, Intelligence, Will, Perception, and Talents are largely functions of the nervous system in particular, but it’s hard to justify “training” them in realistic terms. While there are “brain exercises” that claim to maintain or improve overall cognitive functioning, it’s unclear whether these beneft applied mental performance or skills much.
Of course you're free to disregard it, but I regard this as both mechanically and actually correct. It then goes on for how to do this anyway, but the clear indication is that doing so is not particularly realistic based on the interpretation of these traits by the people who actually wrote 4e in the first place. While GURPS attributes are much broader than their real world analogues they are intended as gestalt representations of the basic functional capacities of the mind and body.

While raising IQ or DX may be an easier way to represent skill improvement in a broad area that in itself is probably unrealistic - because improving a whole bunch of skills should cost a ton of points, and getting to very high skill levels should take most of your adult life. IRL people don't get to improve their basic stats - they have to go the long way around. They don't get to bump IQ up just because it's 'cheaper' - they have to spend the 4 points on every single professional skill they want to raise by one rank. This also makes diversifying a trade-off: it's easier to diversify into multiple skills at lower rank than to pump one skill up to extreme levels, but then you have to spend time maintaining all those separate skills.

It's also related that many adult people seem to learn very little in any field, many professional technicians are basically at near the same proficiency in their 60s as they were in their 30s despite working for decades at it. Having practical skill improvement capped by the huge costs for exceeding IQ that far and the massive time investments and access to superior instructors is a pretty good way of simulating this.

This is also true in a lot of fiction - Batman never really gets any better after middle age. Conan becomes better in areas he hadn't trained before, and then gets worse as his reflexes degrade with age.

In short, while gaining new Talents and raising Attributes is a cost-effective way for characters that are already pretty high in many skills it's not particularly plausible. If you don't care about it it doesn't matter, but if you're aiming for a military simulator it's pretty inexplicable for your SEAL to suddenly become super agile.

The most realistic way to raise core attributes is to use TL9+ bio-tech and cybernetics.

Last edited by VonKatzen; 03-13-2018 at 12:57 AM.
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Old 03-13-2018, 01:01 AM   #133
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Default Re: Defining IQ

I agree the split between a gamable improvement system and reality is important here.

If nothing else even in reality in everyday life we tend to judge intelligence by how it allows people to achieve stuff not a raw quotient or stat that we all walk about clearly displaying. I think in reality there's a lot of blurring between in GURPS terms 'skill' and 'base attribute'.

Basically what's clear on the PC sheet as a hard cut off point between the two, it is in reality less clear in use and even less clear to outside observers (other than those doing a very specific research into IQ who'll still need time and testing to rate a person).

Another factor that further blurs this line is defaulting off skills. EDIT, and talents as well of course!

Tl;dr we don't all walk around with our character sheets on display, so judging exactly how we 'spent our points' can be a bit tough (even for ourselves).

Last edited by Tomsdad; 03-13-2018 at 01:21 AM.
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Old 03-13-2018, 01:05 AM   #134
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Default Re: Defining IQ

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Originally Posted by Tomsdad View Post
Another factor that further blurs this line is defaulting off skills.

Tl;dr we don't all walk around with our character sheets on display, so judging exactly how we 'spent our points' can be a bit tough (even for ourselves).
The reason I would keep the split is precisely because Defaulting and Skills with the Training and Maintaining rules implemented keeps people from becoming freakishly good at everything over time. At lower IQ levels this isn't that noticeable, but at 12+ it can start to become silly. Increasing skills to very high levels and maintaining them is a huge time investment, whereas IQ is just a natural capacity and not only has huge impacts across the board but also requires no effort to retain. Getting a lot of lower level skills is also a bigger time/point investment than raising your IQ via CP.

Again, I'm mainly focusing here on realism and not balance or fiction. Since a lot of fiction follows minimal logic in anything and balance is basically an imaginary construct they're not as subject to rational analysis.

I am working right now on running a very IRL-based campaign so this stuff has been on my mind a lot. A lot of optional rules in GURPS cover this stuff pretty well, though. It does hamper the PC's ability to improve how/wherever he wants, but of course this is a very realistic limitation. It actually makes a higher initial IQ even better, too, because you will never be able to improve it afterward, whereas you can always train or spend CP to improve skills (and do it better with a higher IQ).

Last edited by VonKatzen; 03-13-2018 at 01:08 AM.
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Old 03-13-2018, 01:56 AM   #135
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Default Re: Defining IQ

I think I'm happy to let stats vary over time (even if I'm a bit of a stat normaliser). But I tend to do so with an eye towards what the goal in terms of character build is, and try to encourage a holistic approach within the system. Because while there is some hard(ish) limits on human potential at times*, human realisation of it is a sum total of a lot of different things** especially when we measure it by specific (at times very specific) results.




*but it's a hard to judge before hand as some of those limits themselves are subject to their own sum of ongoing variables! (some are less so of course, height being the classic example). Height is complicated of course as the variables that set it individually mainly occur beforehand so speak, but some behaviour in early life can effect it (diet mainly), but it's normally limited in scale and individual expression. You're never going to go from 5'6" to 6' due to good diet, and average height change in population due to widespread dietary shifts tends to happen over generations. Although some are more extreme than others e.g N.Korea.


**and to be frank our highest achievements tend to involve excelling well in several at a time as a combined effect. What gets complicated is some of those are harder to access and amend than others!

Last edited by Tomsdad; 03-13-2018 at 05:10 AM.
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Old 03-13-2018, 01:58 AM   #136
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Default Re: Defining IQ

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Originally Posted by VonKatzen View Post
Again, I'm mainly focusing here on realism and not balance or fiction. Since a lot of fiction follows minimal logic in anything and balance is basically an imaginary construct they're not as subject to rational analysis.
The larger consideration would be is if the players find this resource management mini-game fun, challenging and worthwhile, or if they'd consider it an onerous amount of bookkeeping. IOW- What does this adherence to a particular dimension of realism bring to the gaming table?
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Old 03-13-2018, 02:18 AM   #137
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The larger consideration would be is if the players find this resource management mini-game fun, challenging and worthwhile, or if they'd consider it an onerous amount of bookkeeping. IOW- What does this adherence to a particular dimension of realism bring to the gaming table?
1) Being realistic is often the point of sim-type games. They're not for everyone. I wouldn't attempt, or bother, to try and explain the appeal to people who don't grok it intuitively. Some people like to play flight sims, some people prefer to snipe enemies on the ground with laser-firing sky tanks. Though there is some overlap they usually end up talking past each other, and it's a waste of time to even discuss it.
2) People are welcome to play, or not play, any game they please. I run and play games that interest me. Whether they interest other people is their affair and I don't particularly bother myself with such questions.
3) Functionally, it limits brute-force and min-maxing. Being super-strong and staying that way is extremely difficult. Winning combats or solving technical problems just by having an effective skill of 33 is sharply limited, etc. Waltzing through situations because you default to 12 in Brain Surgery and Hacking is prevented. Characters have to choose tactics, strategies and equipment to stack the deck in their favor because they can't use game Maths to defeat everything.
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Old 03-13-2018, 05:52 AM   #138
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Default Re: Defining IQ

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Originally Posted by VonKatzen View Post
1) Being realistic is often the point of sim-type games. They're not for everyone. I wouldn't attempt, or bother, to try and explain the appeal to people who don't grok it intuitively. Some people like to play flight sims, some people prefer to snipe enemies on the ground with laser-firing sky tanks. Though there is some overlap they usually end up talking past each other, and it's a waste of time to even discuss it.
2) People are welcome to play, or not play, any game they please. I run and play games that interest me. Whether they interest other people is their affair and I don't particularly bother myself with such questions.

Pretty much agree with this. Basically it's matter of personal preference. (but that said I don't think Daigoro was implying otherwise, rather just asking if your players matched your enthusiasms)

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Originally Posted by VonKatzen View Post
3) Functionally, it limits brute-force and min-maxing. Being super-strong and staying that way is extremely difficult. Winning combats or solving technical problems just by having an effective skill of 33 is sharply limited, etc. Waltzing through situations because you default to 12 in Brain Surgery and Hacking is prevented. Characters have to choose tactics, strategies and equipment to stack the deck in their favor because they can't use game Maths to defeat everything.
However this I'm not sure I agree with, I mean it can do that as a side effect but I think a more effective way of limiting this is to just limit brute force min maxing rather than build in a bunch of disincentives to do so. More over the system already has a lot of built in restrictions, to stop what you are trying to stop

Take your examples:

1). (Brain) Surgery, well first off surgery doesn't default to a stat, so unless you have one of the skills it does default to, you can't waltz in and do Surgery with just IQ. Also Brain being in the head comes with a -3 penalty so even if you are defaulting off another skill it's going to be tough!

2). Hacking or Computer Hacking also has no defaults, but is a cinematic skill. As it says more realistically it would include other computer skills. Some of these have defaults (Computer Operation) but others don't (Computer Programming)


The 'default everything from a monster stat' is I feel at times an over blown threat in GURPS. Now admittedly what you can do is have monster stats and spent 1pt on a whole bunch of skills that don't have defaults. But well to get that to reliably work it needs to be pretty good stat.

Take (brain) Surgery that's a VH skill so one point gets you a skill of IQ-3, so as above that's IQ-6 for head surgery.


So I think it's more that yeah a good raw stat will allow you to do a bunch of stuff not brilliantly but there are limitations. And a really high stat with a relatively small amount of points spent in skills will allow you to function at a broad and high level compared to most.

Obviously there is stuff like "jack of all trades" and so on, but they tend to be a). cinematic and b). inherently antagonistic to the kind of thing you are suggesting anyway.


But honestly if this is a driving why your bringing this idea in, how high do stats get in your games?

Last edited by Tomsdad; 03-13-2018 at 07:17 AM.
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Old 03-13-2018, 06:57 AM   #139
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Default Re: Defining IQ

Characters can take Dabbler to increase their defaults, but I do not see people screaming about how broken Dabbler is. If you are bothered by the defaults, change Rule of 20 to Rule of 16. It is such a minor part of most GURPS games that I doubt that many people will complain.
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Old 03-13-2018, 07:21 AM   #140
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Default Re: Defining IQ

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Characters can take Dabbler to increase their defaults, but I do not see people screaming about how broken Dabbler is. If you are bothered by the defaults, change Rule of 20 to Rule of 16. It is such a minor part of most GURPS games that I doubt that many people will complain.
Yep

Or I think there was a pyramid article that suggested Default at Stat/2 + some value depending on skill difficulty?
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