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Old 12-30-2017, 11:39 PM   #11
Skarg
 
Join Date: May 2015
Default Re: Realistic Point Gains

I like the guideline that starting characters can spend at most 2 x age in character points on skills.

If a player came to me with anything like this idea and method of presenting it, I'd be thinking of the actual PC having delusions about their own ability levels, and probably other mental disadvantages that the player probably wouldn't know about.

Player's character sheet:
Mary Sue, Age 17
ST 16 DX 16 IQ 16 HT 16
Advantages:
Ambidexterity; Discriminatory Hearing; Discriminatory Smell; Photographic Memory; Language Talent; Intuitive Mathematician; Sensitive Touch; Single-Minded; Versatile
Skills:400+ points in skills...

GM's version of character sheet:
Mary Sue, Age 17
ST 10 DX 11 IQ I2 HT 11
Advantages:
Literacy; Alertness +1; Language Talent +2; Mathematical Aptitude +2;
Disadvantages:
Delusions, Overconfidence, Inability to Distinguish Fantasies From Reality, Doesn't Know She's Confined To An Asylum, maybe Megalomania, etc.
Skills: Up to at most 34 points in things the character actually had access to good sources for.

Last edited by Skarg; 12-31-2017 at 12:07 AM.
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Old 12-30-2017, 11:45 PM   #12
sir_pudding
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Location: Ventura CA
Default Re: Realistic Point Gains

Quote:
Originally Posted by Skarg View Post
I like the guideline that starting characters can spend at most 2 x age in character points.
A 150 point character would need to be 75 year old then.

Last edited by sir_pudding; 12-30-2017 at 11:49 PM.
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Old 12-30-2017, 11:49 PM   #13
sir_pudding
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Default Re: Realistic Point Gains

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Originally Posted by Evadam View Post
*The unsuccesful story chances seem pretty interesting though.
Maybe to an oncologist.
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Old 12-31-2017, 12:06 AM   #14
Skarg
 
Join Date: May 2015
Default Re: Realistic Point Gains

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Originally Posted by sir_pudding View Post
A 150 point character would need to be 75 year old then.
I left out the part "on skills". I'll go edit my post to reduce confusion.
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Old 12-31-2017, 12:09 AM   #15
Johnny1A.2
 
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Default Re: Realistic Point Gains

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Originally Posted by whswhs View Post
Someone with 16s across the board is not "realistic" in the usual sense. She's more like Clark Savage, Jr. than like any person you could actually meet or hear of.
Though such a person is not strictly impossible. He or she might come along only once in a 1000 years, but still could technically happen in reality.
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Old 12-31-2017, 04:15 AM   #16
Alonsua
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Default Re: Realistic Point Gains

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Originally Posted by sir_pudding View Post
Maybe to an oncologist.
Can you elaborate?
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Old 12-31-2017, 04:17 AM   #17
Alonsua
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Default Re: Realistic Point Gains

Quote:
Originally Posted by Skarg View Post
I like the guideline that starting characters can spend at most 2 x age in character points on skills.

If a player came to me with anything like this idea and method of presenting it, I'd be thinking of the actual PC having delusions about their own ability levels, and probably other mental disadvantages that the player probably wouldn't know about.

Player's character sheet:
Mary Sue, Age 17
ST 16 DX 16 IQ 16 HT 16
Advantages:
Ambidexterity; Discriminatory Hearing; Discriminatory Smell; Photographic Memory; Language Talent; Intuitive Mathematician; Sensitive Touch; Single-Minded; Versatile
Skills:400+ points in skills...

GM's version of character sheet:
Mary Sue, Age 17
ST 10 DX 11 IQ I2 HT 11
Advantages:
Literacy; Alertness +1; Language Talent +2; Mathematical Aptitude +2;
Disadvantages:
Delusions, Overconfidence, Inability to Distinguish Fantasies From Reality, Doesn't Know She's Confined To An Asylum, maybe Megalomania, etc.
Skills: Up to at most 34 points in things the character actually had access to good sources for.
How is this an iconic and awesome character for a whole setting, if according to Biotech an average physician got IQ-13? More importantly, how does the skills limit respect the learning rules introduced in Back to School? How do you treat a player character trying to attend to college or get any kind of education?
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Old 12-31-2017, 04:24 AM   #18
Alonsua
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Default Re: Realistic Point Gains

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Originally Posted by malloyd View Post
Right for what exactly? If this is the backstory of a character designed for a 1000 point game and you just want to check to see if they are "plausible" compared to what somebody else might develop in play, then I suppose it's fine, though in fact there's no particular reason to bother doing that. If you have 1000 points, you have 1000 points, you don't need to explain where they come from, and your skills could be native talent and not study time anyway.

One fundamental issue is that all GURPS time requirement rules are unrealistic in the interest of adventuring drama. For example nobody in reality is going to prototype a new drug in *80 hours* - the synthetic chemistry might not even be physically possible that fast - or even 80 days. Nor will any real person will be able to study (or do anything else) 8 hours a day, 365 days a year. These rules are all structured for larger than life heroes to be able to finish some vital task in a reasonable period of time in play, not to attempt to simulate out of play backgrounds.
Well, I want her to be like an important/main NPC, I am designing the setting based on the real world and trying to make her some kind of modern Leonardo Da Vinci/Hippocrates/Galen. As I pointed out, an average character starts at about 0 points at age 15, and then gains perhaps 7-9 points a year while attending to education, lowering to about 2.25 a year if they get a job.
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Old 12-31-2017, 04:30 AM   #19
Alonsua
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Default Re: Realistic Point Gains

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Originally Posted by Icelander View Post
The rules for points that correlate with time spent on learning are guidelines and real people can learn much slower or faster, not to mention that some things worth points in GURPS can be gained incredibly fast* and some people need to work extremely hard at gaining traits, possibly never managing to reach skilled amateur levels.

I'm fairly certain that the learning rules weren't meant to be used for every minute of a character's life, from birth onward, but if you do, I think you should certainly account for the fact that a lot of the time until adulthood is going to be spent on learning to be a functioning person, gaining around 10 in Attributes, accumulating normal defaults for someone of your culture and getting Cultural Familiarity and Native language.

Cultural Familiarity is actually a good example of a trait where the time to gain it correlates not at all with the learning rules. Despite costing only 1 character point, it can take years to develop and usually only by living in the culture. You absolutely cannot learn it in a couple of weeks of intensive training or even a semester of academic studies.

*Losing Reluctant Killer, gaining Combat Reflexes and adding points in combat skills could be the result of one gunfight which marked a person for life. And a higher Wealth level, Status and a multitude of Contacts can result from a single successful business trip as a young genius investor meets an angel investor who introduces him around, ending up with offers from several technology giants to buy out his company. Spending points gained through 'adventuring' is every bit as realistic as using a rule where every 200 hours sometimes equal a character point and quite a bit more realistic than believing that 1 character point always equals 200 hours of study.
This is where Back to School applies mods based on advantages such as Single-Minded (+30%), Talents (X/(1-talent level/10), Education Quality, etc... isnt it? For the account if I introduce the houserule of charging 1/3 of the attributes cost while growing up, average adults start at 0 points when they age fifteen, would that work?
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Old 12-31-2017, 04:39 AM   #20
Alonsua
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Default Re: Realistic Point Gains

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Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl View Post
There are going to be very few realistic characters built on 1000 points unless they max out a couple of attributes (which will create characters that do not feel realistic, even if they are technically realistic). While exceptional people do exist, very few people are going to have 16's across the board (a character with 360 points in attributes is probably going to be a 1:1,000,000 type of person and will be a celebrated and well-known genius and athlete).

Concerning study times, they should probably be considered a workable average. Basic training and other intensive training regimes max out at 26 weeks because even exceptional human beings cannot devote more time than that before they crack. When you look at US colleges, 15 hours a week of classes (with 30 hours of week of self-study in the form of homework and readings) for thirty weeks tends to be considered an acceptable load to avoid overwhelming a student (which translates to 900 hours of study a year). With work and hobbies, a college study can probably gain a maximum of 6 character points per year (4.5 from study and 1.5 from work and hobbies). With four years of college, that is only an extra 24 character points, so massive gains in competency are unlikely unless you study for decades.
This is fine enough, to my system there are exactly 1 person with a 16 on anything (like IQ-16 or ST-16, but not both) in a sample of 1.013.594.634 people, sixteen in all stats among the board would take 1.055.497.508.229.160.000.000.000.000.000.000.000 (so while not impossible, never have such amount of human beings ever lived). As for her initial stats (13/13/13/12) I calculated them being possible on one person in 17.869.532.385 (experts estimate than there have been 107.602.707.791 humans to ever live since 50.000 BC).
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