Realistic Point Gains

[Andreas]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

A character with 1,000 points is not exceptional, they are superhuman.

That is not really the case. There are plenty of advantages which aren't realistically mutually exclusive. Just social advantages alone could take up half of those points. For example, 50 points in Alternate Identities, 175 points in Wealth, 35 points in Reputations, 10 points in legal immunity, 10 points in Status, 10 points in Security Clearance, 10 points in Social Regard as well as 200 points in Contacts and Contact Groups, makes for a total of 500 points.

The theoretically highest possible point value for a realistic human being is very high.

[mr beer]

Originally Posted by Andreas

That is not really the case. There are plenty of advantages which aren't realistically mutually exclusive. Just social advantages alone could take up half of those points. For example, 50 points in Alternate Identities, 175 points in Wealth, 35 points in Reputations, 10 points in legal immunity, 10 points in Status, 10 points in Security Clearance, 10 points in Social Regard as well as 200 points in Contacts and Contact Groups, makes for a total of 500 points.

The theoretically highest possible point value for a realistic human being is very high.

Agree with this, all points are not created equal. Multimillionaire 2 is 100 points and is more common than HT 20 [100] and a lot easier to achieve, although still highly challenging of course.

[sir_pudding]

Reputations and Contacts are definitely priced with the assumption that a player character will only have a few that are significant. This is like fiction, especially adventure fiction, but maybe not as much like reality (or some mainstream fiction but I am pretty unconvinced that many people game these kinds of stories). I wouldn't allow a PC to have hundreds of points in either trait, it would be unplayable.

[dataweaver]

The point (no pun intended) is that social traits tend to come and go far more readily than physical or mental traits do. One big public incident, and suddenly you've got a Reputation. At the very least, they don't conform to the study rules that this thread was founded on. Unless you're using something like Buckets of Points/Social Points from Alternate GURPS IV(?) where you segregate your points according to how they might be gained or lost, you're going to have problems with the “Realistic Point Gains” question.

[Alonsua]

Originally Posted by Andreas

That is not really the case. There are plenty of advantages which aren't realistically mutually exclusive. Just social advantages alone could take up half of those points. For example, 50 points in Alternate Identities, 175 points in Wealth, 35 points in Reputations, 10 points in legal immunity, 10 points in Status, 10 points in Security Clearance, 10 points in Social Regard as well as 200 points in Contacts and Contact Groups, makes for a total of 500 points.

The theoretically highest possible point value for a realistic human being is very high.

Originally Posted by mr beer

Agree with this, all points are not created equal. Multimillionaire 2 is 100 points and is more common than HT 20 [100] and a lot easier to achieve, although still highly challenging of course.

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

Reputations and Contacts are definitely priced with the assumption that a player character will only a few that are significant. This is like fiction, especially adventure fiction, but maybe not as much like reality (or some mainstream fiction but I am pretty unconvinced that many people game these kinds of stories). I wouldn't allow a PC to have hundreds of points in either trait, it would be unplayable.

Originally Posted by dataweaver

The point (no pun intended) is that social traits tend to come and go far more readily than physical or mental traits do. One big public incident, and suddenly you've got a Reputation. At the very least, they don't conform to the study rules that this thread was founded on. Unless you're using something like Buckets of Points/Social Points from Alternate GURPS IV(?) where you segregate your points according to how they might be gained or lost, you're going to have problems with the “Realistic Point Gains” question.

It is very fine to segregate the points and it wont be much harder to code it, but I would like to achieve a common conclussion in order to do so :)

[Hide]

Originally Posted by Alonsua

(...) I need some help backing my design, or, putting it simply, regard or disregard it as realistic (...)

So, “Realistic point gains” in perspective of what? For example:

Let's suppose your NPC was friends with your PCs and they escape a lab.
All of you have 100 CP, but after you escape, you take different paths.
Then, you meet X number of years later; your PCs have 250 CP, but your NPC has 1250 CP.

Then, is it you don't know how to justify the overwhelming growth of your NPC?
Is that what you meant? That you want to justify the growth of your NPC in a believable way?

If you want to be "realistic" as replicating real life, such realism depends on how you acquire and spend those points and the ways it reflects in your world’s setting in comparison to real life.

"Realism in a setting" depends on "what is normal" for your setting. If you are football players, it is pretty unlikely having a teammate which also has a consummated career on neurosurgery and physics, regardless of his condition as a professional football player.

I believe your NPC's should be more or less on the same level your player characters will be. And by level I mean capabilities (which are in part, delimited by CP). It is nice if one of your NPCs football players invests 100 CP to be pretty charismatic, good at dancing and enthralling his team or rivals and also being very fit, but it is weird if he has Altered Time Rate instead (while no body has this).

If you are the GM and you have a boss NPC, this boss should be strong enough to provide a challenge but to some extent, be "resistible" by your player’s characters. If your boss has lots of CP it should be accordingly to stuff which story-wise, compels to their role. For example, a king might have super wealth, powerful allies and good diplomacy. But maybe all of his stats are at level 10 (except IQ).

This king has 1,158 CP:

1. Allies 150% point total +10, appear constantly x4, group of 100 x12, minion +50% and special abilities 50%. [960]
2. IQ 15 [100]
3. Common sense, conscious [15]
4. Wealth Multimillionaire 1 [75]
5. And skills: Diplomacy, Writing, Public Speaking and Politics (2 CP each) [8]

Regardless of his CP, finding this king is/was possible in this world; hence it is "realistic" if this setting should compel to this world. On the other hand, following the example of "escaping the facility", maybe this “king” used to be one of your friends, and after he escaped, his brilliant diplomacy paved his way to power.

Now, your character has 1,252 CP (or so I understand).

IMO having "ST15, DX14, IQ14 and HT14" (which is 250 CP) is just too much: This lets you roll almost any skill above 12 by investing just 1 CP after properly learning it. Your NPC has at least 200 CP invested on the advantages you mentioned... and it seems she has 800 CP left for skills. Also it seems she developed the technology to enhance her body by herself, and that she did all of the augmentations to herself all alone? Finally, she needs pills to avoid sleeping, but she did not afford bio-mods for this?

I would start by choosing wild talents (the cybernetic wild talent) and wild cards to tropicalize this character's capabilities. Then I would at least, limit this NPC’s CP to 150% of the average starting points in your setting. And probably, I would start over from this point to redefine its concept.

If the rest of the population in your setting can do the same (or might be capable of doing it or something similar or worth as much), then it might be “realistic” (plausible) in your setting to have a character gaining CP as your NPC did. If other characters simply can't, then it is out of proportion (and probably not realistic). What do you think?

Take care,
- Hide

[Alonsua]

Originally Posted by Hide

So, “Realistic point gains” in perspective of what? For example:

Let's suppose your NPC was friends with your PCs and they escape a lab.
All of you have 100 CP, but after you escape, you take different paths.
Then, you meet X number of years later; your PCs have 250 CP, but your NPC has 1250 CP.

Then, is it you don't know how to justify the overwhelming growth of your NPC?
Is that what you meant? That you want to justify the growth of your NPC in a believable way?

If you want to be "realistic" as replicating real life, such realism depends on how you acquire and spend those points and the ways it reflects in your world’s setting in comparison to real life.

"Realism in a setting" depends on "what is normal" for your setting. If you are football players, it is pretty unlikely having a teammate which also has a consummated career on neurosurgery and physics, regardless of his condition as a professional football player.

I believe your NPC's should be more or less on the same level your player characters will be. And by level I mean capabilities (which are in part, delimited by CP). It is nice if one of your NPCs football players invests 100 CP to be pretty charismatic, good at dancing and enthralling his team or rivals and also being very fit, but it is weird if he has Altered Time Rate instead (while no body has this).

If you are the GM and you have a boss NPC, this boss should be strong enough to provide a challenge but to some extent, be "resistible" by your player’s characters. If your boss has lots of CP it should be accordingly to stuff which story-wise, compels to their role. For example, a king might have super wealth, powerful allies and good diplomacy. But maybe all of his stats are at level 10 (except IQ).

This king has 1,158 CP:

1. Allies 150% point total +10, appear constantly x4, group of 100 x12, minion +50% and special abilities 50%. [960]
2. IQ 15 [100]
3. Common sense, conscious [15]
4. Wealth Multimillionaire 1 [75]
5. And skills: Diplomacy, Writing, Public Speaking and Politics (2 CP each) [8]

Regardless of his CP, finding this king is/was possible in this world; hence it is "realistic" if this setting should compel to this world. On the other hand, following the example of "escaping the facility", maybe this “king” used to be one of your friends, and after he escaped, his brilliant diplomacy paved his way to power.

Now, your character has 1,252 CP (or so I understand).

IMO having "ST15, DX14, IQ14 and HT14" (which is 250 CP) is just too much: This lets you roll almost any skill above 12 by investing just 1 CP after properly learning it. Your NPC has at least 200 CP invested on the advantages you mentioned... and it seems she has 800 CP left for skills. Also it seems she developed the technology to enhance her body by herself, and that she did all of the augmentations to herself all alone? Finally, she needs pills to avoid sleeping, but she did not afford bio-mods for this?

I would start by choosing wild talents (the cybernetic wild talent) and wild cards to tropicalize this character's capabilities. Then I would at least, limit this NPC’s CP to 150% of the average starting points in your setting. And probably, I would start over from this point to redefine its concept.

If the rest of the population in your setting can do the same (or might be capable of doing it or something similar or worth as much), then it might be “realistic” (plausible) in your setting to have a character gaining CP as your NPC did. If other characters simply can't, then it is out of proportion (and probably not realistic). What do you think?

Take care,
- Hide

As per her history, after checking all her character sheets from age 0 to 32, I concluded that she attended full time elite education (150h/month) and self-teaching (165h/month) for her first fourteen years of life. After that, she kept pursuing her formal education and invested the rest of her freetime in research, but when she was seventeen she got to finally develop this "stay awake" drug, so she kept researching and pursued education for (225h/month). When she was twenty she lowered her education time (to 150h/month) and increased her researching efforts. At twenty-five she went into half-time education (lowering to 75h/month) and finally dropped when she was twenty-seven in order to dedicate completely to her research.

Her decision to develop drugs instead of biomods came because she consider them to be less dangerous, since she can restrict the access to the drugs, but once a biomod is in place, it lasts forever. This guarantees quite of a loyalty too, since she controls production and distribution not only of the "stay awake" drug, but of an "accelerated learning", an "extended lifespan" and the cancer vaccines too. In addition, she considers these practises to be more profitable, since you can only sell a biomod to a person once, but you can keep selling them vaccines and drugs forever.

Her research started developing a bioengineering software with around five million dollars and half a dozen employees when she was fifteen, and from then on around her breakthroughs a corporation with almost two hundred thousand employees and four hundred billions market cap has grown. She always used as much help as posible, but she was the leading researcher, so to speak.

[Hide]

Originally Posted by Alonsua

(...) As per her history, after checking all her character sheets from age 0 to 32, (...)

Well, this is what I think:

Let's suppose this person is a human being living right now, in our world. Consider that a child's brain is not ready to endure 315 hours of training per month. Roughly, a child's body and mind are not in shape to do so; and this is natural, because this person's development is incomplete.

Since your NPC receives special education for the first 14 years of life. I will assume that she starts education at age 1.

From age 1-14, you don't have enough development to properly discern anything, and more importantly, you don't have the "mental-structure" to tell between useful and useless information, good and bad sources; you don't know how to employ your knowledge in specialized fields, because you also lack basic knowledge of the world and other obvious things.

This does not mean you cannot learn anything. But the abilities to direct your focus, imagine and discern among good/bad information and knowledge, are yet to be acquired. And probably, this will take place until adolescence. Perhaps once your NPC is 8 years old.

Regarding her education program, if a month has 30 days, then you have 720 hours per day. Out of these, I will consider this:

240 hours of sleep
90 hours to eat/groom yourself everyday
60 hours to move from one place to another or spend "dead time" events (ie. turning book pages, booting a pc, small pauses between your actions, waiting for your teachers, events out of your control, etc.)
30 hours "socializing" or in human interaction (greeting, asking for food, small-talk, etc.)

After this, you have 300 hours left. Then, you have 150 hours of school and 165 hours of "self-teaching".
That yields 735 hours spend in a month. (-15 hours out of 720)

Take into account that in order to make your knowledge useful, you need to put it into practice. With this schedule, it is highly unlikely that your NPC put to practice most of the stuff she learned. But, she might have specialized in a certain field, that would be acceptable.

Considering her rigorous education program, I suppose you want to support the fact she knows many things. Is this right? And then, when you say "I compared all of her character sheets from age 0 to age 32", I suppose you are stacking all of the stuff she has learned. Is this correct?

Let's suppose your NPC is older, and now she has the basic stuff to focus in her goals and drive herself.

Having photographic memory does not mean you can handle and execute your knowledge flawlessly.

You could have learned how to fire a gun, but if you don't fire often, you get rusty. If you studied surgery, you might have the basic knowledge to practice surgery, but you are not ready for "the special situations" of the trade. Your NPC could be the child playing the drums at age 4, but probably, she won’t do it properly if she does not play the drums in the following 10 years (even if she performed “acceptably” at age 4).

So, studying in fact, is not enough to grant your NPC loads of CP. It does not matter if your NPC took nootropics or if she has less sleep. All of it is flavor for her background. This is more or less what I mean:

Originally Posted by whswhs

(...) If you're building her as a PC, she has whatever you can pay for with the character points the GM allows you. Arguments about "she could have spent this many hours a month on study" don't carry any weight. You get to start doing that kind of computation after she enters play, and if you then have her spend all her time obsessively trying to become a superwoman, she won't have any time for adventuring. (...)

However, all of her knowledge could justify this advantage we often see in real life: When one know lots of stuff and is clever, one can link ideas and solve problems more easily.

So, instead of giving her lots of CP (or probably stacking all of her previous CSs), employ her background to justify a wildcard skill for "the job she practices" (B175) and mental advantages such as wild-talent with retention (B99) and/or modular abilities (B71) to justify her impressive background-knowledge and the capability to do lots of things.

I believe the rules behind those items could make your character more plausible. This will also save you some room in your character sheet. Then, you can buy any other skills you deem required.

Finally take a look at the CPs your other characters will have.
She should be more or less the same if you want her to belong to your world's setting.

In this world, we have young geniuses in specialized fields. Such as this kid playing the drums at age 4, but that was mostly, the effort of their parents and the potential they spotted and how they put the kid to work.

I don't deem your NPCs achievements impossible (i.e. conveniently discovering the drug to sleep less and study more), but if this is for a realistic setting she might need a partner/source lending her significant guidance and support. For example, gun-powder and its current applications were discovered after several years of observation and after gathering the of knowledge and theories made by many people (at first, it was medicine). With this, I mean that inventions usually have a background. Another example, Steve Jobs created an innovative cellphone, but it was not the first phone in the world.

If I was the GM, I would tell you that from age 0-14, she naturally lacks the individual-development to drive herself to the extent she did. In other words, I would change that or make it clearer.

Then, I would take real-life examples of "young successful people" in order to learn about the kind successes these people had, expecting you would employ it as a reference for your NPC.

- Hide

[Algarik]

I’m no expert, and I don’t wish to offend you, but if I can give my humble opinion; this is completely unrealistic by Real world standards.

From age 0 to 14 she receive full time elite education (150h/month) and self-teaching (165/h) per month. Which mean she’s training an average of 10,5h/day? Imo, this is simply too much for a realistic child to handle no matter how special she is. If her parents overwork her too much, she’ll just suffer from an emotional breakdown, or any other kinds of severe mental disadvantages. She need to have free time, doing hobby’s and don’t forget Child and Teen ager tend to sleep more than adult do. You can’t treat her as an adult from the day she’s born.

At 17 years old she invented a drug that let her stay awake. This alone is a gigantic discovery that could take years to develop, if at all possible. To develop that kind of drug, someone would probably have to spend his a good part of his life testing, researching the effect on drugs on sleep and doing all kind research on related subject, let alone getting the founding to do say research. (Even if she’s from a rich family, that’s a lot of money to throw for a ‘’maybe’’). Beside, At 17 years old, people don’t do research, they go to college and learn a bunch of academics skills in many different areas, even the really smarts one. At 17 years old people are normally accepted into college and most are not even sure of what they want do. To think that someone would have had the time and dedication to research and develop such a revolutionary drug is out of mind. Take Albert Einstein for example; he got his Ph.D. at 26 years old. He published his popular theory of General Relativity around 1915. Which mean he was around 36 years old at the time?

After having successfully done the impossible, she then kept researching while studying for an average of 7,5h/day. She never stops doesn’t she?! She then proceeded to develop an enhancing learning capacity drug, an extending lifespan drug and the cure for all cancers in a ten years span?

I don’t think this kind of character could ever feel realistic if you consider all the detail. To even feel remotely realistic I think she would have to be much older and I wouldn’t give her the credits for every invention you listed.

[Alonsua]

Originally Posted by Algarik

I’m no expert, and I don’t wish to offend you, but if I can give my humble opinion; this is completely unrealistic by Real world standards.

From age 0 to 14 she receive full time elite education (150h/month) and self-teaching (165/h) per month. Which mean she’s training an average of 10,5h/day? Imo, this is simply too much for a realistic child to handle no matter how special she is. If her parents overwork her too much, she’ll just suffer from an emotional breakdown, or any other kinds of severe mental disadvantages. She need to have free time, doing hobby’s and don’t forget Child and Teen ager tend to sleep more than adult do. You can’t treat her as an adult from the day she’s born.

At 17 years old she invented a drug that let her stay awake. This alone is a gigantic discovery that could take years to develop, if at all possible. To develop that kind of drug, someone would probably have to spend his a good part of his life testing, researching the effect on drugs on sleep and doing all kind research on related subject, let alone getting the founding to do say research. (Even if she’s from a rich family, that’s a lot of money to throw for a ‘’maybe’’). Beside, At 17 years old, people don’t do research, they go to college and learn a bunch of academics skills in many different areas, even the really smarts one. At 17 years old people are normally accepted into college and most are not even sure of what they want do. To think that someone would have had the time and dedication to research and develop such a revolutionary drug is out of mind. Take Albert Einstein for example; he got his Ph.D. at 26 years old. He published his popular theory of General Relativity around 1915. Which mean he was around 36 years old at the time?

After having successfully done the impossible, she then kept researching while studying for an average of 7,5h/day. She never stops doesn’t she?! She then proceeded to develop an enhancing learning capacity drug, an extending lifespan drug and the cure for all cancers in a ten years span?

I don’t think this kind of character could ever feel realistic if you consider all the detail. To even feel remotely realistic I think she would have to be much older and I wouldn’t give her the credits for every invention you listed.

As I was designing this character, I checked how old the youngest doctors in history were, and she was admitted to college at a very young age, having finished her bachelor at ten, her master at twelve and her first doctorate (Ph.D.) at fourteen. As for the inventions I used the invention rules in the campaign basic set. For her skill she was at 24 + 1 (versatile) +5 (weird science), since I have always been told that gadgeteering is unrealistic. As for the time dedicated, it is just a number, I applied a penalty per every point in will under ten (-10%), which at very young ages turns into -50%, though it is important to note that she has hereditary single-minded. As per the available time, I calculated 8h/day (education) +4h/day (self-teaching) with 12h/day (self-teaching on weekends), and then used a factor of 93.75%. This lefts her with 12 "free hours" a day, 8 to sleep and 4 for whatever (she takes 1.5h/day for eating and drinking, which leaves her with 2.5h/day for anything else, which I consider enough for taking a shower and transportation when needed), with some extra 21h/month of "dead time". I think that she gained mental disadvantages every time she failed a learning roll as per Back to School, but I will double check on this.