Attribute levels and their meanings.

[Daigoro]

Originally Posted by warmachine

GURPS Mysteries has a Sherlock Holmes like template with IQ 17. A character with this defaults to professional levels in untrained IQ skills.

I think this points more to a problem with how defaults work than to a problem with having high IQ characters. Using one of the variant rules for defaults- I think one uses 2/3 of IQ?- should fix the issue.

[hal]

Originally Posted by Daigoro

I think this points more to a problem with how defaults work than to a problem with having high IQ characters. Using one of the variant rules for defaults- I think one uses 2/3 of IQ?- should fix the issue.

Or changing the caps.

Sadly? If we're going to start splitting hairs - the real issue is that GURPS bundles IQ, Will, and Perception all into one stat.

In a more realistic world - I would expect that each of those stats would be their own stat, each starting at 10 for average. Geniuses either are such because they have a talent in some specific area - but are lacking in other areas, or they are such that they are Idiot Savants, or (so it seems to me from what little I've read) rare individuals who are GOOD in everything they set themselves at where brainpower is the order of the day.

For me, no one should EVER be able to be treated as professionally trained while having no real time in the skill itself. That means for me, caps should be set at the very least, at 15 with a -4 penalty for easy skill, starting at 11. Even THAT is perhaps too high.

The thing about man, is that if he can reasonably go with "it is sort of like this, but clearly different, maybe I can do this from what I know and make it work" It is a means of working by inference rather than from direct knowledge. That sometimes works, but the real issue is that often, working by inference leaves out the shortcuts or the easy way of doing things that someone in the know would be able to do. Someone not in the know - not so much.

In the end, as a game system, there are certain rules emplaced to make the game "viable" as opposed to "realistic". <shrug>

I guess in a way, having benchmarks for what attribute means is a good thing largely because we're either working with total fiction and the story is not really going to care about realism, or - we're dealing with some form of simulation, in which case - we try to figure out what is a realistic effect and make the rules in a roundabout fashion, produce that result (on average).

Knowing that a ST of X will lift Y pounds is an easily measurable metric and/or benchmark to work with. Same with DX. Ditto with HT (to some extent). But IQ? We're still arguing what it means despite the fact that GURPS has been around since 1986. That's over 30 years of eyeballing it and not being able to agree. My gut instinct is that we never will right up to the day we start keeling over of old age and finding what lies on the other side of the curtain of death.

(not to be pessimistic or a downer or anything!)

[roguebfl]

Originally Posted by schmeelke

That's 1 GURPS IQ point = 20 real I.Q. points.

Ack you headed down a dead end path. GURPS IQ doesn't not have either a direct nor probational relationship to IQ test score. It not just a measur of problem solving ability, it also measure you ability to memorizes, and general experience, as well as you social abutide.

A HIGH GURPS IQ person isn't the person with the best IQ, theory Renaissances polymath the sociable, and excells at both the Arts and the Sciences