Quote:
Originally Posted by Astromancer
He isn't there as a PC, and rules are for player characters. He's meant to be a one man construction team. It makes the building of the canal viable. But his he really more implausible than a Medieval society with magic that still works like Earth's Medieval society?
More implausible than no technological change for a thousand years? More implausible than no gunpowder?
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For this, I will refer you to the box on page 31 of GURPS Banestorm. To summerize, Yrth is not meant to be realistic, or plausible. But it is meant to be coherent.
For all the magic and what not, humans in Yrth are still, well, human. This is so over the top that he's superhuman (at least in my book). He's so one-dimensionally min-maxed to Earth Magic that he's no longer (IMO) a character at all. He's just a piece of construction equipment that needs to be protected from the enemy. A MacGuffin.
And the rules apply to NPCs just as much as PCs. It's a play balance thing...you'll notice that all the NPC stat blocks in Banestorm include point totals.
I don't mean to antagonistic, nor do I want to harp on your play style. It's just that personally, my sense of play balance and narrative consistency just doesn't jell with 255 points in IQ and Magery. There's a lot of potential for story telling in your idea. Having Robert Del a Pole as a emigrant with IQ of 13 and Engineering/TL8, Geology, and Hydrology at 13 or 14, perhaps 15, as well as teaching ability, some charisma and latent bardic chops, and a passion for seeing his project done makes for good drama. Not only does he have to deal with the political aspect, now he has to learn to apply his TL8 skill base to TL3 technology and
magic, and figure out
how to get it done.