[Space] Creating Synthesist characters

[whswhs]

Robert Heinlein had a society run by them in his early novel Beyond This Horizon. A.E. Van Vogt's The Voyage of the Space Beagle inserted one into a series of stories that got woven together into a novel, under the label "nexialists." So they go back a ways before Brunner. . . .

Heinlein, at least, gave them all eidetic memory, though he somewhat overestimated the utility of eidetic memory, I think.

[Celti]

It seems to me that if any non-military character has Intelligence Analysis a synthesist does. Really they might even have an IQ/VH version of it with expanded powers over all fields of knowledge, or maybe even a variant on Oracle (Digital).

Every Current Affairs speciality, in spades. A whole host of Expert Skills. Versatile. Jack Of All Trades is a good representation of some "immensely broad but shallow" knowledge. High raw IQ, of course. Probably other stuff.

[Prince Charon]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Robert Heinlein had a society run by them in his early novel Beyond This Horizon. A.E. Van Vogt's The Voyage of the Space Beagle inserted one into a series of stories that got woven together into a novel, under the label "nexialists." So they go back a ways before Brunner. . . .

Heinlein, at least, gave them all eidetic memory, though he somewhat overestimated the utility of eidetic memory, I think.

I'm well aware of how far back it goes, I just picked Brunner because it looked shorter than the Asimov section from 1954, but more detailed & developed than the Smith section from 1949.

[Anders]

I'm a little surprised no one has mentioned Intuition yet. I could imagine a Wild Talent for knowledge skills, letting him make a brilliant guess on something wildly out of his field because he has amassed a lot of latent knowledge.

[Daigoro]

It's almost my favourite limitation, as I mention it in any thread of this nature, but Hypersensory from Psychometry (Powers p69) on the Intuition or Oracle would be a good build. It basically means that you're limited to results that could be explained from mundane information channels, instead of something psychic or supernatural.

[AOTA]

Would this be something like the Mentats from Dune?

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by AOTA

Would this be something like the Mentats from Dune?

Not quite. Mentats in Dune have minds like computers (which are forbidden in the setting).So the big items are Photograhic Memory and Intuitive Mathematician. Possibly even the Enhanced Time Sense variant from Powers: Enhanced Senses.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Not quite. Mentats in Dune have minds like computers (which are forbidden in the setting).So the big items are Photograhic Memory and Intuitive Mathematician. Possibly even the Enhanced Time Sense variant from Powers: Enhanced Senses.

This still sounds like using humans for what we design computers for now; correlating and cross referencing vast quantities of data.

[Johnny1A.2]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Not quite. Mentats in Dune have minds like computers (which are forbidden in the setting).So the big items are Photograhic Memory and Intuitive Mathematician. Possibly even the Enhanced Time Sense variant from Powers: Enhanced Senses.

True, but the high-end, senior Mentats use their abilities along the same lines as a synthesis, though restricted by certain logical rules inherently incorporated into their training. The Bene Gesserits do this even more, in a more general way, as well.

[Celti]

Originally Posted by Daigoro

It's almost my favourite limitation, as I mention it in any thread of this nature, but Hypersensory from Psychometry (Powers p69) on the Intuition or Oracle would be a good build. It basically means that you're limited to results that could be explained from mundane information channels, instead of something psychic or supernatural.

That's what Oracle (Digital) already is. See Powers, p. 65.