Pak Protecters in GURPS

[Dalillama]

Originally Posted by Kelly Pedersen

I don't think that feat is necessarily explained by high overall IQ, though. Pthssspok wasn't "baseline" when it came to starship engine maintenance. They were not only involved in the construction of their own ship in the first place, but they had also controlled the ship's drive manually through their entire voyage, at least using far less automation than a human would be comfortable with. Pthssspok's point levels in Mechanic (Fusion Drive) must have been enormous, simply from on-the-job training! And even if they didn't have any levels at all in Engineer (Fusion Drive), their default from Mechanic would have still have been quite good.

Drive engineering was Pthssspok's specialty, along with various branches of physics.

To judge Pthssspok's overall IQ, you also have to look at where, and how, he failed. And Pthssspok makes a couple notable errors in IQ-based skills that suggest, to me, that their IQ can't be absurdly high. First, of course, is the fact that they clearly rolled more poorly than Brennan did on Psychology, to work out the probable human reaction to Tree of Life, allowing Brennan to get the drop on Pthssspok. In fact, Brennan speculated that Pthssspok still thought Brennan was just behaving like a "normal" Protector, killing a competitor to ensure his own bloodline's monopoly on the transformation.

Pretty much the only Psychology skill it's possible for Pthssspok to have is Psychology (Pak Protector), because he's never in his life encountered (or even imagined, prior to arrival at Sol) a non-Protector sapience. He has zero frame of reference for how a human might act. Particularly since Pak have traits like Hidebound and Incurious that survive the transition, and Pthssspok undoubtedly has.

Second, though, and much more hugely, is Pthssspok's flub of a roll in the first place, putting Brennan into his cargo hold with inadequately secured Tree of Life. Pthssspok looked at Brennan and, knowing what an untransformed breeder looked like, decided that Brennan wasn't related, to the point where they were surprised that Brennan had eaten the root and undergone the change.

He knows full well the second he sees spaceships that they can't be crewed by breeders, and aren't crewed by Protectors. Therefore, despite superficial similarities, these aren't breeders, QED.

That, to me, is a major failure, if not a critical failure, on Biology, or Physiology, or something. I doubt very much that anyone trained in even TL 8 levels of those skills, when presented with an example of Homo sapiens next to one of Homo habilis, wouldn't instantly conclude they were closely related. Pthssspok doesn't even have the excuse of living in a universe where "parallel evolution" turns up humanoids on every world, because Niven was always pretty careful about having aliens be alien in Known Space, with very clearly different body plans.

The idea of breeders mutating is anathema to Pthsspok; his entire existence is devoted to making sure it doesn't happen. It's much, much easier to believe that convergent evolution produced superficially similar aliens than that he has failed so utterly before he even began.

So, my feeling is that Pthssspok must have been rolling their Biology or Physiology at default there, and must have had an effective skill level lower than 10, and probably notably lower, for that kind of failure to be probable.

I feel that psychological and situational disadvantages cover that adequately.

Much of their intelligence is better portrayed by giving them other "smart" traits, such as the list I suggested, and assuming that they frequently have a lot of points sunk into skills as well.

I added several of them to the revised template; Oracle and Gadgeteer I'd say are optional traits that Protectors from the right sort of background can buy, but aren't part of the basic package.

[jeff_wilson]

Originally Posted by Dalillama

Pretty much the only Psychology skill it's possible for Pthssspok to have is Psychology (Pak Protector), because he's never in his life encountered (or even imagined, prior to arrival at Sol) a non-Protector sapience.

I think saying he has never imagined it goes too far. The Library had records of the nearby systems being emptied and given the density of Slaver settlement it's very likely they encountered life on some of the planets when first encountered. This is consistent with Pak finding it plausible something might evolve and become smart enough to be a threat, so they not only loot the portable resources they break up any planets to discourage colonization in their direction, and then Pthssspok finds it later when searching the old records.