Re-calibrating Attribute Costs

[mburr0003]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

I don't really understand what "broadly and competently skilled but low attribute" represents in real terms.

Do you only allow PCs to be made if you can understand them in real terms? Do you never run/play supers or supernaturally powered games?

Has no one in your games ever said they want to play "Gomer Pyle Iron Man?" IE, a 'genius' level inventor, weapons and battlesuit engineer, capable wealthy business man, basically everything Tony Stark can do with making the suit, but a clueless, tongue tied, rube otherwise?

Sure, you could make that PC with IQ 18 and then a bunch mental and social Disads to drag him down to Gomer's level, but isn't it simpler (if not heavily expensive) to go the other route? And then, if you say, "Yes, it is simpler that way", then it's also simpler if instead of being a 'genius level' inventor, he's "everyday Batman". Just competent at a whole lot of things, but still Gomer Pyle level of "logical deductive reasoning and social graces".

Why would a stupid character be good at a wide range of intellectual skills? How could you master a wide range of intellectual skills and not get smarter?

Study, training, diligence, interest, Talent? I've met a lot of guys on work crews who were competent in a very broad selection of skills, but were still on the "low end" of the smarts slider. Heck, that's where I consider myself to exist.

I wouldn't give myself attributes over 11-12, but I'd need well over 100 points to be able to competently do everything I know I can successfully do under stress. And that's just figuring skills of 12, slightly better than 50% success under stress (which I don't actually consider competent, but I'm willing to accept Extra Time and Tool modifiers might also apply).

Originally Posted by mirtexxan

... set a attribute soft cap ...

Caps are not a solution, they are in fact the opposite of a solution to "Let's figure out how to have an IQ 18+ PC not steppy all over the IQ 12 broadly skilled PC".

BTW, have you checked Power Ups 9?

Yes I have. It's a good start and if I wanted to work in a vacuum I wouldn't have started a thread. Is there something from Power-Ups 9 you think particularly applies and want to bring up?

Originally Posted by nudj

I agree. Just put 1 or 2 points in most skills and interpret part of your higher IQ as learning.

"Just pretend the PC doesn't have a very high IQ" is also not actually fixing the problem.

And before you show up Anthony, no "0% feature" of "you don't actually have a high IQ, it's just a 20 point Talent for skill purposes" also isn't actually addressing the problem. Partially because in GURPS you don't just get what you pay for, but you should also get what you pay for.

And actually, the real solution might be "start over with an entirely new cost structure for everything"... in which case I'm also more than willing to hear thoughts on that as I consider it myself.

Originally Posted by Mr_Sandman

Another option that is particularly applicable in the case of IQ, is to break Per and Will off, and buy them up or down separately from a base of 10, rather than basing them off IQ.

Already done. In fact... I've been contemplating breaking off all derived Secondary Attributes... they are part and parcel with what I consider to be the root of the "Attribtues are too dang inexpensive" problem, just in a "high DX also gives high Speed, Move, and Dodge" (kinda), which... eh... less of a problem for me I guess? I've had far, far, far fewer Players wanting to boost DX to the stratosphere, because, well... most people simply do not invest heavily across as broad a sweep of DX Skills, and buying up just Move or Dodge is cheap enough that doing it separately isn't as big an issue.

The only PCs I've seen who keep pushing DX over individual Skills or Basic Speed are those who want a handful of skills and high Basic Speed (for Initiative, Move, and Dodge) or DF Thieves who want all the non-combat DX skills way up there... and then, well... they never really niche stomp now do they?

What is the story of a character that has a level of 33 in ax?

Why does it matter for the purposes of this discussion?

Is it ... even meaningful?

I'm guessing you've never even considered soaking -20 in combat on your to hit? We play different games you and I. (Yes, I know you're referring to Arcanjo7Sagi, but still.)

Sitting between attributes and skills, you can also make bespoke talents and anti-talents, that help to define a specific character concept.

You can, but Talents are simply never as attractive as raising base stats for most of my Players. Because Attributes are inexpensive compared to Skills (and everything else if it's DX or HT).

When it comes down to it, even without altering costs or putting on caps, you can just look at each character individually, and decide if they fit in your campaign or not.

That's not a useful contribution to a thread that's premise is literally "Let's redesign Attribute Costs".

Originally Posted by lvalero

You might want to review the proposal of Douglas Cole in Pyramid 3/65 "By default". He proposes basing the defaults not in the Attrubute's value but in "half the value" +5. He also proposes a revised table of "skills costs"

That is indeed a solution I'd forgotten. I still think 20 for DX and IQ is a bit low, but, we're now moving into "solved the problem" territory. I'm not sure it's a viable solution for "more realistic" games, but then those penny-pinching GMs aren't ever going to have the issues I've run into anyway (problems I've run into at 275 points and using Templates by the way - so "just use Templates" is also not a viable solution).

Originally Posted by Anthony

The easiest recalibration is to make costs nonlinear and rely on revealed preference to determine the true value of a +1.

That... would work. I mean, thirty+ prior years of it working in 1st, 2nd, and 3rd ed show it's viability. It does makes dealing with Racial Templates a non-zero problem (which is why I suspect it was dropped), but there are simple, if unappetizing, solutions to that.

Originally Posted by monstrous engineer

Have you considered approaching this from the demand side, rather than the supply side? By that I mean reduce the benefit of having high IQ rather than raising the cost of it.

I've done that. It was neither simple, elegant, nor in the end appealing (it involved much wailing and gnashing of teeth, and cries of "never again" from the Players who endured that short campaign.) I stole an idea from another poster here which was caps on defaults and skills benefiting from Attributes. I'm pretty sure IQ ended up costing like 2 points per level after 16 as a "make it worth still buying" measure...

And in the end it still didn't really solve the problem. It just shifted the problem area down a few pegs. (Okay, the problem did not manifest in that game, but it still could have, just would have been IQ 16 versus 10 in that case, had it showed up.)

Honestly, caps and reduced costs to capped Attributes isn't as elegant as the "By Default" article's answer, it was just far simpler. And it doesn't remove the problem, it just shortens the window in which it can appear.