Re-calibrating Attribute Costs

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by malloyd

The reason it isn't is that option cripples a [different] character concept - the guy who wants the benefits of a high attribute but doesn't care about any skills based on it.

Neither IQ nor DX have a lot of benefits that aren't reflected in skills or sub-stats that you can buy individually. GURPS would work fine without having those stats at all.

ST and DX are, essentially, extremely broad talents with some minor side effects, and they exist for the same reason as any talent: to provide a discount to a group of related skills, either because of a simulationist desire to produce 'realistic' (or, sometimes, genre-appropriate) characters, or a gamist opinion that those skills are highly redundant and thus you probably won't get full value from more than one of them. Most game systems (that use attributes at all) are simulationist for attributes, and if the other type of talent exists, it has a different name.

Simulationist attributes become a problem when people disagree on what's actually realistic. This is why people argue a lot more about IQ than DX.