10-02-2022, 05:34 AM | #41 |
Join Date: Jun 2017
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Re: Disconnecting Sapience from IQ
In terms of sheer "memory capacity", a -100 or -50 Disadvantage is preferable to me than a completely new attribute with unique pricing.
Not that you shouldn't continue your idea if you enjoy it.
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Pronoun: "They/She" |
10-02-2022, 05:47 AM | #42 |
Join Date: Aug 2004
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Re: Disconnecting Sapience from IQ
In terms of “sheer memory capacity”, I'd expect a sort of disadvantageous counterpart to Eidetic Memory. I'm not thinking in terms of just that, though. And I'm not sure animals should be particularly bad at memory checks.
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10-02-2022, 07:59 AM | #43 |
Join Date: Jun 2017
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Re: Disconnecting Sapience from IQ
Whoops! Sorry, "sheer memory capacity" was referring to my need to remember rules. Not the mechanics of the NPC.
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Pronoun: "They/She" |
10-02-2022, 07:59 AM | #44 | |
Join Date: Jun 2018
Location: The Wired
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Re: Disconnecting Sapience from IQ
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The PU9 math makes some sense if, for example, you're splitting IQ up into different kinds of intelligence, dividing up existing mental skills between them, and allowing them to coexist on the same character sheet, but that's not what I'm doing here. What I'm doing is taking the idea of Nonsapience, thinking about its implications a bit harder than Basic Set does, and putting a point cost on it. I started at [−100] because that's how much it costs to be Nonsapient by RAW and then after thinking about it chose to keep it there because that does seem about right to me. It severely constrains your character concept and does, in fact, put you at a huge disadvantage next to everyone else, so I'm modeling it as huge disadvantage. |
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10-02-2022, 02:08 PM | #45 |
Join Date: Aug 2004
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Re: Disconnecting Sapience from IQ
Fair enough; –100 for the Disadvantage. But I'd still go with the PU9 math for what Animal Sentience provides, putting it at about 12 points per level instead of 20 points per level. Calling it “Instinct” instead of “IQ” helps get around the player's hangup on “animals shouldn't be smart”, which is what the whole bit in Basic Set about “animals always have IQ of 6 or less” comes from. Calling it Instinct means that it's not really about the capacity to think, at least not the way that humans think.
I would strongly encourage reading the PU9 box on page 47 before dismissing the idea of replacing IQ with a cheaper Instinct Attribute. I quoted part of it earlier (the part that says, among other things, that if the “different stroke” is a net disadvantage, then it should have a marker trait on the character sheet that's a Disadvantage); but there's more in the box to consider than just that. There's some precedent given for changing the Attribute set of certain types of characters (the Amphibious/Semi-Aquatic/Aquatic bit that I mentioned originally come from the fact that this trio of traits alter the way that Basic Move and water Move are calculated; and it also points out that creatures with No Fine Manipulators pay less for ST — something directly analogous to the current discussion); there's advice on what to consider when something is taken away (specifically by pointing to the box on p.40 about what to do with N/A; and I contend that stripping out the higher cognitive functions should be viewed as “higher cognitive functions are zero” rather than “higher cognitive functions are irrelevant”). |
10-02-2022, 04:15 PM | #46 | ||
Join Date: Jun 2018
Location: The Wired
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Re: Disconnecting Sapience from IQ
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Last edited by VIVIT; 10-04-2022 at 11:27 PM. |
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10-02-2022, 04:37 PM | #47 |
Join Date: Jun 2017
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Re: Disconnecting Sapience from IQ
I've thought about renaming it "Mind (MN)", so you're not alone.
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Pronoun: "They/She" |
10-03-2022, 03:48 PM | #48 | |
Join Date: Apr 2005
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Re: Disconnecting Sapience from IQ
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If you read the text of the disadvantage, it represents a general inability to understand the precepts of "civilization" - you don't grok the concepts of art, complex social interactions, or property (presumably including the concepts of money or abstract wealth). You interpret other civilized notions through whatever instinctive responses you might have, such as dominance, holding territory, getting food, or avoiding danger. It's not a moral choice to behave like an animal, it's that you're mentally incapable of behaving like anything else. In any case, if Bestial defines a complete inability to understand civilization and is worth -10 or -15 points, partial inability to understand the complexities of civilization must be worth much less, which makes the OP's original disadvantage extremely overpriced. Bestial can easily be repurposed to represent non-animals with similar potentially catastrophic lack of social awareness, such as robots or certain types of aliens. For example, a poorly-programmed battle robot is effectively Bestial if can't distinguish between civilians and combatants and lacks the ability to minimize "collateral damage" when it fights. Limited Bestial, only with respect to certain aspects of civilization, might be a -60% or -80% limitation. Little better than a nasty quirk. |
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10-03-2022, 04:15 PM | #49 | |
Join Date: Aug 2004
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Re: Disconnecting Sapience from IQ
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10-05-2022, 09:32 AM | #50 | |
Join Date: May 2012
Location: New Hampshire, USA
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Re: Disconnecting Sapience from IQ
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