Human max for secondary attributes? (Per, will, FP)

[Captain Joy]

Originally Posted by NineDaysDead

Tactical Shooting doesn't cap vision or hearing, it caps Acute Vision at +2 and Acute Hearing at +4.

A vision score of 12 means the furthest you can see a man sized object that is not in plain sight is 70 yards or 210 feet. That seems a bit limited to me.

Thank you for the correction; I haven't purchased Tactical Shooting yet, but I intend to.

Does your information about a vision score of 12 come from Tactical Shooting? What do you consider a realistic human maximum for vision?

[Captain Joy]

Originally Posted by Gollum

Without giving such characters a so high acute sense that it makes them better than cats or eagles…

So, the answer of maximum human sense abilities in GURPS should first look at animal descriptions. I've not my books at hand, but it sounds obvious that the maximum acute hearing level of a realistic man can't go over half the average cat acute hearing level. Which is certainly already overestimated...

From Basic Set pages 455 to 458:

Dogs: Perception 12, Discriminatory Smell
House Cat, Lion, Tiger: Perception 12, Night Vision 5
Falcon: Perception 12, Acute Vision 3.
Wolves: Perception 14, Discriminatory Smell, Night Vision 2

So a typical falcon has a Hearing 12 and Vision 15. Cats don't have any Acute anything; their Hearing and Vision are both 12.

[NineDaysDead]

Originally Posted by Captain Joy

Thank you for the correction; I haven't purchased Tactical Shooting yet, but I intend to.

Does your information about a vision score of 12 come from Tactical Shooting? What do you consider a realistic human maximum for vision?

No, it comes from looking at the vision rules. If something is in plain sight you get a +10 to see it (basic page 358), which is why I specified something "not in plain sight". The plain sight rule "does not apply to attempts to spot hidden objects, read text, identify faces, etc."

Vision uses the range table on page 550. Someone with Vision 12 has:

Score/Range
12/2 yd
11/3 yd
10/5 yd
9/7 yd
8/10 yd
7/15 yd
6/20 yd
5/30 yd
4/50 yd
4/70 yd
more than 70 yd not possible.

To see SM 0 objects/people that are not in plain sight, on a clear day in daylight.


The problem of what's realistic is there are at least 3 different things that have been lumped into one roll:

1. Can your eye see it? Acute vision and night vision help here.
2. Were you looking in the right place when it happened? Semi-random, but peripheral vision and 360 vision help, Enhanced tracking might help too.
3. If you saw it, did your brain notice it? This is perception.

Realistically the GM needs to determine if your can see the phenomenon, then roll to see if your eye saw it, then roll to see if your brain noticed it. Does anyone want to go to that much trouble for every vision roll?

[kirbwarrior]

Originally Posted by NineDaysDead

1. Can your eye see it? Acute vision and night vision help here.
2. Were you looking in the right place when it happened? Semi-random, but peripheral vision and 360 vision help, Enhanced tracking might help too.
3. If you saw it, did your brain notice it? This is perception.

Realistically the GM needs to determine if your can see the phenomenon, then roll to see if your eye saw it, then roll to see if your brain noticed it. Does anyone want to go to that much trouble for every vision roll?

1 and 2 can be combined (a higher Per could signify you look around in a subtle way without realizing it). A small house rule you could use is to bring the cost of Acute Senses to [1] and still only making one roll, but comparing it to two different numbers; Your Acute Sense and your Per. If the roll falls in between, you sensed it but didn't realize you did. How the GM handles this is a roleplaying exercise.

[Gollum]

Originally Posted by Captain Joy

From Basic Set pages 455 to 458:

Dogs: Perception 12, Discriminatory Smell
House Cat, Lion, Tiger: Perception 12, Night Vision 5
Falcon: Perception 12, Acute Vision 3.
Wolves: Perception 14, Discriminatory Smell, Night Vision 2

So a typical falcon has a Hearing 12 and Vision 15. Cats don't have any Acute anything; their Hearing and Vision are both 12.

Thanks... Not giving cats acute hearing and dogs acute smell doesn't seem realistic to me. Dogs have not only discriminatory smell. They also perceive odors much stronger than we do. Likewise cats have an acute hearing with which no human can compete. All that have been biologically proved... But no matter! The main goal of this thread, if I understand it well, is to find human maximums in GURPS coherence, not to change this coherence. So these examples are interesting.

If a falcon has Acute Vision 3, for instance, the maximum a realistic human could have is 1 (or 2, at the extreme limit). If a cat has Night Vision 5, the maximum a realistic human can have is 2 or 3. There is no problem with the wolf because biologists usually say that the sight of canidae is more close to the one of human than the one of felines.

[Libertine]

Really, the way I do maximum human advantages is that I set the standard max at 15.and use a 5 or unusual background advantage per attribute if you want to build it to 20. This allows for characters that have a genetic predisposition for excessive traits such as Mike Tyson who only weight trained once in his life, or Stephan Hawking who would have an IQ around 17 or 18. Perhaps 3 pts UB could justify a secondary attribute leap.

[RyanW]

Ted Williams had likely very close to the best eyesight ever, and was tested as 20/10. That would mean he saw at 20 yards (-6) with the visual clarity that most saw at 10 yards (-4). A very basic interpretation of that would suggest he had a vision roll of 12.

But Perception is much more than merely being able to detect detail. It is also recognizing detail, possibly at a very brief glance. So long story short: That first paragraph was a complete waste of time. Except to point out that Ted Williams was pretty awesome.

[simply Nathan]

Originally Posted by Gollum

Thanks... Not giving cats acute hearing and dogs acute smell doesn't seem realistic to me. Dogs have not only discriminatory smell. They also perceive odors much stronger than we do.

Discriminatory Smell includes +4 to Taste/Smell rolls.

[Infornific]

Originally Posted by RyanW

Ted Williams had likely very close to the best eyesight ever, and was tested as 20/10. That would mean he saw at 20 yards (-6) with the visual clarity that most saw at 10 yards (-4). A very basic interpretation of that would suggest he had a vision roll of 12.

But Perception is much more than merely being able to detect detail. It is also recognizing detail, possibly at a very brief glance. So long story short: That first paragraph was a complete waste of time. Except to point out that Ted Williams was pretty awesome.

That's never a waste of time. But yes GURPS rolls together raw ability to detect detail and ability to interpret the detail into a single perception stat. I sometimes think range modifiers should be doubled or tripled - that would allow greater range for Acute Senses.

[BraselC5048]

Personally, especially given character creation example from 4e basic, here's what I would lean for. Will - book says 20, I'd cap it at 18 myself, although nobody seems to have come up with a way check it vs reality. (extra effort roll penalties, perhaps?)

As it turns out, FP has a built-in answer in the book. "In a realistic campaign, limit it to within 30% of HT." Since I 'think' there's consensus of HT 14 being the max, that pretty much automatically sets the limit at 18. (ps - anybody got a link to that thread?)

Per - that's a little more difficult. I'd say that people who take IQ's above 12 really should consider buying Per back down to 12 or so, if not less, unless it's an integral part of the character concept. Per 12 is simply 'above average/good,' not something out of the ordinary for an adventurer. Per 15 is "amazing," and I'd require it to be a part of the character concept, not just something tacked on. I'd set the max at maybe 16, with a stern reminder of "you better realize just how darned good your character is, as good as anyone ever has been," and it must go with the character.

Bringing up HP briefly, I'd set the max at around 15, maybe 1 or 2 higher for the 'giant weightlifter' guys. (Has anybody ever bought down HP?)