09-27-2022, 06:26 AM | #21 |
Join Date: Jan 2014
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Re: Disconnecting Sapience from IQ
Not quite. As I understand it, Bestial is the trait that makes you act like a beast, not be as dumb as a beast. For example, a bestial dragon will see a big herd of sheep in the middle of a field, and go, "Those look tasty; I'll have one." It could be very intelligent, know language and many other things, but it lacks an understanding of how to behave in society.
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09-27-2022, 08:12 AM | #22 | |
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
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Re: Disconnecting Sapience from IQ
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09-27-2022, 08:48 AM | #23 | |
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Portland, Oregon
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Re: Disconnecting Sapience from IQ
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09-27-2022, 11:24 AM | #24 | |
Join Date: Jun 2018
Location: The Wired
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Re: Disconnecting Sapience from IQ
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Contrast this with Uncontrollable Appetite (Livestock). If the dragon had that, it would need to make a self-control roll not to eat the sheep, even if it weren't Bestial, perfectly understood the concept of property, was best friends with the shepherd, and would feel guilty about it afterward. |
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09-27-2022, 12:27 PM | #25 | |
Join Date: Jun 2013
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Re: Disconnecting Sapience from IQ
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But, yeah, a character could absolutely be both Bestial and fully sapient.
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09-27-2022, 12:40 PM | #26 | |
Join Date: Aug 2004
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Re: Disconnecting Sapience from IQ
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It's an interesting idea; but there's still the matter of languages to consider. Even PU9 assumes that the capacity for language comes with IQ 6+. |
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09-27-2022, 02:51 PM | #27 | |||
Join Date: Jun 2018
Location: The Wired
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Re: Disconnecting Sapience from IQ
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In some sense, that takes intelligence. You might be tempted to chalk that up to instinct, but the line between that and intelligence is ambiguous at best, and GURPS doesn't have an Instinct attribute. Quote:
At the time, I thought that was mind-numbingly stupid thing to ask. But I later realized that, on some level, he was right! It is obvious that a sword cuts and a club crushes. And if you just want to pretend to be Zorro or Guts or whoever, you don't need rules to tell you what your sword does, and you certainly don't need rules to describe the difference between Zorro's sword and Guts'! You know that one goes zippity-zip and the other goes CHOP. And yet we have rules for tip slash in Martial Arts and stats for gigantic swords in Fantasy-Tech. Why? Why do have mechanics for this stuff when we already have the perfectly functional mental images of zippity-zip and CHOP right there? I can only speak for myself, but I like them because they lend form and substance to those mental images. I didn't realize this until I tried FATE—a favorite system of the friend I mentioned earlier—and walked with an impression to the effect of, "This is really bland and blah and doesn't feel like anything," even though I had a great character concept and a good GM who was good at describing things. Years later, I still feel like I've given that system pretty short shrift, but I've never felt motivated enough to correct that because GURPS is the system commands my attention and HERO is the one draws my curiosity. How does this relate to animals and IQ? Well… the way GURPS represents nonsapience actually flies right in the face of my mental image of animal intelligence. I don't think sapience and intelligence are the same thing. I don't think that the reason animals don't use language is simply because they're not smart enough. It's just that their brains aren't built for it, just like a dog's forepaws aren't built to grasp and use tools. Again, that's not low DX, that is No Fine Manipulators. GURPS already has "You simply cannot do this general type of thing," and it isn't low attributes, except in this specific case. Quote:
Also, the IQ scale breaks even got sapient when you go much higher than 20. Don't be silly. |
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09-27-2022, 04:07 PM | #28 | |
Join Date: Aug 2004
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Re: Disconnecting Sapience from IQ
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Buying up from 0, 10 IQ costs 200 points while 10 Instinct would cost 120 points; so on that basis, I'd say swapping out IQ for Instinct should be a -80 Disadvantage. Also: “Poorly educated individuals who can barely get by in their native tongue should take the point difference between their actual level and Native level as a disadvantage.” (Basic Set p.24). With this in mind, bump it up to -86 points: -80 for Instinct instead of IQ, and another -6 points for a complete lack of even a native language. Reinforce the latter with a Taboo Trait. And perhaps there should be the occasional exception, such as the chimpanzee who learns sign language to at least a Broken level of comprehension; possible even Accented. Furthermore, there might be the occasional animal that can learn “TL N/A” skills, such as a beaver with some very rudimentary Engineering. They seem quite adept at constructing dams. Last edited by dataweaver; 09-27-2022 at 04:25 PM. |
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09-27-2022, 09:31 PM | #29 |
Join Date: Sep 2019
Location: UK
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Re: Disconnecting Sapience from IQ
I've sometimes thought of doing this by declaring that "IQ" covers only the types of reasoning that humans are unusually good at (e.g. language, other things involving representing things by symbols, mathematics, using tools and making things), and floating anything else to Per. (This would make IQ similar to Intelligence in Dungeons and Dragons). Possibly making the Per-based skills one level harder than their IQ-based counterparts (Average becomes Hard, etc.), which would make it a little more difficult for animals to be cleverer than humans at those skills. I've never tested all this in play, though.
That does mean lumping acute senses and non-human-type intelligence in together, though. And it also still has the difficulty that VIVIT pointed out that you can't straightforwardly represent an unusually clever animal (other than by raising Per, but that also gives it super-senses) - the IQ range is so narrow that an IQ 3 animal is radically different from an IQ 4 animal. Maximara's idea of splitting up IQ is rather similar, but gets rid of that to some extent. It might be easier to list the IQ skills that an animal with this "Nonsapient" disadvantage could do as well as a human than to list the ones it couldn't. That might give a clearer picture of what an animal character with this disad would look like.
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09-27-2022, 10:34 PM | #30 | |
Join Date: Sep 2019
Location: UK
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Re: Disconnecting Sapience from IQ
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Sentient = conscious, aware of surroundings, able to think for itself, not a mindless robot or acting only automatically. Sapient = "intelligent" in the way that a human is, able to use complex language, make technology etc. (It could also be that we have different opinions about how much animals are capable of).
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