Points value of "regular" people?

[Not]

A Masters Degree might add as many as 8 points to your character sheet. That's pretty awful for 2 years of effort. You could probably get Fit [5] by jogging an hour each day for three months.

[mr beer]

I believe that "normal" varies significantly and suspect if you were able to stat out 100 humans randomly selected from the world population, you would find some unremarkable individuals with say -20 or fewer points and others totalling 100+. Of course most of these people would be different "normal" to the ones we meet everyday, being mostly more Indian and Chinese and with less stuff.

It's arbitrary and likely very inaccurate to say "normal" is 25 points, but probably no worse than saying "normal" is 75 points. It depends what your purpose for making such a statement is. If it's because that's what you think actual "normal" is, you're wrong. If it's because you find it useful shorthand for your game world, you're right.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by Not

A Masters Degree might add as many as 8 points to your character sheet. That's pretty awful for 2 years of effort. You could probably get Fit [5] by jogging an hour each day for three months.

That would just grant the running skill. It would have no effect on disease, poison, heat, cold, or sleep deprivation resistance that the Fit related HT roll bonus gives.

[Calvin]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

That would just grant the running skill. It would have no effect on disease, poison, heat, cold, or sleep deprivation resistance that the Fit related HT roll bonus gives.

It should certainly grant Fit. Knowing how to pace yourself and not injure yourself is represented by the running skill. Fit represents (as it says in it's description) higher FP recovery, and one level of demi-HT.

I know from personal experience that running (cycling in my case) certainly grants Fit if you spend time on it, and keep up your conditioning. During the summer I bike ~30km every other day, 50km about once a week. During the summer I am in far better shape than in the winter, FP recovery certainly, resistances are not out of the question. I do try to keep it up during the winter, but Canadian winters are not conducive to cycling.

I probably do have 1 or 2 points in Cycling, but the main difference between summer and winter is my level of Fitness.

[Flyndaran]

Significant and regular aerobic exercise of any sort MAY grant fit. But it's not automatic and usually one just gets much better at that particular activity.

Running marathons won't help much if at all when bicycling or rowing.

[Kromm]

Cardio fitness definitely helps almost everything GURPS calls HT. Before I began cardio workouts, I was sick every one or two months, died in the heat, needed more sleep at night, and got quite a few yellow flags from my MD. After I made cardio part of my day, I went to being sick once or twice a year, having superior heat tolerance, functioning well on less sleep, and having my MD tell me that I check up as 10 years younger than my birth certificate suggests. Getting off your rear to jog, run, cycle, ski, etc. – or to spend time on spinning, elliptical training (my thing), or a treadmill, if you prefer – grants pretty much exactly what GURPS terms "Fit."

The reason I don't say it grants HT in general is that the Basic Speed effects don't fit. I'm really no twitchier or better at out-reacting others than I was before. Also, I'm better at "being Fit," not every skill based on HT . . . my singing voice hasn't improved and neither have my flirtation abilities.

[simply Nathan]

This is my informal method of categorizing mundane persons.

A "regular" person should have no attributes varying by more than one level, a total of 20 points or so in skills, enough to put one skill at 12 and the rest of the points shotgunned into everything else the character knows above default. Point totals can vary a lot; someone with all 11s in Attributes who only had to put 2 points into an Easy skill in order to take it as a profession is a lot more expensive than someone with all 9s in Attributes who had to put 16 points into his Very Hard profession of choice in order to become reliable at it, who further has only 4 points in competence remaining for his "everyman" skills like Housekeeping, Driving, Computer Operation, Current Affairs, Savoir-Faire, and Area Knowledge (and could quite realistically be lacking in any or all of these).

Thing is Advantages and Disadvantages can have all sorts of prices. Peripheral Vision, Versatile, Resistant to Disease, and Eidetic Memory all look pretty plausibly common; Flexible, High Pain Threshold, and Combat Reflexes are probably a lot less common among regular people than among adventurers (even those built on a Regular Joe point total). Most realistic Disadvantages are Quirks, but almost everyone has a dozen or more and should be marked with a lower point total as such since it's technically about statting the person correctly rather than about getting extra points to spend.

A "normal" person, on the other hand, is anyone with total Attributes, Advantages, and Skills that are not supernatural or exotic in nature and are not at levels beyond the scope of real human ability. No running faster than the fastest human runner, no strength and lifting skill combination better than the best human lifter, and very questionable prospects for having anything close to those abilities without Wealth, Status, and expensive Reputations resulting from it. The realistic limits are probably all lower than what is allowed to be purchased on a mundane hero in an RPG, as it should be.

And an "average" person is another beast entirely, what with slightly fewer than two legs, slightly fewer than two eyes, slightly fewer than ten fingers, slightly fewer than one testicle, brown eyes that are very partially blue and green, medium-brown skin (as Caucasians are too light to be average while most Africans and Aborigines are too dark), and so on. The average person has considerably less than any single Quirk or Disadvantage.

[ErhnamDJ]

Originally Posted by Kromm

Cardio fitness definitely helps almost everything GURPS calls HT.

The big one that comes up most often in the game is the improved ability to survive grievous injuries, such as gunshots to the head. I don't know that improved cardiovascular health does a whole lot for you there.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by ErhnamDJ

The big one that comes up most often in the game is the improved ability to survive grievous injuries, such as gunshots to the head. I don't know that improved cardiovascular health does a whole lot for you there.

No one knows why one person will rapidly die while another survives for no damn reason despite major physical trauma despite otherwise similar physiques. I've read of some researching certain genetic influences.

But as many times it's an issue of heart failure, I see no reason why improving aerobic and basic cardiovascular health shouldn't improve survival rates.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by Kromm

Cardio fitness definitely helps almost everything GURPS calls HT. Before I began cardio workouts, I was sick every one or two months, died in the heat, needed more sleep at night, and got quite a few yellow flags from my MD. ....

I was talking only about running, not multiple activity cardio. Single activity exercise tends to specialize the body to that specific action more than general health.
I learned this when I had to switch from biking everywhere to walking. It felt like I hadn't been exercising at all and had to work up my endurance from scratch all over again.