World class competition, what are numbers ?

[D10]

Lets take these 2 examples, and extrapolate under the thread title.

Chess:

Chess grandmasters will have spend thousands of hours playing chess, most of them will have a high IQ (at least 13) doesnt seem far fetched that they could have invested 10+ points in chess, and get skills that range from 19+ up to around 25 to the world best ?

Now in martial arts, you have many other fields in where to specialize, many disciplines that you need to learn, and atributes you need to hone, but focusing on maintaining your contintioning to the top it can be (high atributes) allows you to use lower level knowledge easier, therefore I see this thrend that martial arts are more often than not, guys with great stats and not that many skills.

When both do occour at the same time, you have guys like Anderson Silva


If you are like Anderson Silva most combat skills will be, his takedown defense who is seen as the worse thing in his arsenal, is actually pretty reliable, in his last fight against world class wrestler, he was taken down 2 ou of 4 tries.

I assume a low ranked well rounded fighter will have his skills around 14-18
(some specific techniques being higher like Jab for example).

But a guy like Anderson will have 19+ skills in anything he focuses by now, boxing, judo, BJJ, karate (pre defined to muai thay at a penalty?) He must known a ton of stances, because he keeps changing them at will, hes even a yellow rope in capoeira.

I think he has some of his skills at 23+ lvl, the way he destroys top fighters is amazing, his resistance, hes the complete package.


Do you think those numbers are close to how it should look at the top of world class competition ?

I appreciate all feedback on the subject, thanks.

[Purple Haze]

Knowing more than a few, I'd say IQ 10 is not uncommon, but they all have well over 50 points in chess.

The real secret to making it to the top is to put the effort in at as young an age as possible. Of course GURPS doesn't model that.

[weby]

Originally Posted by Purple Haze

The real secret to making it to the top is to put the effort in at as young an age as possible. Of course GURPS doesn't model that.

Well, I allways thought of talents and combination of inborn abilities and things like that sort of effort.

[makke]

I don't think that you need a high int stat to be a top chess player since the Gurps attribute is all about flexibility and not IQ (meaning a high RL IQ doesn't necessarily translate into a high Gurps intelligence).

If you are studying by yourself you are allowed to study 6 hours per day which is reduced to 3 effective hours. If you do so for a year you'd get roughly 6 CP in your given skill. With a trainer you'd be allowed to train 8 hours per day for roughly 15cp per year.

The problem is that this is more or less only a guide line... There are several topics about how this system doesn't work out for military training and university studies and similar stuff. Furthermore most of the training won't be as effective as the self-study or the training. I'd estimate that someone with a real drive will be able to earn one lvl-increase per year in a given skill.

So to finally answer the question I'd estimate a skill of 25 for the best of the best... but that's only a gut feeling + what I took from previous discussions on the board, tho. :)

[Langy]

Don't make the mistake of assuming the gaining-CP-through-study rules in any way reflect reality. They don't, and this is explicitly mentioned (possibly not in the RAW, but certainly on these forums by Kromm and co.).

I think it's more likely that you get a maximum skill of 18-20 rather than the absolutely ridiculous skills mentioned here.

[aesir23]

I would give a Chess Master some sort of talent for sure, or simply spend a lot of points on the skill and say that its because he's "talented". High IQ is for polymaths, as others have been saying.

I personally think that skills in the 18-22 range work fine for world class competators, it's good enough to demonstrate the vast difference between one of the best in the world and a "talented amatuer", and it's never broken any of my games to allow high skills.

If a character wants to have a skill above 16 or so, I might ask them to buy a reputation or some social disadvantages that explain why they don't have one. After all, if you're the best chess player in the world, people probably know your name. If your the best chess player in the world and you never play competatively, you have some explaining to do.

Others feel that anything above 20 is automatically unrealistic, and they may have good reasons for feeling so. It's really up to you as a GM to decide what feels right in your games.

[EDIT] Are you playing 3rd ed? I ask because there's no Jab technique any more. There's a lot more "Stat normalization" in 4e.

[aesir23]

The scale I use with my players:

10-11: You are an "okay" amatuer or hobbyist
12-13: You could do this professionally, or are a truly gifted amatuer.
14-15: People probably recognize you for your excellence. If this is your professional feild, you're in high demand.
16-17: You are a noted expert, people who care about what you do probably know your name.
18-20: You are one of the best in the world, and could compete for world championships or globally recognized awards (like the nobel or pulitzer).
21-22: You are almost certainly the greatest living practitioner of your skill. Other experts in your feild probably speak of you with reverence and debate amongst themselves how you would stack up against the historical greats.
22 + you are among the greatest in the history of the world.

By this reconing:
I personally might have an 11 Chess and 10 Karate, and a 12 in Teaching and Connissuer (Pulp Magazine Fiction).

Anderson Silva would have a Karate skill around 19-20 and Judo in the 16-17 range.

Gary Kasperov might have a Chess skill of closer to 22.

Someone like Miyamoto Musashi might have had Broadsword around 23-24, but then we're really getting into myth and legend.

[Xplo]

In general, the realistic high end for skills is around +8; that typically represents years or even decades of study beyond which there generally isn't much else to learn.

The highest realistic level for DX or IQ plus Talents is around 14-15; beyond that you start to get people who are better at anything they try by default than a trained professional, and who can become world-class experts on any subject just by studying it a little.

Put these together and you get a realistic top end skill around 23; you could go a little higher if you're willing to be generous with the DX/IQ/Talent limit (the greatest experts ever known were probably extraordinary people).

Of course, these are only guidelines. Chess playing is said to rely heavily on the ability to predict a number of moves in advance, and it would be easy to argue either that (a) this is a rather specific ability better represented by some kind of Chess Talent, or (b) because chess relies on this special ability more than on training per se, the +8 maximum doesn't make sense, allowing the best players to have levels above 18 despite having no Talents and average IQ.

[Kromm]

When telling writers how to norm skills for realistic characters (not fantasy monsters, Buffy-esque slayers, Buckaroo Banzai-level generalists, and so on!), we just point to p. B172 and p. B447. Tactical Shooting adds some other useful guidelines.

• Average People: 8-13
  • Skills remembered from school days: 8-9
  • Most skills, including hobbies, secondary job skills of volunteers, and primary skills of draftees: 10-11
  • Primary job skills of most normal people (including cops, doctors, pilots, and soldiers): 12-13
• Experts: 14-19
  • Someone good enough to work under life-or-death conditions (including commandos, field surgeons, and ace pilots): 14-15
  • Someone good enough to stand out in his field, however rarefied (top commando, ace of aces, etc.): 16-17
  • Best of a generation (e.g., the world's best sniper): 18-19
• Masters: 20-25
  • Top master alive (presumably good enough to teach the best of a couple of generations): 20-21
  • Confirmed top master of all time: 22-23
  • Mythic masters, verging on the cinematic: 24-25

As p. B172 says, you don't achieve great fame by piling on more skill levels. You do it by adding attribute levels and advantages that enhance skills, bypass rolls, remove penalties, etc., and by learning subsidiary skills. A top MMA competitor isn't notable because he has Karate-20. He's notable because he has high ST, DX, and HT; improved HP, FP, and Basic Speed; Judo-16, Karate-16, and Wrestling-16; one trademark technique at 16 for each skill; the maximum number of Style Perks that those skill and technique points allow; and a few advantages like Enhanced Dodge, Flexibility, Hard to Subdue, High Pain Threshold, and (let's face it) Luck. Having points in Ally (Top trainer) and Ally (Top manager) doesn't hurt, either.

[DouglasCole]

As a specific case, what do you think the world-record holding runners look like, in terms of GURPS stats? I'd be interested in what stats, skills, perks, and advantages we'd assign those who currently hold the world records in events from the 100m to the marathon.