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Old 10-02-2022, 05:34 AM   #41
SilvercatMoonpaw
 
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Default 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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Old 10-02-2022, 05:47 AM   #42
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Default 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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Old 10-02-2022, 07:59 AM   #43
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Default Re: Disconnecting Sapience from IQ

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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.
Whoops! Sorry, "sheer memory capacity" was referring to my need to remember rules. Not the mechanics of the NPC.
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Old 10-02-2022, 07:59 AM   #44
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Default Re: Disconnecting Sapience from IQ

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The one thing remaining is how to price the “marker” I referred to before. Selling IQ down to 0 would be –200 points; buying Instinct up to 10 would cost 120 points (because without the academic and technical skills, Instinct should cost 12 points per level). Combined, that's a net –80 points. Except that the other thing you lose when switching from IQ to Instinct is your native language, for another –6 points. Thus, my suggestion to make “replace IQ with Instinct” a –86 point Disadvantage. While –100 points is indeed a nice, round number, it's arguably too much of a bargain.
Being totally incapable of using language should be worth a lot more than [−6], though. Taking English (Native) [0] and no other language means that you can only exchange complex information with other English speakers. Selling off your native language means you can't exchange complex information at all. And, of course, language isn't just for communication; it's also a major thinking aid, whence the phenomena of subvocalization and self-directed speech. Nonsapient doesn't just represent a change to the IQ attribute; it represents a fundamental change in the way your brain works that, among other effects, prevents you from using language and the vast majority of IQ skills. This is why I'm satisfied with [−100] rather than [−50] even though that includes the cost of the Will and Per that animals would no longer have to buy back. In sapient-centric (i.e., most) campaigns, nonsapience is really debilitating in a way that PU9's sum-of-their-parts method of appraising attributes can't account for. This is yet another reason why I dislike the RAW approach of representing sapience through IQ alone; it has a lot of qualitative effects that aren't a result of scaling IQ down, and don't get any worse when you scale IQ down further. B458 assigns (anthropocentric, zoopsychologically dubious) meanings to IQ levels from 2 to 5 in stepwise manner that doesn't follow mathematically from attribute itself the way skill and success roll probability follow mathematically from IQ levels in the range that actually lets you attempt IQ rolls any more than the human faculties of language and technology follow from IQ≥6. GURPS normally handles that kind of qualitative difference as a proper disadvantage. And that, right there, is my biggest reason for wanting a version of Nonsapience that works that way as well. The fact that animals can now actually roll against their IQ scores and possess a handful of mental skills that they wouldn't otherwise be allowed to have is just a bonus.

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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Old 10-02-2022, 02:08 PM   #45
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Default 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”).
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Old 10-02-2022, 04:15 PM   #46
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Default Re: Disconnecting Sapience from IQ

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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.
That's what the −40% limitation is for! I based it on the ST and DX limitations for No Fine Manipulators, but the math works out the same. I think we're actually on the same page here.

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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've half a mind to rename IQ as a whole to IN and letting it ambiguously stand for "INtelligence, INtuition, or INstinct" as appropriate to the character concept, just to make it clear that the attribute can represent street smarts just as well as it can book smarts.

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Old 10-02-2022, 04:37 PM   #47
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Default Re: Disconnecting Sapience from IQ

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I've half a mind to rename IQ as a whole to IN and letting ambiguously stand for "INtelligence, INtuition, or INstinct" as appropriate to the character concept, just to make it clear that the attribute can represent street smarts just as well as it can book smarts.
I've thought about renaming it "Mind (MN)", so you're not alone.
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Old 10-03-2022, 03:48 PM   #48
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Default Re: Disconnecting Sapience from IQ

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Right. Nonsapient is a set of cognitive limitations; Bestial is a set of moral limitations.
Not necessarily so. Arguably, Bestial is the complete absence of morality, at least as humans define it.

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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Old 10-03-2022, 04:15 PM   #49
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Default Re: Disconnecting Sapience from IQ

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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.
Not really; because the OP's Disadvantage doesn't do the same thing that Bestial does. Or rather, it does; but it also does far more. Bestial doesn't prevent you from having a Language, or learning academic or technical skills. If anything, the OP's Disadvantage should be treated as a much more severe version of Bestial, where you lose far more than just the ability to comprehend civilization. It very nearly cuts the value of IQ in half, leaving only Will, Perception, and a handful of social and adventuring skills that make sense in the confines of a Bestial mentality. −100 points feels about right for that; if anything, it might be marginally underpriced.
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Old 10-05-2022, 09:32 AM   #50
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Default Re: Disconnecting Sapience from IQ

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I don't think that quite works.

It's true, on one hand, that if you buy a point of IQ, you get a point of Per and a point of Will for free. So in that sense IQ seems to be something broader than just "intelligence" in the sense in which that word is commonly used.

But on the other hand, if you buy up IQ, and then buy Per and Will back down, you have spent a net 10 points on buying—something. And I'm not sure what is left of that something if you are, let us suppose, a being incapable of language and of tool use.

Can we envision an incredibly cunning "beast" that has IQ 15, but is Nonsapient? How is it different from one that has IQ 10, Per 15, and Will 15? What are its extra capabilities? Or, for that matter, if a very smart animal has IQ 10, human-equivalent, but is Nonsapient, how are its capabilities different from those of an animal with IQ 5, Per 10 and Will 10?

It seems to me that most of the knowledge-based skills, from Archaeology to Physics, depend on the use of language (or a non-sound-based equivalent; see the Signals trait in GURPS Template Toolkit 2), not merely for communication, but as a medium for storing information. At least several of the Influence skills—perhaps all but Intimidation and Sex Appeal—require communication in language, and that seems to be true for a wider range of social skills also. And most technological skills require tool use AND language; I can imagine an "animal" being capable of Carpentry or Masonry or the like without these (a bird building a nest, for example), but not of Machinist or Electronics Repair or Metallurgy. Marx says in one of his books that the difference between an animal and a human worker is that the human builds the house or makes the tool in his imagination before he does so in the physical world; that ability seems to be part of what we are calling "sapience"—and without it, what would IQ let you do?
IQ based skills "very clever" animals seem to be at least anecdotally capable of doing (largely this is based on the wealth of stories about cats, dogs, ravens, and elephants): Acting, Animal Handling, Area Knowledge, Camouflage, Diplomacy (by way of gesture), Gesture, some Hobby Skills, some Houskeeping tasks, Leadership, ... I only got up through the M's in basic set. I'm sure there are a LOT more. Like Religious Ritual (elephants have been observed doing primitive religious rituals of their own design), and Tactics which would be key for all those "very clever" man-eater lion pairs that outmaneuver humans who are trying to hunt them. So yes. I can easily imagine a high IQ but non-sapient animal.
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