09-26-2022, 02:38 PM | #11 | |
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Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Sumter, SC
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Re: Disconnecting Sapience from IQ
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*Will: [5] per +1 *Per: [5] per +1 *Academic skills [3] per +1 *Social skills [2] per +1 *Technical skills [2] per +1 *Brainier “adventure” skills [3] per +1 Depending on how "big" you consider TL skills (up to [5]) that can be used rather than coming up with a new disadvantage.
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09-26-2022, 03:59 PM | #12 | |
Join Date: Jun 2018
Location: The Wired
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Re: Disconnecting Sapience from IQ
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The whole reason for wanting Nonsapient as its own trait is that sapience isn't really about IQ; it's about the mental component of the ability to use tools, language, and skills that rely on tools and language. I find it, well, kinda dumb to represent that as a special case that kicks in when you buy your IQ down so far that it effectively stops being an attribute. That would be like defining an absence of opposable thumbs as a DX of 5 or less instead of having No Fine Manipulators (incidentally forcing animals to buy a bunch of Basic Speed just like they currently have to buy a bunch of Per and Will!) The difference you're perceiving just isn't there. My Nonsapience disad does the same thing that RAW's IQ-based nonsapience does, and for the same point cost. The real difference is that it leaves animals with usable IQ scores! RAW doesn't have all that much for animals to do with this IQ, but that's only because their low IQ would have made them really bad at it. The only things I can think of are advantages that require IQ rolls. This change opens up a lot of possibilities blocked off by a weird design quirk that feels like a half-eaten leftover from 3e that the writers just forgot to throw out back in 2004. Last edited by VIVIT; 09-26-2022 at 04:08 PM. |
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09-26-2022, 07:49 PM | #13 | ||
Join Date: Jan 2014
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Re: Disconnecting Sapience from IQ
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Well, only if the animal had both. There are many animals *without* NFM, while pretty much all animals have non-sapient. |
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09-26-2022, 08:44 PM | #14 |
Join Date: Apr 2022
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Re: Disconnecting Sapience from IQ
I don't get what this is trying to solve.
A player playing something nonsapient seem a bit counter productive to role playing. And for NPCs it doesn't really matter anyway. Sure, there's skill checks for IQ but why would a nonsapient entity use it's IQ based skills if it hasn't reasoned a need for it? And if it just does them randomly, then can they really be considered a skill? And not just a function? Cause, sure, a computer program knows the maths you teach it. But unless it is sapient or something...it would't go beyond. And if we have to become specific/special to some niche things, then maybe they're niche for a reason. Like, if we had to split hairs what sapience means for a computer program/neural network that increases some capability it has. It's still just a function, but then one could go "Isn't human sapience just functions/chemicals" etc. In that case, I'd go again with the beginning of my post. If it's an NPC then who cares, it behaves as it behaves, with some token IQ score to resolve things based on it. And as a player...well, nonsapience, again is kind of stifling, don't you think? And yeah this is for animals but those do communicate, but after a certain level, it's very very simple and can get reduced to 'skinner box' learning and instinct. The parrot might not know what its saying. But if a pigeon does a dance to get a treat cause it learned that, then the parrot probably has the ability to connect things too. Maybe not for casual speech like "Squaawwkkk, the meteorological report is in, screee", and all you do is say "Oh what's the weather going to be?" Then that doesn't mean anything to the animal. But if you inflicted some pain or direct reward to some phrase, it would probably connect the things. So they work with their low IQ and non 'sapience'. Why play something like that as a player, though? |
09-26-2022, 09:13 PM | #15 |
Join Date: Dec 2007
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Re: Disconnecting Sapience from IQ
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09-26-2022, 10:42 PM | #16 | |
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
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Re: Disconnecting Sapience from IQ
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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?
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09-27-2022, 03:58 AM | #17 |
Join Date: Apr 2022
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Re: Disconnecting Sapience from IQ
Aren't those special, though?
Playing an animal sidekick straight, would be quite diminished, unless it's an intelligent animal, because that makes it more believable. What's a toad gonna do? A raven? Cat? Koala? The raven and cat stand out as more suitable candidates because the other two are really dumb when 'played straight'. Raven picks a lock? I can believe it. Cat fetches a key? I can believe it, too. Koala? Unless it's direct koala things, I don't believe anything that smoothbrain does, and even then, I have no confidence in it as an animal, whatsoever. A toad can at least, I dunno, make a cool noise and eat bugs. And the higher the 'IQ' of the animal, the less believable it feels that it's 'not sapient', even if it's not on a human level. "This is the Blorg, it's got an IQ of 500 but is not considered sapient." "What does it do?" "Nothing, really." |
09-27-2022, 04:33 AM | #18 | |
Join Date: Apr 2005
Location: France
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Re: Disconnecting Sapience from IQ
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Yes, precisely, we sometimes need those different capabilities; especially the GM. There are many rolls where IQ is required rather than Will or Per. Does the animal realize that the bait will send him to a trap? Some could say that it can be solved with a Per roll to notice the trap, but, sometimes, animals are clever enough to realize that it may be a trap even if they didn't notice it. The old wolf do not fall into the same trap twice, says the adage. It's much more a matter of reflection than perception, and making a will roll would be even weirder. Likewise, an IQ roll is the most logical answer for all these questions: does the animal remember who has got this smell, can it solve the mechanic puzzle to get the food, get out of the enclosure, think to steal the key of the guardian of the zoo to open the door (like a chimp once did), and so on ... And the problem with the current rules, as said by VIVIT, is that all the individuals of the same species are almost equal while, in reality, some individuals are far much brighter than others, exactly as for humans. Last edited by Gollum; 09-27-2022 at 05:03 AM. |
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09-27-2022, 05:02 AM | #19 |
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Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Southeast NC
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Re: Disconnecting Sapience from IQ
Isn't "non-sapient but as good as a human at IQ things not forbidden by non-sapience" pretty much what the Bestial disadvantage is for?
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09-27-2022, 06:07 AM | #20 | |
Join Date: Apr 2022
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Re: Disconnecting Sapience from IQ
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With clicker training you can make many dogs do some really crazy stuff. But they're still just regular old dogs. It's very hard for me to envision an IQ 15 animal that has no sapience. And AI stuff is weird anyway and most people attribute sapience to it anyway. It even happens IRL, often. "Stupid phone!" (okay, that's not really sapience but kind of anthropomorphizing the phone, but... I'm just trying to make some sort of point) This feels like something contrived that could be solved with just roleplay for the most parts. But yeah, how does the high IQ animal rationalize its high IQ if it's just an animal but not 'humanlike sapient'? Think of the Blorg and its 500 IQ points. What kind of nonsentience can it do? And why does it do it? And on a 500 IQ level. (I chose this ludicrous IQ score to see if this new trait scales, which it should, right? If a thing can have 15IQ and not be sapient, why not 50? Or 100?) |
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