Maximum skill level by TL

[Mailanka]

I don't see why this house rule is necessary, or even particularly realistic. A guy with TL 3 Armoury is likelier to have higher levels of skill than a guy with TL 8 Armoury, because you need more skill to compensate for the lack of excellent tools and top conditions.

Let's use your example of medicine. A TL 1 surgeon has -6 to his skill due to the quality of tools. If he knows nothing about proper cleaning and sterilization or cannot perform these, he suffers an additional -3. Furthermore, if he lacks proper anesthesia (highly likely) he suffers an additional -2. Finally, as a TL 1 character, according to Low Tech, he's not allowed to have the Physician Skill, and thus if he's doing anything other than trauma medicine, he suffers an additional -5. If he can't diagnose the problem (it IS possible to have Diagnosis at TL1, but it's possible that you won't know what the issue is) So, this guy is at -11 to extract an arrowhead, -16* to do heart surgery, and -21 if he needs to do something he doesn't understand.

By contrast, a TL 8 doctor has tools that provide +2 to his skill, he knows and is able to properly clean his instruments, and he has anesthesia. It's highly likely that his superior TL8 Diagnosis skill can understand the issue at hand, and he's allowed to take the Physician skill. That means he's at +2 to do any normal surgery (whether taking out a bullet or performing heart surgery*) and -3 to perform surgery on something he doesn't understand.

Thus, a character with Surgery/TL8-14 has no problem performing most surgeries (Effective skill 16), provided he can diagnose the problem at hand, and he has sufficient effective skill to deal with a few minor penalties. Thus, you can easily afford to have multiple surgeons, and even difficult surgeries become relatively routine.

A skilled TL8 Surgeon, someone with skill 20 for example, could probably get away with foregoing proper sterilization and anesthesia, even while performing a complex surgery, provided he had access to his tools. In short, he can do amazing things even out in the bush on a guy who's just biting down on a strap of leather.

A character with Surgery/TL1-14 has some serious issues. He clearly doesn't understand the human body, has terrible tools, and probably lacks the methods and infrastructure necessary to sterilize his tools or anesthetize his patients. Chances are, he'll do more harm than good (When removing an arrow, he'll only succeed on a 9 or less, and when performing something more complex, he'll only succeed on a critical success, ie "by accident"). A master of the craft (skill 20) who has picked up some top of the line surgical tools and paid top dollar (gold?) for it, found some herbal concoctions to knock out his patients and has a ritualistic fetish for purifying his working space and cleansing those sacred tools WITH FIRE might get change his -6 from tools to -4 and remove the anesthesia and sterilization problem, but he's still at -5 from the lack of physician. To pull out an arrowhead, he has skill 16 (more than enough to succeed routinely). To perform anything more complex, he's looking at skill 11, and he's the best in his field. Heart surgery is just out of the question!

So the TL 8 doctor is already capable of doing things that a TL 1 doctor can only dream of, but that's because he has knowledge (Physician) and tools that the TL 1 doctor does not. Remove those advantages, and the difference disappears.

But more to the point, a skill cap would remove the possibility of the master surgeon at TL 1. You can't have an Imhotep, and given the other penalties they suffer, that doesn't really make sense. The only surgeons worth anything in the ancient worlds must have been so skilled that they seemed to border on the magical. By contrast, we can churn out an entire class of competent surgeons. The difference isn't the skill level (a TL1-14 character is as masterful and nuanced in his skill as a TL8-14 character), but in the tools and knowledge available. To achieve the same results, you have to have sufficient skill to compensate for the lack of proper tools and knowledge ("I don't know the human body, but in my many, many years of cutting on people, I've noticed a few things that you really shouldn't do...")

Historically, less developed people weren't stupid, they just had access to less knowledge and tools than more developed people. They often compensated for this with high skill level, and you often hear people who study ancient skills talk about "how much knowledge has been lost." When you don't have industrial-grade steel, you have to come up with clever tricks to make a top-notch sword, and that requires more skill. When you don't have TL 8 surgical tools, you need more skill to compensate.

With your system, such masters simply couldn't exist. After my IQ 14 genius TL 1 guy spends a single point in Surgery, he's done and cannot improve. That's, IMO, very unrealistic and counter to what it is you're trying to create. Your intent is to show that low TL skills are inferior to high TL skills, but that already exists in the rules, and it effectively makes it more expensive to pull off the same tricks as a higher TL character, which is appropriate. A grandmaster of TL 1 surgery should certainly approach the skill and capabilities of the more modest of the TL 8 surgeons.

TL; DR: GURPS already accommodates the differences between TLs quite nicely, if you hunt around and look at the modifiers. Your system would simply cap people at low point values, thus removing the possibilities of certain character concepts that certainly, historically existed. Rather, I think applying modifiers, which is what GURPS already does, is a more elegant solution.

*I know, I know, chest and head surgery are -3, but that applies equally to both TL 8 and TL 1, so it's easier to ignore it for the purposes of this discussion, and I can't think of non-"field trauma" surgeries that don't involve the chest or the head, alas.

[cosmicfish]

Originally Posted by Mailanka

I don't see why this house rule is necessary, or even particularly realistic. A guy with TL 3 Armoury is likelier to have higher levels of skill than a guy with TL 8 Armoury, because you need more skill to compensate for the lack of excellent tools and top conditions.

How do you figure? The guy with Armoury/TL3 is only likelier to have a higher skill because he probably started when he was 5!

Originally Posted by Mailanka

Let's use your example of medicine. A TL 1 surgeon has -6 to his skill due to the quality of tools. If he knows nothing about proper cleaning and sterilization or cannot perform these, he suffers an additional -3. Furthermore, if he lacks proper anesthesia (highly likely) he suffers an additional -2. Finally, as a TL 1 character, according to Low Tech, he's not allowed to have the Physician Skill, and thus if he's doing anything other than trauma medicine, he suffers an additional -5. If he can't diagnose the problem (it IS possible to have Diagnosis at TL1, but it's possible that you won't know what the issue is) So, this guy is at -11 to extract an arrowhead, -16* to do heart surgery, and -21 if he needs to do something he doesn't understand.

What about when you compare TL4 and TL8? Both have the same rang eof skills available, deprive them BOTH of instruments, and justify why the TL4 physician should not have a much lower skill? Bearing in mind that his understanding of the body involves things like "balancing the humours" and applying cow dung to wounds?

Originally Posted by Mailanka

By contrast, a TL 8 doctor has tools that provide +2 to his skill, he knows and is able to properly clean his instruments, and he has anesthesia. It's highly likely that his superior TL8 Diagnosis skill can understand the issue at hand, and he's allowed to take the Physician skill. That means he's at +2 to do any normal surgery (whether taking out a bullet or performing heart surgery*) and -3 to perform surgery on something he doesn't understand.

Sure, but that helps to explain his overall success, not his innate skill! Take away all the tools, all the tests... what can he do? Still a heck of a lot more than his predecessors 50, 100, 500, or 1000 years ago!

Originally Posted by Mailanka

Thus, a character with Surgery/TL8-14 has no problem performing most surgeries (Effective skill 16), provided he can diagnose the problem at hand, and he has sufficient effective skill to deal with a few minor penalties. Thus, you can easily afford to have multiple surgeons, and even difficult surgeries become relatively routine.

But surgeons DO get better with TL! This is not just opinion, I've had the opportunity to talk to surgeons at Johns Hopkins, and their knowledge of WHAT to do is constantly expanding and NOT always dependent on the presence of particularly complex tools (although they are usually required to make the initial discovery!). Many modern medical and surgically techniques are dependent on relatively meager resources. Expanding this away from medicine, a great deal of new knowledge in the hard sciences is created with high technology but requires nothing more than a piece of paper and a pencil to take advantage of!

Originally Posted by Mailanka

A skilled TL8 Surgeon, someone with skill 20 for example, could probably get away with foregoing proper sterilization and anesthesia, even while performing a complex surgery, provided he had access to his tools. In short, he can do amazing things even out in the bush on a guy who's just biting down on a strap of leather.

Sure, but most of the non-anesthesia tools he needs are not especially complex or new, and would be available in one form or another for the last several centuries!

Originally Posted by Mailanka

So the TL 8 doctor is already capable of doing things that a TL 1 doctor can only dream of, but that's because he has knowledge (Physician) and tools that the TL 1 doctor does not. Remove those advantages, and the difference disappears.

Compare to TL4 instead of TL1 and the logic of your argument disappears as well!

Originally Posted by Mailanka

But more to the point, a skill cap would remove the possibility of the master surgeon at TL 1. You can't have an Imhotep, and given the other penalties they suffer, that doesn't really make sense. The only surgeons worth anything in the ancient worlds must have been so skilled that they seemed to border on the magical. By contrast, we can churn out an entire class of competent surgeons.

And in the ancient world we don't really have a lot of evidence for anything really complex happening with any real level of success! And the few who would be so talented are going to be the exception to the rule in any case!

Originally Posted by Mailanka

Historically, less developed people weren't stupid, they just had access to less knowledge and tools than more developed people. They often compensated for this with high skill level, and you often hear people who study ancient skills talk about "how much knowledge has been lost." When you don't have industrial-grade steel, you have to come up with clever tricks to make a top-notch sword, and that requires more skill. When you don't have TL 8 surgical tools, you need more skill to compensate.

Never said less developed people were stupid - just comparatively ignorant. And you "need more skill to compensate" if and only if you expect to see a comparable or even tolerable success rate - which they didn't. Galileo wasn't a better astronomer than a modern version just because the current guy has the Hubble - he wasn't a better astronomer at all! The modern astronomer even using the naked idea or Galileo-era optics has a far better understanding of the stars and the universe, and is far more likely to make accurate evaluations and predictions, despite Galileo having spent his entire life pursing this one area!!

Originally Posted by Mailanka

With your system, such masters simply couldn't exist. After my IQ 14 genius TL 1 guy spends a single point in Surgery, he's done and cannot improve. That's, IMO, very unrealistic and counter to what it is you're trying to create. Your intent is to show that low TL skills are inferior to high TL skills, but that already exists in the rules, and it effectively makes it more expensive to pull off the same tricks as a higher TL character, which is appropriate. A grandmaster of TL 1 surgery should certainly approach the skill and capabilities of the more modest of the TL 8 surgeons.

I would love to see a TL1 surgeon come anywhere NEAR a TL8 surgeon, even on the same level of tools and preparation. Case #1 - while the TL8 guy is trying his best to sterilize the area and the wound/incision site, the TL1 guy is packing it with dung. Case #2, while the TL8 guy is removing an inflamed appendix with that sharp bit of obsidian (assuming equal tools here), that TL1 guy is leisurely rooting around in the abdomin trying to figure out what looks wrong and what he should do with it!!

Originally Posted by Mailanka

TL; DR: GURPS already accommodates the differences between TLs quite nicely, if you hunt around and look at the modifiers. Your system would simply cap people at low point values, thus removing the possibilities of certain character concepts that certainly, historically existed. Rather, I think applying modifiers, which is what GURPS already does, is a more elegant solution.

I am not sure what historical examples you are crowing about. Honestly. I've had to study some of the work of archaic scientists, and the life work of most of them fill up maybe a couple of weeks of a graduate level class.

[Mailanka]

Originally Posted by cosmicfish

Sure, but that helps to explain his overall success, not his innate skill! Take away all the tools, all the tests... what can he do? Still a heck of a lot more than his predecessors 50, 100, 500, or 1000 years ago!

No, if you take away his tools and his physician skill, he really isn't any better than a TL 1 guy without tools or physician. You can't do open-heart surgery with your bare hands, no matter what your TL.

But surgeons DO get better with TL!

Duh! But this isn't reflected by who has what skill level, but by what information and tools your TL has access too. A guy with rank 20 TL 1 Surgery is just as much a virtuoso of his art, and spends just as many points, as the guy with rank 20 TL 8 Surgery, only the TL 8 surgeon is, obviously, superior.

Sure, but most of the non-anesthesia tools he needs are not especially complex or new, and would be available in one form or another for the last several centuries!

No, they wouldn't. The anathesia and surgical tools we use today are superior to the ones used in, say, TL 5, 6 or 7. Even if you handed those tools to a low TL guy, he still wouldn't know what to do with them: the TL portion of a skill also covers the knowledge of what to do with said tools. The bonus you get from the surgical tools doesn't come because TL 8 scalpels are sharper than TL 1 scalpels, you know.

Yeah, it's a tad abstract, but it's still better than your system, which doesn't allow me to play a virtuoso TL 1 surgeon, like Imhotep, and suggests that the reasons TL 8 surgeons are better than TL 1 surgeons is because they're allowed to put more points into their skills. It's really the other way around: the TL 1 surgeon has to work many times harder to even approach what the least competent TL 8 surgeons can accomplish.

Compare to TL4 instead of TL1 and the logic of your argument disappears as well!

TL 4 characters still don't have access to Physician, so I assume you mean TL 5. We'll compare TL 5 to TL 8. A TL 5 surgeon has the ability to sterilize his equipment, will use anathesia, and has the Physician skill, but his tools put him at -2 to Surgeon skill. Thus, for complex surgeries, a skill 14 doctor only has an effective skill of 12. He really can't afford to screw around! But the TL 8 doctor has +2 to skill from his tools, giving a skill 14 character an effective skill of 16, which means he can afford to forgo anasthesia and/or sterilization without serious endangering the surgery.

So no, the logic doesn't disappear.

And you also seem to be conflating advances in skills like Physician with advances in Surgery. Physician skill is also a TL skill, and improves with time too, so a competent TL 8 Physician has access to even more assets and bonuses than a TL 5 Physician.

I would love to see a TL1 surgeon come anywhere NEAR a TL8 surgeon, even on the same level of tools and preparation.

Maybe you missed the "Even under optimal conditions, the TL 1 physician is at -11."

I am not sure what historical examples you are crowing about.

Crowing?

[cosmicfish]

Originally Posted by Mailanka

No, if you take away his tools and his physician skill, he really isn't any better than a TL 1 guy without tools or physician. You can't do open-heart surgery with your bare hands, no matter what your TL.

No you can't, but even with bare hands there are a ton of things that a higher TL physician can do that a lower TL physician cannot! Look at archaic medical practices that were often completely ignorant of things like infection, or basic anatomy! Most archaic writings on medicine indicate a lack of distinction between blood vessels and tendons, so just what is that TL1 surgeon going to pinch to keep you from bleeding out?

Let's look at the case of the guy with Surgery/TL1 25. He has no anaesthesia (-2) and poor tools (-6), but he still has an effective skill of 17, despite not knowing what most of those things in there do? I am supposed to believe that he is just as competent as a similarly skilled but impaired TL8 surgeon who lacks the tools but knows where everything is supposed to be and where it is and is not safe to cut and how to take care of someone afterwards? This is all knowledge.

Originally Posted by Mailanka

Duh! But this isn't reflected by who has what skill level, but by what information and tools your TL has access too. A guy with rank 20 TL 1 Surgery is just as much a virtuoso of his art, and spends just as many points, as the guy with rank 20 TL 8 Surgery, only the TL 8 surgeon is, obviously, superior.

I agree that he is obviously superior, I think that blaming it all on the tools is ridiculous, and am not sure how to conveniently (from a gaming perspective) differentiate the otherwise difference in (as you put it) knowledge without touching on skill.

Originally Posted by Mailanka

No, they wouldn't. The anathesia and surgical tools we use today are superior to the ones used in, say, TL 5, 6 or 7. Even if you handed those tools to a low TL guy, he still wouldn't know what to do with them: the TL portion of a skill also covers the knowledge of what to do with said tools. The bonus you get from the surgical tools doesn't come because TL 8 scalpels are sharper than TL 1 scalpels, you know.

And those advanced tools primarily come up in reference to extraordinarily complex surgeries - a particularly complex brain surgery may have -15 worth of penalties, and requires a +12 tools bonus to make it reasonable. That the TL5 guy would not know how to use them is why I am not suggesting abolishing the "TL" part of these skills - there is a technology familiarity that goes along with them. But basic competence is far higher than it was a thousand years ago.

Originally Posted by Mailanka

Yeah, it's a tad abstract, but it's still better than your system, which doesn't allow me to play a virtuoso TL 1 surgeon, like Imhotep, and suggests that the reasons TL 8 surgeons are better than TL 1 surgeons is because they're allowed to put more points into their skills. It's really the other way around: the TL 1 surgeon has to work many times harder to even approach what the least competent TL 8 surgeons can accomplish.

Still don't see this, or see where these TL1 virtuoso surgeons have been hiding.

Imhotep was a politician, a priest, an architect, a physician, and an engineer - we're not talking about a guy who dumped a ton of time into medical skills.

For that matter, if you wanted to play some mythic supersurgeon, give him a culture with a medical TL a few levels above the norm and have him be (or study under) the rare innovator who has gone a level or two beyond the current TL max. It would not be skill 25, but like I said I just don't think that is reasonable.

Originally Posted by Mailanka

TL 4 characters still don't have access to Physician, so I assume you mean TL 5. We'll compare TL 5 to TL 8. A TL 5 surgeon has the ability to sterilize his equipment, will use anathesia, and has the Physician skill, but his tools put him at -2 to Surgeon skill. Thus, for complex surgeries, a skill 14 doctor only has an effective skill of 12. He really can't afford to screw around! But the TL 8 doctor has +2 to skill from his tools, giving a skill 14 character an effective skill of 16, which means he can afford to forgo anasthesia and/or sterilization without serious endangering the surgery.

Yes, I meant TL5.

And I am okay with that skill 14 Physician. I am NOT okay with a TL5 skill 25 Physician. How do you accurately determine his chance of success? He can ALSO forgo anaesthesia and sterilization without endangering the patient? Because that seems to be the result.

Originally Posted by Mailanka

Maybe you missed the "Even under optimal conditions, the TL 1 physician is at -11."

No, I did not, but if I allow that physician to have skills in the 20+ range then they are still going to get frequent successes, especially in those areas where they are allowed multiple attempts. This is just not realistic.

[Dustin]

Originally Posted by cosmicfish

My idea is for an optional rule, wherein each tech level would have a maximum skill level applied to certain skills like Physician, Chemistry, etc.

I don't think this is a useful approach. The limitations of understanding at a given tech level don't have to mean that the lower tech person is wrong in the context of the skill usage, just that they can only operate within the limits of their TL's body of knowledge. A TL5 physicist doesn't know about electron spin, but may be real hot stuff with Newtonian mechanics. I don't see how a TL cap on skills can fail to interfere with cases like that.

If a TL0 shaman uses Diagnosis correctly on a case of lockjaw, what he's getting is information on how to approach the problem from within the TL0 body of knowledge. Assuming that demons are not real, while he may believe that demons are the ultimate cause of the disease, that doesn't have to be what he gets out of the Diagnosis roll. At TL0, a successful roll should give him information that helps the patient, end of story. Perhaps the "demons" dislike a tea made from mildly antibiotic roots, and his Diagnosis roll pins down the type of tea to use when presented with this set of symptoms. He's already limited to TL0 solutions, I don't see what's really gained by capping his skill level as well.

[Dunadin777]

I think that capping the skill level is perhaps an inappropriate approach for one reason: it makes it excessively easy to attain the maximum knowledge of primitive societies. Based on your numbers, a high-IQ character could know everything about medicine at TL0 with just one or two points. Historical specialists still spent a comparable amount of time training in these fields as a modern person--the time was less effectively spent, perhaps, but they still spent years perfecting their knowledge.

If you want to have this distinction between the absolute effectiveness of different eras, I'd suggest an increase in inherent penalties to the skill rolls. A TL0 healer/shaman might be able to improve greatly over the years, but he might be at a flat penalty to diagnose problems that would require modern radiology imaging. I'd also tend to make such tasks split between several different skills. A low TL doctor might focus entirely on his own field, but nobody in modern medicine works alone--nurses, specialists, equipment technicians, and doctors all contribute to the success of modern medical techniques. I think modern efficiency in most TL-related skills is more about logistical success in methodology than it is about excellence in empirical knowledge.