| From: | Wafflemiesters <evamarie@**********.NET> |
|---|---|
| Subject: | Intellegence |
| Date: | Wed, 25 Mar 1998 16:11:50 -0600 |
system that has "intelligence" as one of it's stats. Face it... most of our
characters are usually smarter than we are.. (That's if you're considering 3 as an
average) but there's no way to role-play this since the best idea your ultra-bright
character can have is only as good as you (who's pretty bright, but not spewing doctoral
theses in your spare time bright) can have.
>
I susspect the average intellegence on this list is, in SR terms, more
than 3- maybe 4 or 5. Your dealing with SR otaku (in thejapanese word
sense), here.
Actually,my characters act MUCH more intellegently than I do- I tend to
"freeze" in actual situations, and plan much better than I improvise.
Iv'e noticed my LARP (vampire) characters screw up all the time,
compared to my table top (SR +ED) ones.
I usually assign a high intellegence, since I'm a good planner,and buy
skills that might justify using tactics that involve things like magic.
Another thing is, when you call for actions, and the player freezes, we
used to count to five (slowly), then skip him. Now we count to
intellegence....
> Likewise, if you're playing a character who's of lesser intelligence than you, it can
be pretty hard to "dummy-down".. ie.. maybe you get this cool idea to drop a
grenade into their pneumatic messaging tube (so you're playing steam-punk.. so what? :) )
as a distraction.. but would your character with his intelligence of 2?
>
Hell yeah- Buthead (maybe not Beavis) is smart enough for that! That's
just malicious, not brainy. When handed a character with low
intellegence and few knowledge skills, I usually just don't make any
suggestions as part of a planning session. That, plus the 2 count when
you stall will result in some "dropped balls" compared to getting a 7
count.
A bigger anoyance with perception rolls is that you supposedly need
multiple (2+) succeses to gain anything more than general information.
Evendumb people can generally identify friends in most situations! I
realize, in cases where tests are called for, your usually dealing with
cases where accidental shootings and such DO happen, but it getts out of
hand sometimes. Maybe we use to MANY perception tests, I dunno.
> I've always much preferred a system where your "awareness" is a stat.
That's
> something that can be controlled by the GM.. you just don't notice that
> pneumatic tube.. likewise, you could have memory as a stat. It's easier for
> the GM to remind you of something you don't remember, or say, "Roll a memory
> test" to see if you remember that hey.. it's saturday, and they don't have
> pressure in the pneumatic tubes today.
Those are good points, but I don't see why intellegence can't be used
for those rolls. There are cyber, magic, and "edge / flaw"
modifications that can apply to either of those rolls, as well, so I
think SR has the mechanics covered, if you prefer to do things that way.
Mongoose
