Science Familiarity Chart?

[Bloodstone]

How many Science Skills do you give your super scientists? If your anything like me, the answer is probably "too many". Looking over Dr. Destroyer, Telios, Mentiac and a few others and it's easy to see where this mentality comes from.

 

But I got to thinking "This is just plain overkill".

 

So I thought about designing a Science Familiarity chart, but I'm not really much of a science geek so I would definitely need some help. Here's the basic idea:

 

All science skills are divided into two main categories : Major Sciences and Lesser sciences (I'm sure someone will eventually take offense at that label). Lesser sciences are more specialized fields of study, while Major sciences are extremely broad fields. There may need to be a third category for extremely specialized fields, but that remains to be seen.

 

Lets go for some examples, which may or may not be all that accurate:

 

Biology, Medicine, Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics are all examples of major sciences. By purchasing a major science, you also get access to several lesser sciences, but at a penalty. The penalty is based on how many steps removed from the major science you want to go (more on that later). Major Sciences cost 3 pts give you a 9+(INT/5) roll. +1 to the roll for 2 pts. Major Sciences can almost always be used as Complimentary skills with any lesser science that they share a familiarity with.

 

Anatomy, Astronomy, Pharmacology, Botany and Zoology are all subsets of one or more of the major sciences. These skills are considered lesser sciences. Lesser Sciences cost 2 pts give you a 9+(INT/5) roll. +1 to the roll for 1 pt. Lesser Sciences are more specialized and restricted. However, Lesser Sciences often bridge the gaps that separate the Major Sciences, allowing characters to know more about science in general as they explore more and more diverse yet interrelated fields.

 

Now lets say you have the Major Science of Medicine (17-) but not Chemistry. But you REALLY need to solve a chemistry related problem. You are a scientist. Chances are you probably know SOMETHING about chemistry, even if it's not your field of study. So you trace a line through the familiarity chart. Lets say it goes something like this: Medicine - Anatomy - Biology - Biochemistry - Chemistry.

 

Each step down the familiarity chart imposes a penalty to the roll. Lets say it's -2 for now, just to toss a number out there. So going from Medicine to Chemistry is a -8 penalty, giving you only a 9-. That's harsh, but these two Major Sciences are quite far apart on the chart. In fact, it may not be harsh enough.

 

Now, lets say you have Medicine (17-) and Biochem (15-). You get to use the shorter of the two distances, resulting in a -2 to your Biochem roll. A 13- is a much better shot.

 

Now it's possible that this should not be the "base" state of the system. That this should be something only available to people with a real knack for Science, like a Talent perhaps. But really, I can't even determine that until I make up the chart and see what it's impact will be like. Obviously, I can't think of every science known to man, but I think working with HEROdom Assembled we could cover a lot of ground.

 

So the questions are:

 

Is this worth doing or is the system completely fine as is? In other words do you feel that the 61 pts worth of Science skills that Dr Destroyer has are points well spent?

 

If it is worth doing, is the math I presented here ok? Should the penalty for skipping down the familiarity chart be increased or decreased? What about the point costs for the base skills themselves?

 

And finally, has someone else done this before, cause if so I'd much rather be lazy and borrow their work

[Dr. Anomaly]

Re: Science Familiarity Chart?

 

And finally' date=' has someone else done this before, cause if so I'd much rather be lazy and borrow their work [/quote']

You might check out this post (and attachment) by Cancer...

 

[Toadmaster]

Re: Science Familiarity Chart?

 

Well, you're kind of re-inventing the wheel. Knowledge skills, Science Skills etc sort of work the opposite of what you describe creating. They way it is set up the more specific your skill the better information you get from a success.

 

For example, you have 3 characters rolling to get a piece of information

 

Character A has Biology

 

Character B has Toxicology

 

and Character C has neurotoxins from the rain forests of the Belgian congo

 

all three characters successfully make their roll, Character A may discover that the patient has been poisoned with some kind of neurological toxin, Character B may discover the patient has been poisoned by a neuro toxin from an animal souce, while Character C will discover that the patient has been poisoned with a Neuro toxin from the Congo "I say, old chap" frog (so named because after touching the frogs highly poisonous skin, the victim only has enough time to say "I say, old chap" before flling into a deep coma), the use of this toxin as a weapon is unique to one tribe in the Congo, the Mabutu death frog tribe (and just happens to be a group of the Toadmasters loyal followers).

 

Alternately these skills can be used to complement each other increasing the chance of success.

 

So while you proposed system isn't a bad way to handle skills, it isn't needed unless you happen to dislike the way skills already work.

[Guest daeudi_454]

Re: Science Familiarity Chart?

 

I would like to see a familiarty chart, if for no other reason than costs.... If I have Trig, Calc should get a discount....

But I guess on the flip side, that is what the Scientist Skill Enhancer is for...

[stan da ork]

Re: Science Familiarity Chart?

 

Just to keep anyone from taking offense, you could swap out "Major" and "Lesser" with "General", "Specific", "Specialized", etc.

 

While I appreciate what you are trying to do here, I think it overcomplicates the matter of Sciences in a way that doesn't generally add any benefit to most games (it might have a place in Star Hero, though). If you wanted to make the "Super-Scientist" character easier to build (and cheaper), perhaps this would work:

 

Instead of basing how much information a character gains from a Science skill on how specific that skill is to the situation, base it on that and on how much the character made his roll by. So Toadmaster's example would be if all three characters made their roll by the same amount. If the Character A (the one with Biology) made his roll by a lot more (like by 6), he might get all the information Character C (the one with the very specific skill) gets for making his roll exactly. By giving a bonus for making the roll by a lot, a character can simulate knowing everything there is to know about Biology by buying a very high Biology skill, instead of buying tons of more specialized sciences based on Biology. So Captain Biology could just buy Biology 30- and be done with it. For the true Super-Scientist (one who knows everything about science, period), you could even allow a single skill called Science, and let the character just buy that up really high. So sure, the guy with Science needs to make his roll by twenty or more to identify the interaction between quarks and muons that is the source of the supervillian's power, but who cares when his skill is 40-?

[Steve]

Re: Science Familiarity Chart?

 

I would like to see a familiarty chart, if for no other reason than costs.... If I have Trig, Calc should get a discount....

But I guess on the flip side, that is what the Scientist Skill Enhancer is for...

 

Well, if you did it like the language tree, then you can get quite a savings on points, depending on how similar two sciences are. Mathematics and Calculus would have great similarities. But someone who knew Chemistry would not have as many similarities to work with in how well they could learn (or know) something like Computer Science.

 

I suppose an argument could be made for something similar on Area Knowledges, but that's another story.

[Mister E]

Re: Science Familiarity Chart?

 

Well, if you did it like the language tree, then you can get quite a savings on points, depending on how similar two sciences are. Mathematics and Calculus would have great similarities. But someone who knew Chemistry would not have as many similarities to work with in how well they could learn (or know) something like Computer Science.

 

I suppose an argument could be made for something similar on Area Knowledges, but that's another story.

Area Knowledges should be easy to turn into a Chart.

[Trebuchet]

Re: Science Familiarity Chart?

 

It should be fairly easy to do such a list. Any physicist will know some chemistry and mathematics because the former is a related discipline and the latter is a tool used by physicists, but not any mathematician will know physics or chemistry. A really topnotch physicist will be very good at both of those (in other words, actually buy them instead of just using the "free" Familiarity). And I'd say calculus would be a required knowledge to be considered a mathematician (After all, you can learn it in high school!) unless you're running a pre-Isaac Newton campaign.

 

Where it would get trickier would be with narrow specializations and rubber-science - Where exactly do you fit "gravitics" or "hyperspace physics"?

[Logan D. Hurricanes]

Re: Science Familiarity Chart?

 

I quite like the idea. Now, you must do it

[Guest daeudi_454]

Re: Science Familiarity Chart?

 

BASED ON THIS:

http://www.psc.edu/MetaCenter/MetaScience/fos.html

 

It would be an interesting build for the sytem...

Here is just a thought-

A character could buy a "ten skill" for the regular price (3/2 for (9+int/5))

Then the character could purchase 1 pt. Science Element or SEs...

These would be a +3 with that specific field.

The +3 is based on lack of a WF penalty, just for S&G.

 

Skills within the larger "Hundreds Skills" (100, 200, 300, etc.) would have a -3 penalty, and those in other Hundreds skills would be a -8 or not at all.

There would be no penalty for other sciences within the "ten skill", and only a -1 for the SE related skills in other "Ten Skills"... (or no penalty, depending on preference of GM/forum)

This would require the chart to be remade and cross referenced....

Not to mention it would start having Prerequisites....

[austenandrews]

Re: Science Familiarity Chart?

 

I've found that it's generally not worth the space on the character sheet to list out a dozen different science skills. As a GM I prefer to allow broad categories to cover minute details. Frex "SS: Mathematics, 14-less" would grant pretty much the same knowledge about calculus as "SS: Calculus, 11-less," because there's really very little need to distinguish the two in most games.

 

However for rare games where minute granularity is useful, such a chart of relationships could be interesting.

[Guest daeudi_454]

Re: Science Familiarity Chart?

 

well- it would essentially work like that, but with specializations...

 

Science Skills (15 IQ)

SS: Mathematics 13- (5 pts.)<110 Mathematical Sciences (DMS)>

SS: Astronomy 12- (3 pts.) <120 Astronomical Sciences (AST)>

SS: Chemistry 14- (7 pts.)<140 Chemistry (CHE)>

 

Science Elements

122 Planetary Astronomy <+3 with SS: Astronomy> (1 pt.)

144 Organic and Macromolecular Chemistry <+3 with SS: Chemistry > (1 pt.)

[Supreme Serpent]

Re: Science Familiarity Chart?

 

Reminds me of the Shadowrun skill "tree". Pretty much how I do things, just not that formalized. If you have "Chemistry", you can do things in the specialties, with some penalties. If you have the specialty, you can do things in that field very well, and have penalties if you try to go "back up the tree" towards the base skill or to another specialty. Note this is mostly for supers games also, where science is...elastic at best anyways.

[Steve Long]

Re: Science Familiarity Chart?

 

All this brings to mind some similar tinkering I did a ways back for The Ultimate Skill -- I'll have to be sure to come back and revisit this thread when I get to work on the book in earnest next year.

[Lord Zod]

Re: Science Familiarity Chart?

 

I don't want to stray to far from the original topic, but I thought you might be interested in hearing about some other alternate ways of dealing with science skills.

 

I saw a talent called Universal Scientist posted on this website. I'm sure some of you are already familiar with it. http://www.globalguardians.com/houserules/houserulesindex.php

 

The website had a new talent to go along with all of the groups of skills that have skill enhancers. It's the same idea behind Universal Translator.

 

Another alternative that I'm familiar with was recently devised by fireg0lem, for a game he's about to start up. He created it in order to encourage characters to become superscientists and superscholars while still allowing them to specialize in different fields and leaving them with plenty of points for superheroing, because it's just that kind of world. To that end it isn't grounded in realism quite so much as your system, but it's working out so far for its intended purpose.

 

He's abolished skill enhancers all together, and the language relation chart no longer has an effect on point cost, though people can still understand languages related to the ones they know if there are 3 or 4 pts of similarity.

 

He uses a doubling system for knowledge and science skills. 2pts gets you 9+(INT/5) with one science skill. Every additional 2pts doubles your number of science skills. So for 4pts you get 2, for 6pts you get 4, and so on. Before long you're Doc Savage. You can also swap out 9+(INT/5) with one skill for Base 8 with two skills, but the gm discourages doing this past a certain point because it starts to get silly. Knowledge skills work the same way.

 

Languages (in case you're curious) work the same way, if you replace "9+(INT/5)" with "Idiomatic, Native Accent (the 4pt level)" and replace "Base 8" with "Fluent Conversation (the 2pt level)."

 

All of this, of course, might be of no use to you whatsoever. It wouldn't work so well in a more realistic setting. But sharing ideas sometimes leads to interesting results, so I thought I might as well toss it out there.

 

Good luck designing your Science Familiarity system. It sounds like it has alot of potential.

[prestidigitator]

Re: Science Familiarity Chart?

 

I don't know about Familiarity, but I wouldn't be opposed to coming up with some default relationships among the more common sciences for purposes of determining level of detail and penalties.

 

Remember that if you find yourself giving a character a bunch of related Science Skills you can simply transform it into a fewer number of broader Science Skills with some bonuses or Skill Levels to overcome the difference. Complementary Skills can also help a great deal here.

 

For example, if I am tempted to give a character Biology, Anatomy, Neurosurgery, Chemistry, Biochemistry, and Pharmacology all at their base levels, I might instead turn it into Medicine and Chemistry, +2 with each, and a Skill Level with Science Skills. That covers the basis even when the character might take a -3 when using Medicine to perform brain surgery or determine some broad biological fact about another species (when Neurosugery or Biology, respectively, might have done the same with no penalties).

[kave99]

Re: Science Familiarity Chart?

 

back in the days before ss ks ak ps we used to spend 5pts to 50pts on super skill called scientist. a Doctor might spend 5pts, a gadgeter 25pts and doctor destroyer might have 50pts. the more points the more skilled you where. the gm would roll sum dice and give you sum info on the alien virus or what ever. it worked well . when ks and such came around we switched over and it seemed that the points totals matched up pretty well to the character concept.

[Killer Shrike]

Re: Science Familiarity Chart?

 

I prefer to use vaguely defined KS's and SS's to handle broad categories rather than buy a bunch of seperate abilities.

 

You could always make SS a laundry list Skill combining a skill roll and FAM groups like survival and gambling.

 

I mention that in passing in this doc:

 

http://www.killershrike.com/GeneralHERO/HEROAnatomy.htm

 

Specifically:

Checklist Skills

Some RU Skills have been merged with the Familiarity Skill model (like the Weapon and Transport Familiarities mentioned above), to allow more optional granularity. For example Computer Programming is just a normal RU Skill by default, but it can be grated more finely if the GM prefers, with a checklist of specific platforms and programming languages that a person is proficient with bought as 1 point familiarities. This is useful in campaigns that focus on high tech and enforces a higher degree of realism, but is not useful in campaigns where such shadings are not important.

 

This is done really inconsistently however; it is very hit or miss as far as which Skills are expanded in such a fashion. In my opinion all of the RU Skills could be modified to work in this fashion; in particular the abstract KS, PS, SS Skills could be switched to this model so that you could do something like take an undefined KS Roll and then buy the things that the roll applies to for 1 point each instead of having to buy a new Skill for each one. For instance it would often be less expensive for a brainy scientist type character to buy a single Science Skill 17- and then buy all of the types of Science he can apply the roll to than it would be to buy multiple Science Skills up to 17-, or sufficient SL's to approximate the same effect.

[Guest daeudi_454]

Re: Science Familiarity Chart?

 

Isn't that just a vague version of what I suggested?

[Killer Shrike]

Re: Science Familiarity Chart?

 

Isn't that just a vague version of what I suggested?

Or to put it the other way, isnt what you suggested the same as what I've already proposed previously?

[zornwil]

Re: Science Familiarity Chart?

 

Well, just to add two cents as we've talked about it, I draw from the idea in Fantasy Hero (listed in a sidebar) of having a penalty up or down from your "level" of knowledge. What I mean by this is that if you, say, have AK: France, and you try to apply it to something very specific to the city of Lyons it's -5 (I use higher modifiers; that's how FH suggests and that's better for most people's games; naturally, adjust up or down to taste). If you apply AK: France to broader info on Western Europe, it's -5. Europe as a whole, -10. That street int he city of Lyons, -10. And so on. That's pretty much precisely from FH, except my example is different- FH brought it up in the context of AK specifically.

 

But I apply it to sciences. If you have biophysics, then something relating to physics is -5, biology is -5, something very specific within biophysics (such as knowledge specific to the strength of a slug) -5, and so on whether more or less general. I can be more specific if needed but I doubt it's necessary, the idea is simple enough. I use -10 in a high-powered game (in general, I double all penalties anyway from the book in high-powered games, though it can vary of course according to the type of game and area of interest), I wouldn't in a lesser game. And of course this is modified. Doing a check on Paris, even something quite specific, if you have AK: France is certainly not going to be a full level down, doesn't make sense.

 

A "science familiarity chart" would be helpful just from the perspective of informing the levels and so on.