Light Effects

[redsash]

1 hour ago, Sean Waters said:

 

I agree and have previously argued that Perception should be a 2 stage test: 

 

1. Roll to see if you can actually sense something.

2. Roll to see how you interpret or understand that.

 

I absolutely agree that the second one would benefit from high intelligence, or skills appropriate to the situation, such as AK: The Wilderness.

 

 

Hero models that reasonably well with complementary skill rolls.

 

In your example with the vacuum, there are two things going on: the sensing and the diagnosing. As a GM I might not want you to roll both because it slows things down (and would give you a premature hint that there is a Mechanics issue), but I might give you a +2 to your PER roll or give you more information if you make the raw INT-based roll.

 

i.e. the same roll gives you "The vacuum is straining, sounds like it might be blocked" vs "the vacuum is making a funny noise"

 

Also, I am not a pirate, and I don't have that skill. Lots of people know that technique but don't have the presence of mind (INT) to use it.  😉

 

Back to sense organs: is there enough light to activate your eyeballs (including any superhuman eyeball buffs)? If not, then no PER check.

 

If there is enough light, then the signal is going into your nervous system. Great, now it's up to your mind to interpret it, starting with some very basic pattern recognition and filtering. How well do those function? Well, that's hard to know, but the way we test it comes up with a number that we call "Intelligence Quotient" (Note that intelligence should theoretically be independent from knowledge, although again our tests are flawed, so there is almost always a hidden knowledge aspect to IQ scores.)

 

So in other words, people who are good at recognizing patterns in sensory data are more intelligent, because that's the definition of intelligence.

[Doc Democracy]

27 minutes ago, redsash said:

Hero models that reasonably well with complementary skill rolls.

 

In your example with the vacuum, there are two things going on: the sensing and the diagnosing. As a GM I might not want you to roll both because it slows things down (and would give you a premature hint that there is a Mechanics issue), but I might give you a +2 to your PER roll or give you more information if you make the raw INT-based roll.

 

i.e. the same roll gives you "The vacuum is straining, sounds like it might be blocked" vs "the vacuum is making a funny noise"

 

Sean's case might be more clearly modeled with a penalty to the PER roll unless the complementary skill existed.  In his wife's case she is more likely to fail the PER roll because she lacks the awareness that it means something, not that she doesn't hear it.  A single roll should mean, if she fails, that she is not aware that she needs to do anything.  She might say to Sean later "I did notice it was making a funny noise"...

 

Doc

 

[Sean Waters]

56 minutes ago, Doc Democracy said:

 

Sean's case might be more clearly modeled with a penalty to the PER roll unless the complementary skill existed.  In his wife's case she is more likely to fail the PER roll because she lacks the awareness that it means something, not that she doesn't hear it.  A single roll should mean, if she fails, that she is not aware that she needs to do anything.  She might say to Sean later "I did notice it was making a funny noise"...

 

Doc

 

 

That's precisely what she says.  Moreover she denies that it is making a funny noise even when I point it out to her.  She is doing it on purpose, because she can hear me opening a bottle of beer from the other side of the  house.

 

I like the two roll idea just because it makes more sense to me: the odds might be similar overall inserting a penalty (having to roll 11- twice is about the same as having to roll 9- once (About 39% compared to 37.5%) but the bell curve means that a -2 penalty does not always have the same effect: having to roll 14- twice is about the same odds as having to roll 13- once, not having to roll 12-.  That would mean that the penalty is a bigger effective penalty for more skilled protagonists, which does not feel right.

 

Again, that is the bell curve for you.

 

Another thing though is that it makes just more sense to me.  Say you have a REALLY good archaeology skill, you'll definitely recognise those rocks are in fact finger bones BUT you would be no more likely (or should be no more likely) to spot the 'rocks' in the first place unless, possibly you are specifically looking for them (which would be a bonus to PER, possibly due to extra time, but no bonus to KS: Archaeology).  In fact if you ARE specifically looking for them you can describe them to others with no archaeology skill.  They can then make a perception check to see if they spot something LIKE that.  "What about these?", "No.",  "What about these?", "No.",  "What about these?", "No.",  "What about these?", "N-wait a minute...", 

 

Finally it just feels easier to apply appropriate modifiers.  It is dark, you take a PER penalty, because all you are doing is seeing if you notice something, not to see if you recognise it.  Just because you would know what it is if you did spot it makes it no more likely that you would spot it in the first place.

 

Hero has a relatively complicated combat system and we think nothing of that.  Combat REALLY slows down most game sessions, but it sort of tells a story, rather than just saying, "Right you've got Fighting Skill at 12- and he's got Fighting Skill at 13-.  Do an opposed check.  OK, You win."  I feel we could do more to make Skills tell a story and not just rely on the GM, who has enough to do, to interpret the results.  Chaining skills is one way to do that and perhaps justifies having quite high skill totals.

 

I appreciate this might seem to be getting a little off topic but, you know, discussion.

[Doc Democracy]

22 minutes ago, Sean Waters said:

Another thing though is that it makes just more sense to me.  Say you have a REALLY good archaeology skill, you'll definitely recognise those rocks are in fact finger bones BUT you would be no more likely (or should be no more likely) to spot the 'rocks' in the first place unless, possibly you are specifically looking for them (which would be a bonus to PER, possibly due to extra time, but no bonus to KS: Archaeology).

 

You know, I kinda disagree with this.  Recognising signal from noise very much depends on knowledge of detail.  I might completely miss those finger bones because they look no different from the rocks and roots they sit among but the archeaologist's detailed knowledge makes them stand out, almost as if they were under a little spotlight...

 

Not always, but sometimes. 

 

Doc

[ScottishFox]

On 1/10/2020 at 6:20 PM, Ninja-Bear said:

FWIW I looked up Light College for Fantasy Hero 4th ed and It was bought as Change Environment.

 

Btw what is Light Illumination it was listed in Gadgets! book.

 

 

 

That's how I've always done it and probably where I picked it up.  4th Edition forever!

[PhilFleischmann]

21 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

This isn't the political thread (and I'm not crazed enough to even look there, let alone post in it), so I'm not going to call anyone or anything out.  Hell, you don't even need politicians.  Surely you have coworkers of some sort.

 

At any rate, what you suggest there is not even remotely supported by the evidence available in the world.  We all know some extremely well-versed idiots of one stripe or another.

What in the world does this have to do with anything?  You're the one who asked, "What knowledge does intelligence provide?"  Are you simply repeating my point that a person with a 30- KS: Star Wars Trivia is not necessarily intelligent?  Then, yeah, I already agreed with that.  If your knowledge isn't applicable to the real world, then it might not count toward intelligence.  And likewise, a really high intelligence or knowledge of real-world science doesn't mean that the person will be a good politician, or have knowledge in some other field.  No one ever argued otherwise.

 

I don't know what "evidence available in the world" you're looking at, but the evidence that I see is that people who study become smarter, and people who don't, don't.  And yes, they only get smarter in the field(s) which they study, not necessarily in any other field.  And in the case of politicians (and indeed all people), there is very little correlation between intelligence and ethics.  But again, this has nothing to do with the discussion as I've understood it.

[ScottishFox]

On 1/11/2020 at 12:50 AM, PhilFleischmann said:

Thread Drift!

 

I generally would expect a Super-Scientist to have a high INT, because that's what studying science does.  Just like I would expect a super-fighter to have high STR.  If you spend years of your life in physical combat training exercises, your muscles are going to get stronger.  Likewise, if you spend years studying science, your brain is going to get stronger.

 

This sounds great, but intelligence testing in real life suggests that you can shift your innate IQ by about 15-20% tops.  Optimal nutrition, rigorous use of your brain, etc.

Physical strength on the other hand can be more than doubled with a good strength training program.

 

I don't know if college made me any smarter, but multiple years of swimming and martial arts allowed me to do 600 lb calf raises on 1 leg.  I **wish** education would have had that much of an impact on my IQ. 

 

PS-  We're on page 9 of a post about how to model flashlights.  😐

Edited January 13, 2020 by ScottishFox
PS

[Chris Goodwin]

13 minutes ago, ScottishFox said:

PS-  We're on page 9 of a post about how to model flashlights.  😐

 

See also Parkinson's law of triviality ("bikeshedding").

[PhilFleischmann]

10 minutes ago, ScottishFox said:

This sounds great, but intelligence testing in real life suggests that you can shift your innate IQ by about 15-20% tops.

Well, it's been about 35 years since I last took an IQ test, but as I recall, they asked me many knowledge-based questions.  Questions about vocabulary, and math, and various kinds of problem-solving.  I was able to answer these questions correctly (and thus get a high score) because I studied these things.  Presumably, I would have had a lower score if I was unable to answer these questions correctly.  How do you even measure intelligence separately from knowledge?  If you have two identical twins with the exact same diet and physical living conditions, but you have one go through an intensive education, and have the other one watch daytime TV all day, do you think they'll score the same on IQ tests?

 

I do not grant that IQ is the same as intelligence, nor the equivalent of the INT characteristic in HERO.

[Duke Bushido]

IQ is, plainly and simply, a measure of exposure and retention as compared to your age group. 

 

When you are young, it is easy to have a high IQ: all you have to do to be "gifted" by American standards is to be exposed to and retain knowledge that is considered to be above your age group or ahead of the scholarly plan for your age group. 

 

This is also why IQ testing is hailed by ethnocentric hate groups: there is a large bias towards things that generally don't make it into poorer school districts, such as those found in inner cities and large urban areas. 

 

Your IQ will drop as you age: what was cutting edge when you were a child is now a matter of course for people in general.  As you enter the work force, your learning becomes more and more specialized and what was advanced for your last age group is now normal for your current age group. 

 

Because of this trend of normalizing new and exciting cutting edge things, the scale itself and in particular the comparison to age categories must be adjusted every so often.  The last I knew, it was every twenty years, but that may have changed. 

 

IQ was a fraud from the get-go, and as far as I know, the USA is the last nation on earth that still tries to attach significance to it; it has been disproven too many times to be taken seriously anywhere else in the world. 

[Duke Bushido]

1 hour ago, PhilFleischmann said:

What in the world does this have to do with anything? 

 

Someone made the claim that knowledge provided intelligence. 

 

Then apparently lost that knowledge. 

[PhilFleischmann]

19 minutes ago, Duke Bushido said:

Someone made the claim that knowledge provided intelligence. 

Indeed, and no one has come anywhere close to refuting that claim.

 

Someone else asked, "What knowledge does intelligence provide?"  But we have no idea what he meant by that.  And he seems utterly incapable of answering any questions as to what he meant.

[Ninja-Bear]

Phil, knowledge provides Intelligence you say? Am I correct? And no one refuted that claim? Correct? Let me present Rainman. He has phenomenal knowledge/memorization but he doesn’t have a normal Intelligence. 

[Sean Waters]

5 hours ago, Doc Democracy said:

 

You know, I kinda disagree with this.  Recognising signal from noise very much depends on knowledge of detail.  I might completely miss those finger bones because they look no different from the rocks and roots they sit among but the archeaologist's detailed knowledge makes them stand out, almost as if they were under a little spotlight...

 

Not always, but sometimes. 

 

Doc

 

I can see that *ahem*, but I would also argue that I know full well what my car keys look like.  I've had them for years, I have absolutely no problem recognising them when I see them and I do not have a bunch of similar keys about the place AND YET I can put them down to answer the phone and then have to take 10 minutes finding them again.  My perception is fine, I am just not great about sorting keys from background, despite my detailed and intimate knowledge and years of practice looking for them.  Or maybe, just maybe, I'm excellent at hiding keys.

 

If we had separate rolls we could emulate that better: my eyesight is fine but I'm an idiot.  That is not the same thing, to my way of thinking, as just having a low PER roll,even if mathematically it yields a similar result.  Having two rolls tells you more about the process.  it is more interesting.  It really does not take long.

 

To take a comparison with Strength in Hero, we don't roll for how much you can lift (barring Pushing), there's just a number for that.  Similarly, you are always going to be able to perceive (in the sense of actually see) the same thing in the same circumstances.  If you could see it yesterday, you can see it today.  The issue here is whether you perceive (in the sense of comprehend) the significance of that, and that is what Perception seems to emulate.  However, there's also the problem that, when there is background noise, even though you are certainly capable of perceiving (in either sense) a certain thing, you may well not do.

 

My view is that the 'How Much Can My Eyesight Lift' bit is down to your physiology and the conditions: are you CAPABLE of seeing the thing in question, which is really a question for the GM, based on the rules (which is why having Light Levels could be a useful tool).  Next there is the question of whether you notice the thing in question.  To my way of thinking, that is what the PER roll is, whether you actually pick that information out of the background noise.  Finally there is the question of what significance to attribute to that information, which is why I think there ought to be another step and we should decouple PER and INT.  Sure you can say a single roll does all that, but where's the fun in that?

 

If you have not seen this, watch and see if you can get it right: 

 

[PhilFleischmann]

Rainman, you say?  Let me present this bit of knowledge:  Rainman is a fictitious character.

 

And here's another bit of knowledge about his character:  He isn't particularly intelligent at all.  He has no ability to cope in society.  He can memorize numbers and count very quickly.

 

So yes, no one has refuted the claim.  I already acknowledged that a character created with the HERO System could be very intelligent with no knowledge, and the same holds true with a character in a movie.

[Sean Waters]

2 hours ago, PhilFleischmann said:

Indeed, and no one has come anywhere close to refuting that claim.

 

Someone else asked, "What knowledge does intelligence provide?"  But we have no idea what he meant by that.  And he seems utterly incapable of answering any questions as to what he meant.

 

I suspect it means that intelligence without knowledge does not mean that you can derive everything from first principles: you need at least some knowledge, and the more you have the more your intelligence can get to work.  It's like a supercomputer with a 20 byte broadband connection.  Intelligent ignorance may get there in the end, but probably no quicker than informed norm.  There's a reason we didn't come up with Relativity (I say 'we'...) until the 20th Century: it required a lot of geniuses over a long period of time involved in a lot of experimentation and theorisation (is that a word?) before we had the knowledge base for intelligence to take the next step.

 

Equally you could have a ZX80 with a Gigabit internet connection.  Lots of information available but it isn't going to get processed  very quickly or make the base unit any more powerful.  The availability of a lot of knowledge does not mean that we will be able to use it to come to any particular conclusion.

 

Intelligence + Knowledge, however...

 

Or, you know, what Ninja-Bear said.  That's probably a better analogy.

 

EDIT: The point is, Intelligence is computing power, Knowledge is data.  Both is best.

[Duke Bushido]

Rainman was based on a real person name Kim Peek. 

 

Just like the character in the movue he was a fount of knowledge,  with most experts citing his memory as flawless, and he absorbed information.  But other than being able to recall it, he could do very little with it. 

Mr. Peek is one of a very tiny group of humans referred to as "megasavants." He wasn't particularly "intelligent," at least not in any useful measure. Much like the Rainman character, he was functionally retarded and almost unable to care for himself until very late in life.  Even then, he did better with periodic visits from caretakers.   Unlike the Rainman character, he was unable to form emotional relationships.  Minor, I suppose, in this age that glorifies the introvert and the self-exiled shut-in, but interesting nonetheless.   I can't think of a single Guinness book of world records since the early seventies that he wasn't in, at least until I stopped reading them in the nineties. 

 

I offerred politicians as a class of highly-educated / knowledgeable people of questionable actual intelligence.  I will withdraw that now, both because it may have been too subtle for the conversation, and because we can question if the goals are what they state, or if their goal is simply to live high on the hog off of tax money, in which cases most of them are extremely shrewd. 

 

So let me make this less subtle:

 

The amount of waffling and redirection every time I respond to one of your comments suggests that you find me unintelligent enough to not notice.  There is little point in listing my fields of expertise nor my knowledge acquired via odd recreational habits (like reading textbooks and technical manuals - and the Guinness book- for fun), as this is the internet, and there is no way to one-hundred-percent prove any claim either of us makes about ourselves.  Suffice it to say that I am in possession of more knowledge across more fields than all but one or two of the people I encounter on a regular basis in the real world. 

 

Yet I am pretty sure that you think I'm a dumbass.  (Certainly I tend to speak like one, casually, but then, I am comfortable with it). 

 

Does the Kim Peek example, or my own stupidity, not offer some valid rebuttal to the idea that knowledge does not just become or in any way grant intelligence simply by being collected? 

 

As to "disappearing," well I publically (and I thought rather politely) tried to step out of this thread some time back.  Without naming anyone, I would like to ask those parties who keep sending me messages that there is something here I need to read would please stop doing so.  I've been back a couple of times now, and I assure you, there is nothing here I need to or am remotely interested in reading. 

 

I appreciate your concern for my peace of mind, but believe me: it's better achieved continuing to not read this thread. 

 

Couteous regards to all. 

 

Duke

[Ninja-Bear]

1 hour ago, PhilFleischmann said:

Rainman, you say?  Let me present this bit of knowledge:  Rainman is a fictitious character.

 

And here's another bit of knowledge about his character:  He isn't particularly intelligent at all.  He has no ability to cope in society.  He can memorize numbers and count very quickly.

 

So yes, no one has refuted the claim.  I already acknowledged that a character created with the HERO System could be very intelligent with no knowledge, and the same holds true with a character in a movie.

Rainman is based on a real person.  And there other people like that I’ve worked in that field with those clients. They have knowledge yet not Intelligence.-as In functioning in the world.  So know I’m not sure what you’re arguing?

[PhilFleischmann]

33 minutes ago, Duke Bushido said:

The amount of waffling and redirection every time I respond to one of your comments suggests that you find me unintelligent enough to not notice.

I'd like to give you the benefit of the doubt that you're not unintelligent.  After all, you play HERO.  And we seem to be in agreement on most things.  It is your continuous posting of things that are irrelevant and the failure to answer any of my questions that I find frustrating.  And a simple failure of logic:

 

My claim is (and I'm pretty sure I've said this multiple times by now) that you can't become intelligent without knowledge.

 

You turned that around and acted as if I said that you can't have knowledge without being intelligent.

 

In the HERO System, knowledge and intelligence can be purchased a-la-carte.  But in the real world, intelligence requires effort and study.

 

And you seem to have gotten the logic mixed up again, by implying that I said that if you study and acquire knowledge, that is guaranteed to make you intelligent.  (I assume that's what the politician thing was about.)  I said no such thing.

 

We seem to be in agreement that IQ really doesn't mean very much - especially considering the ways in which it is determined.

 

Are we in agreement that, in HERO, selling your INT down to 5 and then buying a bunch of INT-based skills up to a very high level is a stupidly inefficient thing to do?

Are we in agreement that intelligence does relate to perception?

Are we in agreement that it's a lot easier to see something 20 m away in broad daylight than it is to see something 2 m away in a "dark night", even though the RAW give both of these a -4 modifier?

Are we in agreement that "Active Sight" gives off light detectable by those with passive sight, the same way Active Sonar gives of sonar pings detectable by those with passive sonar?

Do you agree (or have any feedback at all) about my ideas for how to cost Active Sight?

What do you think the point value of Normal Sight should be?  In 5e, it was 25 points.  Apparently in 6e, it's 35 points.

Are we in agreement that Normal Sight should have exactly the same point value as the Physical Complication: Blindness?

Anything else?

[Duke Bushido]

 

1 hour ago, PhilFleischmann said:

I'd like to give you the benefit of the doubt that you're not unintelligent.  After all, you play HERO.  And we seem to be in agreement on most things. 

 

 

 

Generous of you, considering the number of times my temper has gotten the better of me.  That is the primary reason I quit this thread, have continued quitting this thread, and, so we are all on the same page:  will _not_ be returning to this thread after this post.  However, your generosity is accepted.

 

 

Quote

It is your continuous posting of things that are irrelevant and the failure to answer any of my questions that I find frustrating. 

 

They are not irrelevant.  I have answered questions, and I have addressed some of the angles of the problem of "how to make light," usually in an attempt to get some sort of consensus on the parameters of this project, or at least the problem they are to address.  At any rate, I have addressed most of the questions that I can, to include yours.  The problem is that your questions seem to change so as to no longer fit the answer given.

 

If I may prevail on your generosity with an example:

Quote

And a simple failure of logic:

 

My claim is (and I'm pretty sure I've said this multiple times by now) that you can't become intelligent without knowledge.

 

I do not doubt that this is your current claim.

 

 

Quote

 

You turned that around and acted as if I said that you can't have knowledge without being intelligent.

 

I turned nothing around.  Look on the previous page.  You should find something that looks like this:

 

 

On January 12, 2020 at 2:08 PM, PhilFleischmann said:

None.  It's the other way around.  Knowledge provides intelligence.  

 

 

Granted, I may have subtly twisted your stating that "knowledge provides intelligence" into something more along the lines of "knowledge provides intelligence."  If so, it was entirely un-intentional.

 

Though you weren't at all unhappy with the posts from Ninja Bear offering an example of knowledge not providing intelligence.  In fact, you seemed rather pleased that the only example that disputed the specific claim "knowledge provides intelligence" was fictional.  At no point prior to being given an example of real humans for whom knowledge does not provide intelligence did you have any problem with the idea that someone may have twisted what you said to suggest that you had stated knowledge provides intelligence.  Only then was there concern that someone (from the ....  Well, to keep it courteous, let's say "direct accusation" instead of "phrasing," I'm guessing someone was me  )  twisted your words. 

 

 

It's much like this was:

 

6 hours ago, PhilFleischmann said:

Someone else asked, "What knowledge does intelligence provide?"  But we have no idea what he meant by that.  And he seems utterly incapable of answering any questions as to what he meant.

 

It would seem self-evident, in that it's asking a follow up to a statement that seemed to imply that intelligence, by itself, provided knowledge.  I admit, though, that I wasn't surprised at discovering you're an intelligent person, because in spite of having no idea what I meant, you answered it flawlessly:

 

On January 12, 2020 at 2:08 PM, PhilFleischmann said:

None.  It's the other way around.  Knowledge provides intelligence.  

 

 

 

 

1 hour ago, PhilFleischmann said:

In the HERO System, knowledge and intelligence can be purchased a-la-carte.  But in the real world, intelligence requires effort and study.

 

Yes.  I believe others have said that shortly after I tried to leave the first time.   At least that first part.  The second part....  That's more complicated.  I have no idea how old you are (and I'm not prying; it's rhetorical), but I assume, as you play HERO, somewhere around sixty like the bulk of us last few fans.  You can't improve intelligence with study.  You can improve knowledge, you can improve method, you can improve all the things about the quality of knowledge that you gain and the volume of knowledge that you gain, and that knowledge can even include better and better guidelines for reacting to stimuli of all kinds, but at the end of the day, it's just route.  You are teaching and implanting reactions-- many of which may even seem "more intelligent," but that's got observer bias:  when you start doing things the way the teacher wants you to do them, the teacher is going to view this as being "more intelligent" than what you were doing before.  You can teach a critical skills map, a critical thinking map, and a problem-solving map.  But if the student doesn't make that one leap to fully grasping it-- if it stays simply route regurgitation forever, have they become better at problem solving?  Probably, at least in the set of problems to which the maps and patterns they have learned can be useful.  But have they actually started to become more intelligent?  To "think smarter?"   In truth, there's no real way to judge that except to put them into problems _outside_ of what they've learned.  That's harder to analyze large scale, mostly because the most obvious experiments are questionable at best, immoral or illegal at worst. 

 

So all we can do is look at people who learned what we did, how we did, and try to judge them objectively, which-- well, "observer bias" again.  Though I think it's fair to say that most of the people we remember as "kinda dim" twenty years ago will spark us as "kinda dim" again today.  More savvy, perhaps, but not necessarily "more intelligent."  It's a hard thing to prove _objectively_ en masse.  

 

Quote

 

And you seem to have gotten the logic mixed up again, by implying that I said that if you study and acquire knowledge, that is guaranteed to make you intelligent.  (I assume that's what the politician thing was about.)  I said no such thing.

 

Granted. 

 

Well, except for this:

 

On January 12, 2020 at 2:08 PM, PhilFleischmann said:

None.  It's the other way around.  Knowledge provides intelligence.  

 

 

 

 

Quote

We seem to be in agreement that IQ really doesn't mean very much - especially considering the ways in which it is determined.

 

I believe we are, at least for the most part.  In fact, if you will bear with me for a _real_ "posting of something irrelevant," I'd like to share a story about a dear old friend from my earliest gaming days, a ...  well, I reckon he'll always be a young man in my memories; I never knew him as anything else. ;).   Back in school, CW had set a record that wasn't beaten until his senior year:  he had, by a long distance, the highest IQ ever to attend our little public high school.  Ten years later, we were hunting together.  While I loved him like a brother, I also have to admit that in spite of his IQ tests, you'd be hard pressed to accept that there was a brain in his head.  I am remembering specifically when CW, JW (no relation), and I were out hunting.  We'd been walking through the woods for a couple of hours, finding sign and track but no deer.  At one point, near the creek, we had come out of the woods to walk along the extremely wide power line access road that was cut through the woods.  

 

Now where we lived at the time, there was a serious problem with people taking jacked-up 4x4 trucks (this was the 80s, and monster trucks were all the rage) and just destroying these access roads, meaning that should something happen, the power company couldn't get in to make repairs.  There were many methods of combatting this problem, and one of the cheapest and most effective was "tiger traps."  I have no idea what they were actually called, but "tiger trap" was as good as anything else.  It was a square-edged hole, dug with a backhoe, five feet across, four feet deep, and cut across half of the access road.  A truck simple couldn't get around it, and no matter how big your tires, you couldn't go through it, either.  When crews showed up, they brought a pole trailer with a timber bridge on it.  They would carry the bridge to the hole, cross the hole carefully, then load the bridge back onto the pole trailer after it went by.

 

We had been walking three abreast, enjoying the rising sun (it had been an extremely chilly morning, and the sun didn't get into the woods like it was pouring onto that access road) and talking quietly.  CW was in the center.  We had our hands in our pockets and our rifles slung on our backs.  We saw the tiger trap _long_ before we got to it.  We commented on it.  As we approached, JW drifted off to the left to skirt around it.  I hopped down the bank and into the creek (I was wearing waterproof boots and pants, and the creeks run low in the winter).  CW?  He just kept walking straight.  Straight ahead.  Talking, carrying on.  He walked right into the tiger trap.  Face-first.  He just took a step, there was no ground, and he made no attempt to cut his momentum or brace his fall.  He didn't even take his hands out of his pockets.  He could have broken his neck!  He didn't, fortunately, but he got banged up pretty badly.  The look on his face when we helped him out-- I don't think it had registered even _then_ what had happened.

 

Stupendously high IQ, though.  He joined the air force the year after that.  I kind of lost track of him.

 

There _is_ one thing that IQ is really helpful for, though, but I'm pretty sure it's an unintentional consequence:  it lets you know who you _don't_ want to spend a lot of time talking to.    Anyone I have ever met hung up on their IQ to the point of making it a topic of conversation has always had....    I guess the polite thing to say is "Issues."  So it does make nifty toe tag of surviving social gatherings that someone has dragged you to attend.    

 

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Are we in agreement that, in HERO, selling your INT down to 5 and then buying a bunch of INT-based skills up to a very high level is a stupidly inefficient thing to do?

 

No; I am afraid we are not.  It's points-inefficient, yes.  And if you're buying them up per the "+x pts for a plus 1 with this skill, across a lot of these skills, then it gets extremely inefficient, points-wise.  Broad Skill levels is more efficient for a large number of skills of a similar type.  Buying INT up is possibly the most points-effective way to get high skill rolls.

 

Stupid, though, is a judgement call, and will vary from person to person.  I will agree that you think it is stupid.  I will agree that I think it's points-inefficient.   I don't have a lot of players who build points-first, though.  Most of them build concept-first, and if that's their concept, then I have no problem with it.  I will also postulate that it does make for a different feel, and a wider variety of characters than just "smart guys have X INT for the skills; bouncy guys have X DEX for the skills, etc.  You are effectively just finding another way to recreate the pigeon holes that divorcing Primaries from Secondaries (and Dex from pretty much everything) were intended to do away with.  Oh-- I will also agree that there is nothing wrong with doing it that way.

 

So ultimately, I would ask that you accept "we are agreed _enough_"   Though I'm not sure what building a cluster of INT skills has to do with creating light.  (I have missed a few pages, and I feel that I am probably better for it).

 

 

 

 

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Are we in agreement that intelligence does relate to perception?

 

I would expect so, given the lengthy justification I wrote for precisely that relationship.  Again, "comic-book wise."  If you're looking for more realism in your games, then I would break that link.

 

 

 

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Are we in agreement that it's a lot easier to see something 20 m away in broad daylight than it is to see something 2 m away in a "dark night", even though the RAW give both of these a -4 modifier?

 

All other things being equal, yes.

 

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Are we in agreement that "Active Sight" gives off light detectable by those with passive sight, the same way Active Sonar gives of sonar pings detectable by those with passive sonar?

Do you agree (or have any feedback at all) about my ideas for how to cost Active Sight?

 

I have quoted these together because I have no informed answer for you.  I wasn't kidding:  I _left_ this thread.  I have to assume that the "Active Sight" you suggested is on one of the pages I have not read.  I have the thread bookmarked, and when the entire topic cools down-- or we all find the next shiny thing to play with     -- I will probably come back and read it.  If you think you will still be interested in feedback then, let me know, and I will gladly give you my impressions.

 

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What do you think the point value of Normal Sight should be?  In 5e, it was 25 points.  Apparently in 6e, it's 35 points.

 

Tough one to crack; there are so many ways to look at it.   However, much like Hugh--

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Are we in agreement that Normal Sight should have exactly the same point value as the Physical Complication: Blindness?

 

Yes.  I personally tend to think that the two should be equal.  Obviously, if a character has taken the Limitation "Blind," then to get normal sight, he would have to pay a number of points equal to the Limitation.  It gets tricky when you have to build "normal sight" using the senses rules, and that can raise some issues for some people.  But largely: yes; this is one of the points I thought we had all agreed on when-- was it Hugh?-- mentioned it several pages ago.

 

 

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Anything else?

 

Are we agreed that we're all a little tired of you pretending bafflement at direct answers to your questions or direct questions about your comments?

 

Are we agreed that I am going to leave this thread, for the last time, and not return to nor be expected to return to it for any reason?

 

 

 

[Sean Waters]

Well I'm glad we all came together on that one.

[Doc Democracy]

8 hours ago, PhilFleischmann said:

Are we in agreement that it's a lot easier to see something 20 m away in broad daylight than it is to see something 2 m away in a "dark night", even though the RAW give both of these a -4 modifier?

I think the difference here is when the GM might ask you to make roll.  Will he ask you to make a roll to read the licence plate on a parked car, during the day.  Probably not, no -4 comes into play. On a dark night?  Probably not.  Not possible.

 

Will he ask you to make a roll to notice the man, 20m away, tailing you on a street with reasonable traffic.  Yup, and may assign -4 to both the tail and the PER roll.  Same on a dark night when the tail is only 2m away.

 

These are rules that cannot exist in the absence of intelligent application by a reasonable GM.

 

Doc

[Doc Democracy]

17 minutes ago, Sean Waters said:

Well I'm glad we all came together on that one.

I am constantly amazed that it takes Duke 3 posts and about 2000 words to leave a thread. 🙂

[Solitude]

9 hours ago, Doc Democracy said:

I am constantly amazed that it takes Duke 3 posts and about 2000 words to leave a thread. 🙂

 

Well, the thread is cursed. 

The answer for the rules as written came out in the first five posts of this monstrosity,  creating light is the first example of what change environment does and it is given in the second sentence of the description. 

 

Y'all're justa buncha Oompaloompas on this thread 'cus you gotta be that orange to do so much navel gazing. 

[Gnome BODY (important!)]

53 minutes ago, Solitude said:

 

Well, the thread is cursed. 

The answer for the rules as written came out in the first five posts of this monstrosity,  creating light is the first example of what change environment does and it is given in the second sentence of the description. 

 

Y'all're justa buncha Oompaloompas on this thread 'cus you gotta be that orange to do so much navel gazing. 

[CITATION NEEDED], because that ain't how it be in my books.  In fact, my books explicitly state the opposite, that CE can't make light (FRED p135, 6E1p175).