Sample IQ Qualities Costs

This was created in order to save you doing math. The sets are arranged by their spread (by how many numbers are the same and how far apart they are. Some are given names for convenience.

Quality Example Pricings

The hardest part of the quality system is the pricing. Here are a few examples worked out so you can get a feel for it.

Joe Plumber

As a simple example, lets consider Joe Plumber, a very capable handyman man who doesn't get or like people or book learning. He has:

Splitting up IQ: Qualities

IQ is an extremely wide category -- it covers everything from building a boat to passing yourself off as someone else to solving complex math equations. This was fine when Gurps was a game about combat: it was the 'everything else' category. And in a game thats still overwhelmingly about combat, its still works fine. However, it struggles when it tries to focus on a game that isn't all about combat or other physical activity. The way this shows up tends to be in IQ being too cheap and IQ being too broad. A classical example is the wizard who has to sink lots of points into IQ to cast spells and then causally puts a single point into fast talk and becomes the de facto face man.

One of the first things to do in this situation is to start charging 20 points for IQ rather than 20 points for IQ+will+per, and to encourage talents. This was a solid effect of lowering general IQ, but keeping the specialities of the character intact. This is sufficient for a lot of concepts, particularly concepts useful to PCs. It breaks down after the talent reaches a certain size though: a 15 point talent is rarely competitive even with the expanded 20 point IQ -- though some do exist. This becomes particularly apparent when trying to stat very round characters (like a real life person).

My solution is called Qualities. IQ has been split up into six broad 'qualities' with a seventh that can spawn additional supernatural uses.