Ship's Crew Numbers

[Badenov]

An Attribute of 1 is still playable, too. I've had a number of characters I've played with 1's in an attribute.

CT doesn't have much explicit in core about attributes...
STR sets carrying capacity, affects melee to-hits
DEX affects ranged to hits
END is maximum full strength blows per combat
CT-82/83: Int+Edu sets maximum skill levels
STR+DEX+END ≅ HP

a few skills get mods for certain attributes.

So, unless imposing a task system (which, to be fair, many do, and all later editions do) low int is usually little more than a -2...

Hence my realization that a 1 isn't the bottom end of the human condition, just the bottom end of playability.

Even so, a physical attribute of 1 may be playable, but it makes you much more fragile, too, in terms of how much damage you can take. In addition, a 1 str makes most melee weapons take a penalty. A 1 Dex does the same for Ranged. End 1 limits how much melee you can do. A 2 int is indeed just a -2 to some rolls and possibly some hurtful remarks.

 

[Rupert]

A low Int but reasonable Edu probably means thinking a bit slowly, and simply not being able to understand highly abstract concepts. Plenty of people get by without notice with this today, and always have. Low Int, low Edu is where the problems really come up - can't reason their way out of a problem, lack the formal education and ability to apply any rote or book learning well...

 

[Badenov]

Low Edu implies you missed some schooling. Either it didn't take, for whatever reasons, or you got kicked out for reasons, or you were raised by wolves, or the like. Low Int tends towards being unobservant as the individual lacks the critical thinking skills to identify important details that need looking deeper into.

 

[Condottiere]

Highly educated, low intelligenced character is possible, but plausible?

It works for intelligence and wisdom, where the characteristics don't necessarily tend to need to relate to each other.

 

[Grav_Moped]

Yup. IMTU, that's where the Cutter Module comes in handy. Load it with seats and store it at port for the rest of the 60 days (24 hours to the passengers).

Lots of options for the "NEW LOW PASSAGE" (60 days, Cr 750, 2 passengers per dTon ... no death!)

I've noted this before, but it's a disjunction between two game mechanics with differing purposes. Low Passage is travel that's cheap because it's risky, and maybe a personal time capsule if you look at it sideways. Med Fast is how you get around the fact that "proper medical attention for that wound" may well be at least a week away and maybe we don't want that character dead right now. The fact that Med Fast plus a vacc suit is interchangeable with a Low Berth wasn't really considered until well after the fact.

 

[Badenov]

Highly educated, low intelligenced character is possible, but plausible?

It works for intelligence and wisdom, where the characteristics don't necessarily tend to need to relate to each other.

I met those sorts of people all the time before I retired. Colleges can't teach intelligence inasfar as it's largely inherent, but low intelligence people's money is the same sort as high intelligence people's money and low intelligence people, if they're not too low, know that they'll need more book knowledge to work around their lesser ability to draw correct conclusions of their own.

That said, I worked in a pretty high int/high edu field, so no one was very low. But a 8 int vs an 11 int stood out. Those 11's always had the right answer.

 

[Condottiere]

That may be more mannerisms and polish, which may relate, in our case, to Social Standing.

Education implies retention of information.

 

[mike wightman]

Even so, a physical attribute of 1 may be playable, but it makes you much more fragile, too, in terms of how much damage you can take.

Physical stats after aging rolls 444, or 516 - both have the same total, just don't get hit in the 1

In addition, a 1 str makes most melee weapons take a penalty.

Str 3 makes all melee weapons take a penalty, 4 you can use a dagger... put another way 1 in no worse than 3 (in most cases 5 or more is the minimum), use a spear, foil or cudgel and you are only at -1.

A 1 Dex does the same for Ranged.

Again a 1 dex is no worse than 3, shotgun or carbine are the ones to go for (only -1), most require 6 or more

End 1 limits how much melee you can do.

Wear battledress...
More seriously a powered exoskeleton using the robot construction rules

A 2 int is indeed just a -2 to some rolls and possibly some hurtful remarks.

Int 1 Soc 12 can still be president... of a company, yes president of a company.

 

[mike wightman]

Low Edu implies you missed some schooling. Either it didn't take, for whatever reasons, or you got kicked out for reasons, or you were raised by wolves, or the like. Low Int tends towards being unobservant as the individual lacks the critical thinking skills to identify important details that need looking deeper into.

It could also mean your education is not up to the same standard as a starfaring society... a character with low Edu and high Int can raise their Edu relatively easily to parity. No amount of education make Lord Percy of Percy any more intelligent.

 

[mike wightman]

Highly educated, low intelligenced character is possible, but plausible?

It works for intelligence and wisdom, where the characteristics don't necessarily tend to need to relate to each other.

Have you been to university? You can find loads of low Int high Edu high Soc kids there.

 

[mike wightman]

That may be more mannerisms and polish, which may relate, in our case, to Social Standing.

Education implies retention of information.

Many an Oxford classics graduate can recite Homer in its original Greek but have no common sense or ability to reason.

Int is reasoning, original thought,problem solving, critical thinking

Education is memory, retained knowledge and training.

A highly educated physicist may be able to solve field equations, but will never have an original theory.

 

[Badenov]

Physical stats after aging rolls 444, or 516 - both have the same total, just don't get hit in the 1

Yes, that's my whole point. That's a very glass jaw situation. In 1/3 of fights, this char is KO'd by the first whisp of damage. Fine for a more political campaign where fights aren't as common.

Str 3 makes all melee weapons take a penalty, 4 you can use a dagger... put another way 1 in no worse than 3 (in most cases 5 or more is the minimum), use a spear, foil or cudgel and you are only at -1.

It's true, a 1's as bad as any score below the min. That said, I would be very uncomfotable in a party with a dex 1 person with a shotgun. Or an Int 2 person.

Again a 1 dex is no worse than 3, shotgun or carbine are the ones to go for (only -1), most require 6 or more


Wear battledress...
More seriously a powered exoskeleton using the robot construction rules

Does a +stat from Battle Dress actually count toward how much damage you can take? But yeah, a powersuit built from the military vehicles hadbook can walk at a human pace and resist oodles of damage. It tends to fall through floors, but ....

Int 1 Soc 12 can still be president... of a company, yes president of a company.

It's only sad because it's true.

 

[atpollard]

Have you been to university? You can find loads of low Int high Edu high Soc kids there.

... and some Professors.

Actually, perhaps not applicable to INT 1, but the STEREOTYPE - [NOTE: Use with caution, most stereotypes have SOME basis in facts and a lot of glaring EXCEPTIONS] - of Indians (not the Native American sort) places them as "highly educated" but generally "unimaginative", which would be the classic high EDU, low INT as Traveller defines those stats. I point it out because I suspect that there is a cultural bias at work that incentivizes EDUCATION and disincentivizes thinking "out of the box" (the Box is there for a reason).

Thus low INT could simply be a cultural bias to never question things.
It would not occur to that person to bother asking "WHY?", it is enough that things ARE the way they ARE.
Presented with a new weapon, they instinctively ask "Where is the manual that explains what we should do?"

 

[Condottiere]

That has less to do with intelligence, than brainwashing.

Character characteristics are about current potential performance.

I don't want to say caps, because in Traveller, characteristics can be increased or decreased.

I would say knowledge/skill would be more for information gathered.

 

[atpollard]

Int 1 Soc 12 can still be president... of a company, yes president of a company.

It's only sad because it's true.

It is funny.
It is also "toes to the line".

[for the sake of the topic, let's all step back from that line.]

 

[mike wightman]

There are three metrics - Int Edu Skill

knowledge is education
reasoning is intelligence
skill is specific application or specialisation beyond basic education

 

[Condottiere]

I think Education is a composite of knowing where to look for information, literacy, and evaluation.

 

[Badenov]

Int 1 Soc 12 can still be president... of a company, yes president of a company.

It is funny.
It is also "toes to the line".

[for the sake of the topic, let's all step back from that line.]

So, on a serious note and hopefully stepping away from the line, Int 1 (or any value) Soc 12 is pretty much the definition of Nobility in Traveller, with all attendant perks. In MgT1, you qualify for the Nobility career automatically, I dunno what CT does for nobles.

 

[Spinward Flow]

Actually, perhaps not applicable to INT 1, but the STEREOTYPE - [NOTE: Use with caution, most stereotypes have SOME basis in facts and a lot of glaring EXCEPTIONS] - of Indians (not the Native American sort) places them as "highly educated" but generally "unimaginative", which would be the classic high EDU, low INT as Traveller defines those stats. I point it out because I suspect that there is a cultural bias at work that incentivizes EDUCATION and disincentivizes thinking "out of the box" (the Box is there for a reason).

To be excessively fair to historical precedents, this particular "accusation" has been deployed and used REPEATEDLY against what we shall respectfully call foreigners who don't look or sound like us.

It is typically deployed by nations that like to think of themselves as Rugged Individualists (pulled ourselves up by our bootstraps type mythos) against COMPETITORS from nations and national identities that lean more towards the collectivist and social rather than the selfish and parochial.

Pretty much any time you see the charge of "highly educated but not imaginative" leveled against foreign/outside groups of people as "general expectation that is more true than it is false" you can very quickly assume the backhanded inverse applies to the side leveling the charge (we're highly educated AND intelligent, unlike YOU!) as a way to protect their own ego from the insecurities brought on by competition against incumbent interests.

As @atpollard cites, it's an accusation being leveled against the (asian subcontinent) Indians (of a Hindi persuasion) by incumbent interests that don't want the competition. It's also an accusation that has been directed towards MANY nations around the Pacific Rim (no need to enumerate them all) as well as almost the entire African continent and the people from there (I wonder why ... ).

In other words, this kind of thing keeps happening in world history ... and it keeps getting proven WRONG over and over in world history.
It makes for a nice salve to bruised egos who would rather "keep it in the family" for whatever is at stake for the incumbent interests ... but there's no "monopoly" on intellect by specific groups of Solomani. They'd LIKE TO THINK SO, because that makes them "better than everyone else" by default ... but it isn't actually true.

I dunno what CT does for nobles.

If you don't have any terms of service in the Noble Career, then you're just an Honorary Noble (think celebrity, if it helps) in your field.

If you do have terms of service in the Noble Career (see: LBB S4), then you must achieve Position before you can be assigned as the Emperor's representative to an autonomous world government in the Third Imperium (higher ranked nobles may be responsible for multiple worlds simultaneously). If you fail to achieve Position as a noble, that means that you're (more or less) a courtier to a Noble (who has position), rather than holding the top job yourself, which essentially relegates you to the role of "staff" rather than being the one "in command" as the Noble of a world (or worlds if ranked highly enough).

Hope that helps.

 

[atpollard]

An interesting observation is that Traveller (Classic) claims INT is "I.Q.".
Taking that at face value, some interesting facts about IQ:

• Tests and IQ are only valid for children since there is too little research data on adult IQ to create a definitive correlation.
• High IQ actually declines as the child ages (from 5 to 25 points from grade school to High School).
• The bottom 3% is about IQ 70.

Therefore, based on 2D6 percentiles at age 18 ...
Only Traveller INT 2 qualifies as "Borderline" / "Slow Learner" / "Well Below Average" [IQ 70-79].
Traveller INT 3-5 is "Low Average" [IQ 80-90]
Traveller INT 6-8 is "Average" [IQ 91-110]