Why are Edu and Soc necessary?

[stofsk]

All other d20 games that I know of have the six abilities: Str, Dex, Con, Int, Wis and Cha. T20 introduced two more with Edu and Soc (well three if you want to include Psi), but I wonder if it was strictly necessary?

Standard d20 abilities are divided roughly in two: three physical abilities and three 'mental' abilities. The two additional T20 abilities are not really 'mental' but seem to be social. Having a high Education doesn't necessary mean you're intelligent or wise, but only that you attended school, and sometimes it doesn't even mean that. As it states in the Handbook a high Edu might be equivalent to a PHd or Masters, but doesn't necessarily mean that.

Whereas having a high Social status means you have an inherited title others don't but isn't that what the Noble class is for? Conversely a low Social status means that you're on the fringe of lawful civilisation and you may very well be wanted for a number of crimes, but again isn't that what the Rogue class is for?

I just want to discuss the nature of Edu and Soc. They don't seem to be typical ability scores. When you level up every 4 levels and get that extra ability point, what does it *mean* to put it into Edu or Soc? If you put it in Str or Con, or Dex, it means your character has been training at the gym or playing Darts religiously; if you put it in Int it means he solves sudoku puzzles every day, in Wis it means he has a lot of real-world experience, and in Cha it means he's come out of his shell and interacts with people.

But what if you put it in Edu? Does that mean in between adventures your character was engaged in study? Or Soc: if you put it in Soc are you increasing your status somehow? Going from a Knight to Baron?

 

[mike wightman]

The Education stat to me is a measure of your general learning - the science, maths, arts, etc. that don't have separate skills.

Education increases would represent general reading, research, and study. Many skills that you increase with skill points have an Education governing stat, so as you increase these skills you are also increasing your general education (knowledge) base.

Soc needn't all be about noble titles. It also represents your general standard of living and the extravagance of your lifestyle. It's having the money to move in higher circles.

To raise Soc, I'd want to see the player spending lots of money and making contacts with the next social tier.

 

[Chaos]

One quick correction, stofsk: the one-per-4-levels stat increase cannot increase Soc beyond 15, so it is not possible to get a noble title, or rise to a higher noble rank, with that.

Besides that, I agree with Sigg.

I´d also say that raising Edu represents having seen a lot of the world, or rather, galaxy, and raising Soc represents having been successful in your chosen career and gaining the respect of your peers.

 

[archhealer]

Yeah, a natural score of higher than 15 would imply some sort of inhereted status, but 15 would still be pretty damn famous/rich/influential.

IMTU, I allow EDu and SOC to be changed by in game events a little more easily than others; if a character makes a concerted effort over a long period of time to increase their EDU, I'll usually allow it, making it suitably difficult, of course. But can be done. Same with Social.

 

[parmasson]

EDU is what you know, facts, dates.
INT is how well you can use it.

 

[mike wightman]

I also think Edu should in some way be linked to TL understanding...

 

[archhealer]

I allow characters to adapt to high TL stuff more easily if they have a higher EDU score. Basically, knowing a lot about technology and theory makes it easier to adapt and apply stuff you already knwo to new gadges and skills.

 

[parmasson]

look for the logo:
Imperial Standard, (IS) . . . .
Ensuring compatibility under pain of death since year 1


(Brought to you by the Ministry of Trade)

 

[stofsk]

Originally posted by Chaos:
One quick correction, stofsk: the one-per-4-levels stat increase cannot increase Soc beyond 15, so it is not possible to get a noble title, or rise to a higher noble rank, with that.

Say you rolled an 18 can you then put it into Soc?

Similarly is it worth putting that same 18 into Edu when it can be raised by, say, going to university?

Thank you all for your replies.

 

[archhealer]

Keep in mind, if your EDU is already 18, it will go up at MOST one or two points from University, and then only with honors/grad programs etc.

Most of my players have found that putting a really LOW score into EDU is best, then having university bump it up to 11 or 12 as soon as they're finished.

 

[Whipsnade]

stofsk,

They're neccessary from a meta-game aspect as their inclusion converted d20/Modern 20 into T20. And converting the Traveller setting for use with the RPG world's current 800 pound gorilla is a good thing.

Thanks to d20 mechanisms like levels and classes, people already had and still have qualms about using d20 in the Traveller setting. If T20 had nothing like EDU and SOC, the complaints and accusations would have been even greater. EDU and SOC made things fit a little better.

In pre-d20 Traveller, EDU and SOC had many uses. EDU helped limit the number and levels of skills any NPC or PC could have. EDU was also an important stat when you remember that CT and no purely mental skills. SOC provided a nifty way for GMs to separate players from their money with the monthly upkeep costs. SOC also factored into many NPC reaction rolls, sometimes helping and sometimes hurting.


Have fun,
Bill

 

[epicenter00]

stofsk,
The simple and dumb answer:

D20 games trace their lineage back through 3e D&D and then 2nd edition D&D, Advanced D&D (so-called "1st edition"), and so on. These used the six basic stats that D20 still uses today.

Traveller D20 traces it lineage back through earlier editions of Traveller, which were its own system, where Education and Social Standing were important stats.

So that's the easy answer. They're included as a compromise between the two systems and because that's the way it was in my day, and in my father's day, and his father before then, all the way back to the days back when we still needed the millers to process our food to make it edible. Darn that Vilani conservatism.

A more interesting answer:

Actually a better question to ask yourself is, "Why don't other D20 games have Education and Social Standing scores?"

Of the two, Education is the more dubious of the two, as you could argue that Wisdom essentially represents a similar thing to Education - that is, the sum of knowledge of the character. Wisdom suggests it's gained through experience, while Education suggests someone learned it at school. As mentioned above, Education doesn't necessarily mean it was gained at school, it can simply just be from being well-read and memorizing lots of facts - something similar to the function that Wisdom served in D&D.

Social Standing, I argue, should have been in original D&D. The original D&D world, Greyhawk, and the Third Imperium of the Traveller universe share a few common traits, but one with relavance here is that both are potray a society with a class system. Not the modern United States, which has a class system, but everyone pretends it doesn't. People in the TI aren't born equal, not even ostensibly.

The TI has a monarch who isn't just a figurehead. Emperor Strephon really has power. Innumerable Legions of steely-eyed Imperial Marines await only his order to go and bring ruin to his enemies in the form of a rain of Trepida grav tanks and infantry armed with fusion guns descending from orbit. Vast armadas of starcruisers bearing the Imperial Sunburst need nothing more than a gesture from him to bomb entire civilizations, the fruits of millenia, to radioactive ruin from orbit. This power is very real, and its parcelled out to nobles to see that the Emperor's will is done. Social Standing is a score that tells you how big of a slice of that pie of power you get. It's been since expanded to chart the wealth of societies without systems of nobility, but that's the root of it.

 

[slyen2002]

How I tend to see it:

Education is the sum of the knowledge you have recived during the course of your life.

Intelligance is how bright you are and your capacity for the said knowledge.

Social Standing is your position in society, weather a Prince or an Outlaw.

Charisma is how well people are influenced by you via by a coimbination of voice, apperance, and/or ideals displayed.

---

Hope that helps

 

[stofsk]

Suffice it to say I'm now convinced.

Thanks for the replies everyone!

 

[stofsk]

Epicenter00's post got me thinking of something.

In the Handbook, Education is defined as being the Character's accumulated knowledge, from life experience and/or formal education (schooling, classes, on-the-job training I'd imagine as well).

Well, where does that leave something like Wisdom, which I always imagined to be 'knowledge gained from life experience'? How do you treat Wisdom then?

This is related to my other post about Barbarians and EDU/SOC.

 

[TheEngineer]

Hmm, difficult. I would locate Wisdom between Education and Intelligence.
Perhaps a kind of "Soft-Skill" Education, which should be used in situations not exactly related to a specific hard fact knowledge (a bit related to "lore" skills like human lore or world lore, dealing with the more basic aspects of the world).

 

[robject]

Wisdom, as life experience, could be represented through the various skills a player character has learned. But there is something additional, perhaps in the knowledge a character's player has of the game setting and places that the character has been, lessons learned (if an NPC volunteers to defuse a bomb, let him...), and people/organizations encountered.

 

[princelian]

Dr. Evil from the Austin Powers movies is an example of someone with an extremely high Intelligence (hey, he designs deathrays and moonbases, not to mention futuristic clothes in which to dress his captured adversaries), and extremely high Education (he's got a Doctorate of Evil, after all), and an incredibly low Wisdom (super slow-moving deathtraps, etc.).

Wisdom is the ability to make the, well, wise choice from a selection. High Int can counter the effects of a low Wis, but not entirely.

 

[MrMorden]

To make EDU actually useful, you can award bonus skill points per level like:

EDU Bonus
12 +1
14 +2
16 +3
18 +4

Thus the EDU actually helps your player know more stuff. I've been kicking this idea around for my next T20 game.

 

[Gnusam Netor]

I think WIS and EDU make the other fairly redundant, but only fairly. I see WIS as more of "common sense learnt(?) from school of life", whereas EDU is school knowledge.

With that said, i would remove WIS from T20 and add one half of it's charecteristica to INT and the other half to EDU (ETA: ohh, and some would go to DEX...

) - if it was up to me that is.

T20's SOC adds information about the character versus D20, so i think it should stay as is.