From the discussion on advancing atributes in another thread I get the impression that people tend to think of the intellegence attribute as an indication of how smart you are. This isn't my interpritation.

In my game INT is better described as awareness or quick wittedness. It factors into reaction, and combat pool, and it jumps to the quickness attribute in astral space. If intellegence represented your ability to solve brain teasers I don't think that any of that would be true.

INT represents your ability to process and react to the world around you. So a ganger who is forced to stay on his toes to keep from being devoured by ghouls is most likely going to show more SR intellegence than a computer programmer whose brain is better at focusing on a single abstract task while filtering out the rest of the world.

Book learning, logical thinking, complex math and such are definately in the realm of skills rather than attributes. If you ask a naturally bright person to solve a complex chemistry problem and they don't know anything about chemistry they still will have trouble with it.

Blah blah blah blah blah blah....

Most people here agree with that conception of Intelligence... try reading this thread.

And the fact that the College Education edge increases knowledge skills and not intelligence pretty much confirms it and puts the debate to rest.

~J

no, that's not how it works, and not only are all of you wrong, you're also all stupid.

just kidding. i remember from my single semester of psych that "intelligence" can be divided into two parts--fluid intelligence, and crystalized intelligence. they're just what they sound like: fluid intelligence is how quick you are on your mental feet, how quickly you can learn, etc.; crystalized intelligence is how much you know. that seems to fit SR's game mechanics pretty well.

I'd say that's a pretty accurate way of looking at it for most things. The only place I can think of it breaking down is that intelligence is the linked attribute for language, knowledge, and B/R skills, along with demolitions, electronics, and biotech. Being quick witted or aware doesn't really correspond to being able to more easily learn to default on these skills.

sure it does. it allows you to more easily relate what you do know to extrapolating what you don't know.

I wouldn't say that's a function of either awareness or quick-wittedness, but it's not a major issue anyway.

Being quick-witted allows you to come up with workarounds for things that go wrong faster.

~J

Perhaps, but that's kind of disregarding the impact of powerful, but slow, intellect. If you look at the top experts in academic fields, I doubt that the common factor uniting them is being quick-witted. Being a deep thinker is a lot more important than being a fast one in those situations, and those skills are still linked to intelligence.

So to make it perfect for everyone, we should subdivide intelligence into two sub-attributes.
The fluid though attribute is what you use for improvising, defaulting, initiative, combat pool, astral speed, etc.
The crystaline attribute is what you use for starting knowledge and language skills, karma costs, etc.

The BP cost would be the average of the two, one can start up to 1 point above the normal attribute max, but the other must be lower to compensate (like specializing at char-gen). The karma cost to increase either one is half that of a normal attribute increase.

Primarily, this would change the paradigm from "every one is a genius" to "everyone has wit faster than the people playing them".

Other restrictions as you see fit.

yeah, if you really wanted to. but then, we'd end up dividing Str into "Power and Endurance", Qui into "Speed and Balance", and other 2e D&D tripe.

the problem with more accurately modeling "real world" dynamics is:

how do you model the inconsistencies across different situations or puzzles? for the analytical end: some people are better at use of words (some mechanically and some in a more impressionish fashion) and some are better at spatial relations and some are better at pure numerical (or symbolic) calculation. granted these are all similar and related, but there's variance here too. i won't even pretend to understand the mechanics of "wit" w.r.t. witticisms or action-choice reflexes.

the general approximation of Int., Cha, Reaction, and Knowledge skills paints enough of a picture for my end of things. though the fact that Int has game effects that reflect both kinds of smarts is an idiosynchracy of the system. make up new edges&flaws if you need finer granularity. (i.e: a character that was very booksmart and witty but not so good at *think-fast* might take a lesser version of combat paralysis that only affects suprise. or something.)

eh, sub-attributes are too much work for too little return, to me.