Talent shaping behaviour

[beccaelizabeth]

Still thinking why Hogwarts would be all wizardry all the time
and why wizards would put up with that

It's an entirely GURPS centred idea, but
Magery gives a bonus to both skill and speed of learning
up to at least +3 and -30% time in most magical universes
and since Hogwarts has Time Turners they have Timeport which is a Magery 3 spell so at least +3 for anyone that could potentially cast it
so
people with Magery are noticeably quicker and better at studying magic.

As a 'gifted' kid I can fill in the rest of the feels
where you're told you're good and smart and quick
and there's this one subject where you are
and everyone around you defines you by it
but
then you try a different thing
and zomg how do you even?
it's like you're normal
not even normal
surely normal is the basic level of hardly even trying that you usually feel
this must be stupid
you feel so stupid
and
no one must ever know!

For everything about how others name you and treat you says
Gifted
so what would they be like if they knew you were a dud?


It's not just that magic is Super Special
it's that they're all Gifted in this one area
it comes naturally in a way nothing else does

So they can either get stuck in and work harder at all the rest
but I have read what length of homework they're being set, working hard seems not to be the baseline
or
they can do the ego defence thing
and say
who even wanted to learn that stuff anyway?



+1 or +3 means nothing without context
but context gets complicated and in some corners turns into an argument.
GURPS will be rolling 3d6 and trying to get under the target number. Average-normal attribute is 10 and attributes effectively cap for humans around 20.
The basic set says

How to Select Basic Attributes
The basic attributes you select will determine your abilities – your strengths and weaknesses – throughout the game. Choose wisely.
6 or less: Crippling. An attribute this bad severely constrains your lifestyle.
7: Poor. Your limitations are immediately obvious to anyone who meets you. This is the lowest score you can have and still pass for “ablebodied.”
8 or 9: Below average. Such scores are limiting, but within the human norm. The GM may forbid attributes below 8 to active adventurers.
10: Average. Most humans get by just fine with a score of 10!
11 or 12: Above average. These scores are superior, but within the human norm.
13 or 14: Exceptional. Such an attribute is immediately apparent – as bulging muscles, feline grace, witty dialog, or glowing health – to those who meet you.
15 or more: Amazing. An attribute this high draws constant comment and probably guides your career choices.
All of the above assumes a human. For nonhumans, read each point above or below the human norm of 10 as a 10% deviation from the racial norm instead.

GURPS Fantasy elaborates, p103 talking specifically about how many people are suitable for learning magic

Skill 10: Spells work only half the time, making them marginally useful. They are only for emergencies.
Skill 12: Spells usually work; the caster can get a job as a mage.
Skill 14: Spells work nearly always and are reliable in a crisis.
Skill 15: Spells have reduced energy cost, making them easier to maintain. Enchantment becomes possible.
Skill 16: Critical failures are rare; the caster is a master mage.
Skill 20: Spells have substantially reduced energy cost; enchantment works even in low-mana areas.
[...]
Considering only IQ (and assuming Magery 0 is common or unnecessary),
every community has people with IQ 11-12. In a common-magic setting, every village
has a hedge wizard who knows a few basic spells, and one or two advanced ones.
Every town or city has people with IQ 13-14, so at least every small city has a professional mage with formal training in intermediate level spells.
A large city, or a county, duchy, or small country without medium or large cities, will have people with IQ 15-16.
A large country will have people with IQ 17-18, capable of becoming enchanters or affecting the outcome of a battle.
People with IQ 19-20 will be found somewhere in an entire world, but there will be
only a few.
If the public tolerates magic, some mages will be world-famous. In low-mana worlds, they may be capable of making enchanted objects.

Adding levels of Magery into the calculation improves the odds a bit. Magery is effectively a specialized Talent for working magic; it’s reasonable to suppose,
for example, that people with IQ 14 and Magery 1 are more common than people with IQ 15, but less common than people with IQ 14.

With Magery as rare as one in a million all that is pretty irrelevant, they train everyone who can take the training, and IQ distribution is ordinary within that group.



What constitutes ordinary IQ distribution gets complicated. 10% deviation from the norm means you can look at a graph of IQ test scores and plot your GURPS IQ to somewhere up to 15. Ish. 99.9% of people are covered by then. That seems like a lot. And then what are the other five points for?

But there are a lot more than a hundred or thousand people to math. GURPS Fantasy gives you some definitions for village, town, city etc. Villages have 100 to 999 inhabitants, Towns have 1000 to 4999, assorted sizes of cities are 5,000 to 9,999, 10,000 to
49,999, and 50,000 to 99,999 inhabitants, and imperial capitals are... bigger. "exceeding 100,000 inhabitants. The largest, such as Rome and various Chinese capitals, may attain a population of a million or more."

Put together that means IQ 10 to 12 covers the whole bad of abilities up to 1 in a thousand. You need more than a thousand people before you're sure to get IQ 13.

And if you compare that to IQ scores from IQ tests that's everyone up to 150 covered. I think. If I've understood the math, which is never guaranteed.

And then what do you do with the other 8 points of IQ? What do they even mean?

I mean Mensa takes the top 2 percent of the population, but that means a Mensan would have at least one peer in every village. Two in a hundred is quite a lot.


But then if instead of proportional to population numbers it's actually meant to be proportional to geography you get a mess where there's still only a couple of people that smart in x area, even when there's so many more people, so IQ becomes a sliding scale depending on setting, and no.



But! It do give you an outline for figuring what a whole point of improvement feels like.


If you have an average IQ, but have any Talent for Magery, you go from being average to being one of the smartest in your class. If you're already smartest in your class, a single point of Magery makes you smartest in the village. If you're already smart for your village, in magic you're smart for a town. And so on.

But if you have a really strong talent for magery? You could go from average at most things to effectively smartest in town. Or smartest in town to smartest in the country.


Skill is chance of success, IQ gives you varying boosts to effectiveness with the same minimal study time put in, and someone with an effective IQ one or two or three points higher goes from marginally useful to professional in that one area, or even capable in a crisis, with minimal study. Which sounds like our characters...

And is a hell of an incentive to stay in your lane,
and feel weird and incompetent out of it.



So this is a GURPS specific rule, but it kind of fully explains, well, wizards
in general
studying this one thing they're super good at.