Characteristic Modifiers greater than 15?

[00gab00ga]

Forgive me if this is answered elsewhere in the forums or in a rulebook but I am unable to find them in my searches.

What happens with modifiers for characteristics above 15? The core book states that the maximum level for an unaugmented human is 15 but what if I were playing a K'Kree or K'Kree with augmentation?
Are characteristics higher than 15 useless or is there some errata or a chart somewhere that I have missed? I find it hard to believe no one else hasn't asked so I must be missing it.

 

[Treebore]

You get a +1 per 5 points, so +3 at 15, +4 at 20, and so on. Well, technically thats "classic", Mongoose did the progression a bit differently, but the philosophy is still the same, so look at the pattern of progression and follow it.

If you ever do power armor you will need to figure it out to 45 anyways. A quick way I do it is look at their current multipliers and multiply those by the Power Army modifier.

 

[Sevya]

The formula for Mongoose is (Attribute/3)-2. Round down for the division. If you don't want to deal with the math, it would be +3 for 15-17, +4 for 18-20, +5 for 21-23, and so on. 45 would be +13.

Sevya

 

[Rikki Tikki Traveller]

Sevya is correct. The playtest document had higher values but those were dropped in the printed edition.

Just follow the progress in the TMB... Every three characteristic points gives another +1 DM.

 

[BP]

The formula for Mongoose is (Attribute/3)-2. Round down for the division. ...

Thanks Sevya, I hadn't bothered to look at this one yet. Just a clarification - 0 is a special case (-3 instead of -2).

Note that this formula is useful when dealing with stats that change (like during combat) as well as dealing with the arbitrary numbers mentioned here. It sure beats having another table to handle large stat values - for those that are ok with the math, of course.

ASIDE:
Also, for those not familiar with the term, round down is the same as droping the decimals (or remainder) - also referred to as truncating.

By default, most computer languages (and micro-coded hardware - the main reason, typically) truncate results just like this, instead of 'rounding'. In order to support rounding, special handling generally must be provided - and sadly, often isn't, resulting in misconceptions, programming bugs and/or erroneous results. Consider, in the case of integers, intermediate decimal results must be stored with +0.5 added prior to rounding. To make matters worse, that is the common form of rounding - scientific applications typically require support for the add-odd/even-drop rule. Some applications require rounding up. And there are other, more obscure rules as well.

Speadsheets often show results rounded - keeping intermediate precision (decimal place) values prior to showing the result. This often leads to columns of numbers that show summing to a total value (like 100%) to be off when manually checked. Example: 91.6% + 3.6% + 4.8% = 100%, but visually one might only see 92%, 4%, and 5% which totals to 101%!

 

[Treebore]

The formula for Mongoose is (Attribute/3)-2. Round down for the division. If you don't want to deal with the math, it would be +3 for 15-17, +4 for 18-20, +5 for 21-23, and so on. 45 would be +13.

Sevya

+13? Dang! Guess I will have to work out a table, I was really screwing that player with TL 15 BD Armor with only giving him a +9. Well, not that bad, he should have had a +11.

 

[BP]

+13? Dang! Guess I will have to work out a table, ...

Or, you could just divide by 3 ignoring the remainder and then subtract 2? Viola - infinite table...