Infant

The infant classification on B20 Age and Beauty gives some guidelines for this vague group:
==Stats==
*100% of adult HT (this is not mentioned explicitly but there is no note about reducing HT to a %)
**100% of adult FP is probably implied too
***this differs from 3e where HT was equal to age from 1-6 years old, probably due to HP being based on it then
*30% of adult ST (ST 3 for the ST 10 human average)
**by extension this would probably imply HP 3 as well
***ST 3 in 4e imparts a Basic Lift of 1.8, allowing a 4-second 2HL of 14.4 pounds
*40% of adult DX (DX 4 for the DX 10 human average)
*50% of adult IQ (IQ 5 for the IQ 5 human average)
**this presumably implies Will 5 and Per 5 as well
*SM-3
No number is assigned to how many years "infant" represents, but it clearly intended to be 4 or fewer due to 5-year-old being the next tier with a ST/DX/IQ/SM boost.
==Strength==
3e has used the term which could give some more specific guidelines of what it could be intended to mean:
*B13 said "DX 1" was "infant" (also ST 2)
**this was a step below "cannot walk" at DX 2 (implying infants also could not walk)
*B13 said "ST 3" was "3-year-old" which was a step above "cannot walk" at ST2, implying you COULD walk by 3
**in 3e, you got a 2HL of STx25 would would mean lifting 75 pounds
***B14 assigned ST 2 (lifting 50 pounds) to 2 year olds.
****1/8 of 50 is 6.25 which falls between ST5 (BL5) and ST6 (BL7.2) in 4e
***B14 assigned ST 1 (lifting 25 pounds) to those 0-1 years old
****1/8 of 25 is 3.125 which falls between ST3 (BL1.8) and ST4 (BL3.2) in 4e
Since 1 year olds are stronger in 3e than "infants" in 4e, it stands to reason that "infants" are meant to be less than 12 months old.
3e lacked ST resolution below 1, and 4e similarly uses whole-number increments. 4e always uses 10 CP per ST increments, and 3e uses them from ST1-7 and ST9-13 (ST 8 is an outlier where it's just 5 in either direction).
It seems reasonable to allow purchase of ST in 0.1 increments for 1 CP apiece in 4e (also increasing HP by 0.1 increments, worth 0.2 CP), and within the 3e ranges where it's 10/pt increments, such as for children (which would also change FP by 0.1 increments)
This would allow 2HL to progress in 2.5 pound increments in 3e, while in 4e it uses the more complex "square the ST" approach.
Emulating 4e's "average human infant" ST3 2HL of 14.4 pounds in 3e would ST 14.4/25=0.576. That is 0.424 less than ST 1, which saves an additional 4.24 character points (-84.24)
==DX==
This is a larger problem because there is a clear contrast between DX1 in 3e and DX4 in 4e.
===Attacks===
Due to needing a minimum skill of 3 to attempt an attack, DX 1 could not use normal "DX attacks" (punches, shoves, grapples, bites) using standard attack maneuvers. For this to be possible they would need to take All-Out Attack (Determined) to get a +4 bonus to get an effective DX of 5.
*This also just BARELY allows kicks at DX 3
It doesn't appear like Evaluate was available in 3e's basic set (possibly in MA?) nor Telegraphic Attack (introduced in 4e's MA) to go beyond this.
DX4 would allow in 4e a Determined DX 8, boostable to 11 or 14 with Evaluate (Ev bonus can be doubled against foes with dropped guard) or 12 with Telegraphic (15 or 18 if allowing Ev+TA bonus stacking as a house rule that Kromm suggested which is RAW illegal in MA)
The approach below with Noncombatant helps to mitigate some of that problem by giving -4 to DX for attack purposes. Plus a logical prohibition on learning combat skills until all levels are bought off, which makes complete sense for newborn infants (humans or otherwise) who should not be able to just go and learn combat skills and their techniques.
The "Reaction Penalty" interestingly would mean that those who react badly to cowards also react badly to infants.
Couch Potato would similarly be logical for newborn babies to have (-4 on bicycling, skating, etc) but would result in athletes and fitness nuts reacting badly to infants too.
===Parries===
Especially due to how parries work between editions: they boosted from DX/2 to DX/2+3
This means "infant unskilled DX parry" would've increased from 0 (0.5 rounded down) to 5.
The replicate the effective 3e "babies can't parry" (well, not technically, you can ALWAYS attempt a critical success on an active defense even if it's zero!) in 4e without lowering DX requires a more creative approach.
The best approach is probably PU3p21 Noncombatant maxed out at 4 levels as -60. This gives -4 to DX for combat purposes, which means babies would only have a parry score of 3, effectively no different from a parry score of 0.
===Speed and Move and Dodge===
In 3e dodge was equal to Basic Move (there was no Basic Speed) which still used the (DX+HT)/4 formula but could not be bought up or down, only modified by the Increased Move advantage or Lame disadvantage group.
DX1+HT1 would mean a BM of 0.5 for those ages 0-1, so with a dodge stat of 0 they could only dodge on critical successes of 3 or 4. Move is a minimum of 1 regardless (rounds up) except for those paralyzed or lacking legs.
(DX4+HT10)/4 would result in a Basic Speed of 3.5
*resulting in a Basic Move of 3
*resulting in a Dodge of 6
This is a much more capable dodge ability and Noncombatant does not penalize it, so some other solution would be needed to bring it down. Although there's no difference between effective dodge of 4 and below (4 is always a critical success, only going up to 5 increases odds) there is a difference between BASE dodge stat, due to circumstances which can give dodge bonuses to raise them to 5+ such as One Foe (+1) AOD:determined (+2) Telegraphic Attack (+2) Feverish Defense (+2) and Retreat (+3). The possibly +10 in bonuses available actually means that there would be a mechanical difference from someone whose dodge was negative 6 (10-6=4) and negative 5 (10-5=5) though it's not clear if base dodge can actually get that low.
===Lowering the Dodge with Quirks===
You can probably ignore the quirk limit of 5 (infants are usually NPCs) and a "leveled quirk" like the proposal below would perhaps technically cease to be a quirk anyway
*(for example like how you can effectively have >5 Incompetent quirks via taking 4 levels of Anti-Talent applying to >5 skills)
Approaches include:
*note that B17 allows Extra-Heavy Encumbrance to cause a -4 penalty to dodge. Although "Encumbrance can never reduce Move or Dodge below 1." this can help lower Dodge 6 to Dodge 2.
**this doesn't require encumbering an infant: there is a quirk called Dead Weight (PU6p22) which can reflect poor muscle tone and emulates encumbrance. There is no rule prohibiting a quirk from being selected multiple times.
***"Dead Weight 13" would add 13/2 BL (6.5) slightly exceeding the "Heavy" limit to incur the -4 penalty, while still allowing the potential to carry 3.5xBL while moving
****(any more exceeds 10x BL which is beyond EHE and presumably makes movement/dodging either impossible or automatically 1, since no guidelines exist below 20% move -4 dodge threshold)
*****clearly there should be SOME level of encumbrance which utterly prevents movement (Move 0) and dodging (dodge N/A) so the "can't go below 1" guideline is probably meant to apply to things falling under the categories above, capped at 10xBL.
Quirks 26 also has Preferred Tactics which can give a -1 penalty to an active defense (per p 27) "against an opponent who could have noticed your predictable choice". Something like Preferred Tactic: Dodging would make sense for someone with Noncombatant 4 since they can't parry/block competently anyway. Not submitting to this is still possible (in which case there is no -1 to your parry or block) but lack of heart in effort gives foes +1 to resist or defend against the infant.
Q19 Glimpses of Clarity version of Flashbacks can cause distraction that inflicts -1 to "rolls to do anything", explicitly including defense rolls. This would be useful not just in bringing down an infant's dodge but also in further reducing their ability to attack/parry/perceive based on distraction (they are processing memories from earlier in the day)
*B136 on which this is based strangely only specifies "skill rolls" for mild/severe and crippling only precludes "skill use". While that would prevent using combat skills, it wouldn't prevent parrying on raw DX or dodging! "Receiving no input from the real world" probably means being effectively blind/deaf/numb though, so if defenses were allowed it would be probably be as per those disadvantages (probably attacks are always surprise attacks, since you can't rely on sound to compensate for blindness for ranged attacks, or touch to compensate for blindness for grappling attacks)
Quirky Effects (Q4) mentions "Penalties to Success Rolls: -1 on the character’s rolls to act (e.g., attribute, skill, or active defense rolls)" in the first bullet. This is what GOC appears to be a version of.
Happening on 6 or less is:
*a double-value for avoiding self-control disadvantages on B121. These are 2.5x if they can't be avoided at all.
*half-value for associated NPC advantages on B36. These are 4x if ALWAYS available, implying an advantage is 1/8 cost if it requires 6 or less activation.
**-7/8 is -87.5% by comparison yet Unreliable (5 or less) is -80%. That's perhaps due to limitation minimums, but going beyond can be useful for paying for enhancements!
This appears to indicate that GOC is overpriced because it effectively has a "Not Penalties to Success Rolls (Unreliable -80%)" counter-perk (mitigator).
For that reason "-1 that can't be mitigated" should probably be worth far more than a quirk, or else any sort of mitigation shouldn't be worth a quirk because there's no incentive to take the non-mitigated version.
Category:Rules