Steve Jackson Games Forums - View Single Post - Why does 4e give a flat cost for attribute increases?

weby · 07-13-2015, 03:30 PM

One reason is that in effect you have a rising curve/utility for most tasks.

One is that by standard modifiers getting more than -9 requires several extremely hard things to to happen at same time.

There are several rules limiting things overall also like the fright check cap, rule of 16, rule of 20 and so on.

But also the basic utility, take someone with 1 point in an IQ/easy skill having 50% probability in average task at IQ 10, raising by 12.5% for buying IQ 11, rising by further 11.57% for getting 12, then only raising by 9.72%,6.94%, 4.63%, 2.78% and then not raising at all.

Though I do agree that high attributes do make a game feel to not be realistic fairly quickly at far below any sorts of human maximums and a steep curve could help, but I never liked the 3rd ed version either in actual play though on paper it looked nice.

07-13-2015, 03:30 PM	#3
weby Join Date: Oct 2008	Re: Why does 4e give a flat cost for attribute increases? One reason is that in effect you have a rising curve/utility for most tasks. One is that by standard modifiers getting more than -9 requires several extremely hard things to to happen at same time. There are several rules limiting things overall also like the fright check cap, rule of 16, rule of 20 and so on. But also the basic utility, take someone with 1 point in an IQ/easy skill having 50% probability in average task at IQ 10, raising by 12.5% for buying IQ 11, rising by further 11.57% for getting 12, then only raising by 9.72%,6.94%, 4.63%, 2.78% and then not raising at all. Though I do agree that high attributes do make a game feel to not be realistic fairly quickly at far below any sorts of human maximums and a steep curve could help, but I never liked the 3rd ed version either in actual play though on paper it looked nice.