Steve Jackson Games Forums - View Single Post - Price of Cumulative (+400%) if each successive use takes a cumulative -1 penalty?

Anaraxes · 04-29-2017, 06:56 AM

The "possibly-infinite" is largely illusion, though. Certainly it's true, in that abstract combat-on-an-infinite-featureless-plain sense. But how often does it actually come up that you (a) need an infinite amount of stacking to achieve your goal; (b) have an infinite amount of turns to apply it; and (c) never get a crit fail while doing so?

For judging the cost, it helps to realize that the utility of each successive application has declining utility. The first stack is more valuable than the taking the stack from 9 to 10. And the likelihood of needing that much effect is similarly less. (The mooks will go down quickly regardless.)

I'd suggest that 10 applications is approximately "effective infinity" for a combat ability. If you sit in a corner for 10 turns chanting, the other PCs will probably finish off the enemy by the time you're done. 10s combats are rare, at least in my experience, and it's a rough boundary between durations in combat time and out-of-combat time. (Compare the limits on Takes Extra Time.) That number also dovetails with the -10 TDM often used to represent "impossible" (except for those amazing heroic PCs), such as fighting blind.

For another example of declining utility, consider the forum discussions on the pricing of Costs FP. Someone will usually make the point that the very first level, taking an ability from "free" to "limited", is much more significant than the 3 or 4th level. "Can use 5 times in combat" isn't that much more limiting than "Can use 10 times in combat" -- especially since once you have a lot of Costs FP abilities, that Energy Reserve starts looking good. Similarly, the first stack of your Cumulative Affliction is often going to be more significant than taking the stack from 5 to 6 levels. The marginal utility of stacks isn't a constant. So, the pricing shouldn't be thought of as linear.

(The assumption of linearity is one of the pitfalls in the Either-Or calculation, and one reason it often fails to satisfy people in practice. The math is perfectly sound -- but it does assume that the effects are independent and combined linearly, like regular real numbers. But that's not really true of perceived modifier values. We treat them that way so we can do the math using tools we already know, rather than futzing around with a lot of table lookups and charts for every modifier. And sometimes, that won't work out.)

04-29-2017, 06:56 AM	#6
Anaraxes Join Date: Sep 2007	Re: Price of Cumulative (+400%) if each successive use takes a cumulative -1 penalty? The "possibly-infinite" is largely illusion, though. Certainly it's true, in that abstract combat-on-an-infinite-featureless-plain sense. But how often does it actually come up that you (a) need an infinite amount of stacking to achieve your goal; (b) have an infinite amount of turns to apply it; and (c) never get a crit fail while doing so? For judging the cost, it helps to realize that the utility of each successive application has declining utility. The first stack is more valuable than the taking the stack from 9 to 10. And the likelihood of needing that much effect is similarly less. (The mooks will go down quickly regardless.) I'd suggest that 10 applications is approximately "effective infinity" for a combat ability. If you sit in a corner for 10 turns chanting, the other PCs will probably finish off the enemy by the time you're done. 10s combats are rare, at least in my experience, and it's a rough boundary between durations in combat time and out-of-combat time. (Compare the limits on Takes Extra Time.) That number also dovetails with the -10 TDM often used to represent "impossible" (except for those amazing heroic PCs), such as fighting blind. For another example of declining utility, consider the forum discussions on the pricing of Costs FP. Someone will usually make the point that the very first level, taking an ability from "free" to "limited", is much more significant than the 3 or 4th level. "Can use 5 times in combat" isn't that much more limiting than "Can use 10 times in combat" -- especially since once you have a lot of Costs FP abilities, that Energy Reserve starts looking good. Similarly, the first stack of your Cumulative Affliction is often going to be more significant than taking the stack from 5 to 6 levels. The marginal utility of stacks isn't a constant. So, the pricing shouldn't be thought of as linear. (The assumption of linearity is one of the pitfalls in the Either-Or calculation, and one reason it often fails to satisfy people in practice. The math is perfectly sound -- but it does assume that the effects are independent and combined linearly, like regular real numbers. But that's not really true of perceived modifier values. We treat them that way so we can do the math using tools we already know, rather than futzing around with a lot of table lookups and charts for every modifier. And sometimes, that won't work out.)