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Old 05-07-2013, 01:52 AM   #192
dataweaver
 
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Join Date: Aug 2004
Default Re: Advantages Are Not Utility Priced

Quote:
Originally Posted by Ze'Manel Cunha View Post
But if you are going to count points, then you should be able to strip out the built-in UB costs which should only be setting specific.
That assumes that there are built-in UB costs to be stripped out. That is, you're assuming that there is some part of the trait's cost that is not setting-specific. I don't think that's a valid assumption.

The idea that point costs have any sort of objective truth to them is an illusion. When you're looking at one thing, you can say that a more potent version of it should never cost less and should usually cost more; but how much more depends on campaign- and group-specific factors. For example, you'll eventually reach a point of diminishing returns, where you have enough potency to overwhelm 99% of the opposition in the game in this area; by that point, spending more on it is wasteful, unless you know for a fact that the remaining 1% is going to be a frequent adversary.

And even then, if the type of circumstances that make that trait useful aren't going to come up much in the game, you get to a point where it stops making sense to charge for more of it: you might have the best darn buggy whip in the land; but it's still just a buggy whip, so there's only so much you can charge for it.

And as soon as you start comparing different things, objective standards go right out the window. Is +1 IQ really worth the same as +4 DR? It's a nonsensical question, because you're comparing apples to oranges: IQ has nothing in common with DR. The relative value of IQ and DR depends heavily on how often IQ-based challenges will come up vs. how often DR-based challenges will come up. In a high-intrigue game, physical violence may be all but unheard of; and when it does happen, it will probably have been carefully orchestrated in advance to involve overwhelming force. In such a game, having DR is worthless in and of itself; it only has value if it's a secret and thus can't be accounted for by your enemies. Conversely, the most banal of hack-and-slash games renders IQ all but worthless: all that matters is how much damage you can dish out and how much you can take.
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