Quote:
Originally Posted by jeff_wilson
Don't you see a rather circular character to your reasoning here, wrt the stated issue of this thread?
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I simply didn't see the point in reiterating what others have said. As you've called me out, however...
I don't use points because points don't tell me anything I don't know from
looking at the stats, and because it's time consuming to actually write out and then add up all the points. A 500 point character could be a polymath, a God-King, an exceptional martial artist and entrepreneur, or a paraplegic who can
rip people apart with his mind. I get a lot more out of looking at the character and seeing they have high skill levels, have huge Status and a Minion Ally Group army, have high strength, combat skills, and some background skills, or lack limbs but have a ridiculous level of TK than I ever would out of seeing that the character was built on 500 points. I give my players a point budget so that they consider themselves to start on an even playing field with each other, and to prevent them from going crazy buying skills/abilities/etc in a manner inappropriate for my campaign. I don't give myself a point budget because I base the NPC stats off of the PC stats. Just how high of skill should the polymath have? Enough to be useful, but not so much that he overshadows all of the PCs. How large/powerful of an army should the God-King have? Enough to be a threat without instantly annihilating the PCs. How skilled should the martial artist be? Enough to be a challenge, but not so much that the PCs can't touch him (unless I
want him to be nearly untouchable). How much TK should the paraplegic have? Enough that the PCs won't be careless, but not so much that he can kill them effortlessly.
Now, I
do think there is a point to statting up non-PCs. This tells you what the character is capable of.
However, there is no good point in determining the point total - or in some cases how to actually build the ability, if it's excessively complicated - if PCs are never going to get access to the trait. This is because the point value of the trait doesn't tell you anything the trait itself does not tell you more effectively. "This character has a 1d (2) imp Innate Attack with Acc 3, RoF 3, Rcl 2, no 1/2D, Max 100, and costs 1 FP/use" tells me far more than "This character has a [16] Innate Attack." Additionally, the fact that the Innate Attack happens to cost 16 points tells me simply that this guy has an Innate Attack with some decent modifiers tacked on - something that I
already see, and indeed see exactly
what modifiers there are, by just looking at the attack's stats. Similarly, if a villain from my "Angels vs Demons" (working name) dimension shows up, with his innate defensive field that imposes a to-hit penalty against ranged attacks equal to his speed in yd/sec, I don't need to try to wrack my brain figuring out how much this trait costs*.
*I eventually will need to come up with a point cost, of course, as I intend to run a game in that dimension. Although all the PC's will have the trait, they may have access to special abilities that shut it down - and pricing this Limitation depends on what the ability itself costs! Plus, if I ever do IW with the players as Infinity Patrol after that setting, someone might want to play a character from it, in which case knowing the cost would be a good idea - and, of course, the possibility of
me playing a character with such a trait exists. But, to simply introduce a character from there, I wouldn't need to bother.