[mburr0003]

Originally Posted by maximara

Uh. What I gave regarding the break down came from Power-Ups 9 - Alternate Attributes. Pages 5 and 12 in fact.

Yeah, sorry, Power-Ups 9 does it, and I clearly disagree with that breakdown.

You could easily bump DX and IQ to 40/level each and they would still be a value over buying Talents for most Characters.

While PU9 does note using Talents as a base for an attribute's cost is a bad idea (pg 9) ...

That's not actually what it says. Okay, it does, but for different reasons, because Talents "cover more than just skill improvement". (And again, I disagree, I argue that Talents should impact the cost of raw Attributes, Attributes should cost more)

What it's very explicitly ignoring is that Talents need those associated extras to remain competitive with Attributes. Otherwise most Talents are not worth taking (arguably any Talent that costs more than 5/lvl or if you're taking more than one Talent that broadly covers a single Attribute, is no longer worth it, usually).

Why? Because very few Characters have only five skills that belong to a single Attribute, and once you've exceeded ten skills in one Attribute, it's more valuable to just raise the Attribute (actually that hits at 5, or even 4 skills in one Attribute, but then Talents can play a strong price break role at that number of skills). If you're at the edge, exactly 10 skills, it's arguable either way (do not undervalue the raw DX check). But then Talents often have lower caps and a smaller cost.

... it does suggest that using them as a guide results in IQ being higher.

As well as DX, though I think it's "upper limit" of 35 is still too low. 40/level for DX and IQ almost feel right, actually IQ still feels low, but bumping it up more than that... I don't think it would have a positive impact. As it stands it would inflate the cost of "IQ" characters who tend to have lots of skills that very rarely see use.

And that's a lot of what Power-Ups 9 is trying to hammer home but doesn't really teach well: Figure out what Skills your campaign will be leaning hard on, and balance around those skills if you're planing to change Attribute costs.


For my games splitting out Will and Per and leaving IQ untouched works, because I promote Will and Per skill usage as well as heavily indulge in Social and 'Science/Craft" skill usage. I also heavily use DX Combat and Parkour skills (which also covers HT skills). To be honest, depending on the genre, I sometimes reduce ST, because it's just not a competitive Attribute in the post-modern genres where guns hit harder and equipment weighs drastically less (c-punk and space sci-fi). And I've been doing this since 1990, so it's not exactly a new concept.