Quote:
Originally Posted by Kromm
That said, I've often toyed with the idea of retroactively optimizing PCs, things like shaving off 30 points of IQ-based skills to raise IQ by 1, lowering point total by 10 points despite the increased efficiency. I often suspect that's the missing link that keeps starting and earned points from working the same way.
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It is part of it, but not the whole thing.
My reason for this claim is experience:
Social Engineering: Back to School, pp. 10-11 describes raising attributes by "point conversion" but I've used a more liberal version of this for years: characters can buy up attributes with a combination of unspent bonus points and points from lowering skills, but I don't require that all skills governed by that attribute are reduced, provided
no skills go down.
This does not break anything, IME, and has allowed characters to remain reasonably efficiently designed on some very long-running campaigns: Infinite Cabal started at 300 points and ended at about 950, so about 215 sessions at 3 points each, while Irresponsible & Right started at 225 and ended at about 700.
Other things I allow are shuffling points within specialisations of a skill, provided nothing goes down, and buying Talents in play if the character already has and uses all the skills in the Talent. I also use the rule for buying Language Talent from Back to School, having originally invented it. I should probably write an article about this.
The remaining reason that characters designed with a high point total are more efficient is that buying
large advantages is a lot easier if you have 450 points than 250.