Re-calibrating Attribute Costs

[Arcanjo7Sagi]

Originally Posted by lvalero

You might want to review the proposal of Douglas Cole in Pyramid 3/65 "By default". He proposes basing the defaults not in the Attrubute's value but in "half the value" +5. He also proposes a revised table of "skills costs"

It could be an interesting solution for less cinematic games. Generalist hyper-competent characters become much more costly to make.

This reminds me of an idea I had a while ago, but I haven't been able to test it. It would keep the costs as they are, but introduce stat modifiers, similar to what happens in D&D:

10-11 = +0
12-13 = +1
14-15 = +2
16-17 = +3
18-19 = +4
20-21 = +5

Using this idea (which I admit I haven't tested, it's just something that came to mind), you would add the attribute modifier to the skill, rather than the entire attribute itself. With this, the skills would have a common base based on difficulty, instead of attribute.

It would be like this:

Easy:

1 point = 10
2 points = 11
4 points = 12
8 points = 13
12 points = 14
Etc

Average:

1 point = 09
2 points = 10
4 points = 11
8 points = 12
12 points = 13

Difficult:

1 point = 08
2 points = 09
4 points = 10
8 points = 11
12 points = 12

Basically, it's like for skill purposes, everyone has a base attribute of 10. Then the final SL is the composition of that base (which can start with 10, 9, 8 and 7 depending on the Difficulty of the skill) + whatever you pay for training by the skill table, as it normally is today + ability modifier + Talents, if any.

At first it sounds like you're doubling the cost of attributes, yes. But there are still situations where you roll the raw attribute, as it normally happens, in situations foreseen by the system (perception tests to notice something, intelligence tests to remember things, DX tests to keep balance, etc).

That way, someone with IQ 20 (+5 modifier) and with 1 skill point spent would have SL 15 for Easy skills, 14 for Medium, 13 for Hard, and 12 for Very Hard. As opposed to the current 20/19/18/17.

Again, I haven't tested it to see how it looks, but in theory it seems to lighten the weight of attributes in skills a bit. It also makes Talents interesting from a cost-effective point of view.