Leveling up skills

[Steve Plambeck]

Amen to everything you just said David. That's actually a great "state of the union" address for where we're at with the Legacy version of TFT.

Originally Posted by David Bofinger

Plus worrying about those 3/? rolls is the tail wagging the dog: I want ST 19 to use a great sword in one hand, not to pass ST rolls. I want IQ 16 for three spells with "seven hexes" in their description, not to pass IQ rolls, I want DX 17 not to pass DX rolls but so I can have adjDX 12 in improved plate and a large shield. It's not the player's fault that acquiring those capabilities inevitably makes them breeze through attribute checks as well.

Why couldn't we have one simple blanket rule wherein all attribute check rolls are made against a fixed maximum attribute value, independent of any character's actual attribute.

Wait -- it occurs to me we already actually have that built into the Critical Success and Failure rule (ITL 9). Doesn't that alone vaccinate us against any ill effects of "attribute bloat"? If success rates for attribute checks are already capped by automatic failure, then higher attribute numbers can't really hurt the game, can they? What am I missing?

True it would be a pretty dull game if everyone could crank all three attributes up to 15. Every roll would have a 96-98% chance of success, and that may be the specific thing SJ was trying to avoid. But we do want some attributes to get well above 14 for purposes other than making attribute checks, as in all those good examples David brought up.

Now I wonder if lowering the threshold for automatic failure to 15 on 3 dice instead of 16 (or even as low as 14!) would so mitigate the effects of attribute bloat we could drastically cut the Experience Point costs of everything else, without any more rule changes than those.