I sympathise with much of what you are saying (passim the fact that I suspect it was a design decision) but I do not think that this is the crux of the problem except in the specific case we started with.
You could achieve the same effect if a number of supporting characters augmented the uber-hero simultaneously with different feats from different affinities from different deities (or even wholly different magic types).
>
> I *appreciate* that there are many Narrator Tricks (TM) that can be
> used to rein in such abusive behaviour. But I do not think the bald
> face of the augmentation rules does enough to discourage it. I
would
> *like* a game where I'm pretty darn sure my PCs' and NPCs' relative
> ability ratings will stay more or less where I set them.
I think the crux of your problem is with the way that augmentation scales. Augmenting a 5W ability with a 5W magic will generally give you +1 or +2 advantage, you would need a ridiculous number of different magic feats available to get a couple of W worth of advantage from this. Augmenting at this level is barely worth the effort. Augmenting a 5W3 ability with a 5W3 magic gives more like +10 so jumping W levels becomes a relatively minor matter. Augmenting at this level is extremely powerful. Once you hit W4 levels and up the augmentation just gets awesome (you quickly hit one W per augment as you go up).
I can understand why you have a problem with this, I can see that I might have a problem with it if we ever get to those sorts of levels. What I cannot see is an easy way to resolve it without cludging something else which works well enough at lower levels (such as augmenting with multiple feats) or introducing increasingly complex rules (breaking the simplicity of the game IMO).
-- Nic
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