<nify maths snipped>
Sadly the mention of things like logs tends to drive many people screaming from the room.
However your basic point is a sound one: Never add two abilities, always augment one with another.
Taking this way back up the thread to quest challenges, I think the obvious solution is that if you are challenging for an ability you already have, you still get a new ability.
Say you have close combat 6W2, and in a quest challenge you defeat a troll death-lord, wagering your close combat against his close combat 10W2. Rather than adding the two abilities (giving you CC 16W4, clearly broken), or adding one fifth (giving a more reasonable 16W2), I think you should gain "death lord combat". You would also add the death lord's close combat combetencies (mace, club, etc) to your own, should you not already have them.
This is a skill that can clearly be used to augment your close combat, and probably for a hefty augment at that. It may also be appropriate to use in certain other areas. Ever after, when preparing for, or even in a fight, you can take a moment to bring to mind all the combat tricks and experience you absorbed from the death lord, greatly improving your prowess and flexibility in battle.
In short, what seems to me natural is that the result of a quest challenge is always a new ability, never a simple add to the current ability. Yes, this makes questing for things you are already good at perhaps less exciting than questing for brand new things, but I think that this is as it should be, IMO.
> But then, a squad
> with one CC 10W Hero and 20 CC 17 grunts would have 10W + (20 *
17)/5 = CC 18W4
> (and 370 APs), so this approach needs fixing too.
>
> The anally retentive calculation method for the squad's enhanced CC
would be
> the
> following one :
>
> 10W + ((17 + (17 + (17 + (17 + (17 + (17 + (17 + (17 + (17 + (17 +
(17 + (17 +
> (17 + (17 + (17 + (17 + (17 + (17 + (17 + 17/5)
> /5)/5)/5)/5)/5)/5)/5)/5)/5)/5)/5)/5)/5)/5)/5)/5)/5)/5)/5)
>
This works out to the sum of a geometric series, which with a multiple of 0.2 means that any fair number of terms will approximate 0.25. So with this approach I'd suggest that 1/4 * (sqaddie skill) is better than 1/5 * (sqaddie skill) +1.
However, I don't really see what is wrong with the current HW
approach of looking at multiple attackers/defenders, and adding up
AP? I thought that was one of the mechanisms that bugged people quite
little?
>
> Wealth is an exception, because you actually *need* a simulationist
rule for
> it, and some method of translating the TN into accountancy.
*need*???? A lot of people seem to be playing the game without such a think without great difficulty. Perhaps "....because if you feel you *need* a simulationist rule for it....." would be a better phrasing?
Personally I look at "how wealthy is my character?" a little bit like saying "how much water is in my well?" There may be a certain amount of water sitting there, obvious, but as you pull it out the well will fill back up. If you pump it out too quickly it might take the well a while to fill back up. If you continue to pull water out of it, eventually it may not fill up to the same level. Events outside your control may change the depth of water in it. You can pour water into it, but it takes a lot of added water to raise the level on more than a temporary basis.
On the other hand, I see simulationist rules as being more like a water tank, it holds so much, you drain it and that is it until you re-fill it, you can figure exactly how much water is in it. I think most people would rather have a well than a water tank, although of course there are exceptions. If the whole point of the game is that the heroes are outlawed and cut off, then tracking each of their possesions with care could be appropriate.
All just IMO, of course.
--Bryan
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