I would like it if this were true, but unfortunately it doesn't seem to be. For example, it has been mentioned several times that it will take the expenditure of at least 168 Hero Points to get from a starting character to one who can learn a theist cult secret (one affinity at 5w and two at 1w -> three at 1w2). If one were to put all these points in just one skill, however, whether it be Wealth, Close Combat or Tiddlywinks, that one 5w becomes 13w9. This is why specializing your HP expenditure on a single generic skill from which you can improvise almost anything is seen by some on this list as so dangerous and in need of some rule to discourage.
The standard responses to this will be that it would take too long in game play to matter, no one skill will ever be relevant to the narrative in every single session, and such a character is too over-specialized for his own good. However, I don't think that's quite true. Most gaming groups I've played in met once per week, so play for four years and you should hit 168 sessions without much trouble, meaning there's little need for this character to reduce HP efficiency by buying more than one increase at a time. Also, since the actual number of HP he will be earning per session is suggested to be 2-5 plus bonuses for finishing story episodes, in the 3 1/2 years it takes to build the 13w9 he'll develop seven additional skills at 1w5 for variety. Even if the super-skill increase only counts as relevant 1/3 of the time, that still means +3 skill per 5 HP, for a total of 5w6, which is still plenty high enough for a game-breaker.
Now, for the benefit of the animism fans on the list, I will mention the character type who breaks the game most by this particular style of HP use: a shaman who puts his 13w9 in Spirit Combat. His fetch of equally godlike might allows him to casually enter the Spirit World at will, where he can easily integrate spirits of up to minor-god-level might, meaning that he can gain essentially any talent he wants at any time at a starting level of about 1w7 for just two HP each. A note to those who will deride me as a "rules lawyer" and say that good GMs will somehow prevent this: I think of myself rather as a "rules bug identifier" -- the rules as written allow, and indeed the resolution mechanics earnestly encourage, this sort of behavior, which I regard as undesirable in the extreme; therefore I would suggest that the rules be changed to make this sort of powergaming less attractive, so as not to force GMs to work to prevent this abuse.
For this reason, I heartily recommend the various suggestions made by Wulf Corbett, David Dunham and others to increase the HP needed to increase an ability score as that score gets higher; actual cost = base cost + 1 per mastery seems popular. This change alone drops the insane 13w9 to a much more manageable but still somewhat scary 19w4. Because the ability score system is essentially logarithmic, I think I might prefer an exponential cost scale, e.g. one that doubles in price for every mastery, but this might cause players to despair that once they reached a certain point, their characters have too hard a time getting any stronger in their main ability -- or at least their magic ones (I don't see a big problem in requiring 8 HP for a one-point increase in a mundane skill in the w3 range, but 24 for an affinity or 40 for a grimoire of equal score does seem rather rude).
This change would also help fix the problems mentioned recently by Benedict Adamson and David Cake, that the way the skill system works actively discourages ambiguous references and balanced skill development -- if it costs 16 HP to improve Generic Hunting from 1w4 to 2w4, but those same 16 would take your Move Silently in Forest from 1w to 9w or Six Cuts Silk from 13 to 5w, it would make much more sense to develop your specialized helper skills in addition to your big ones, instead of the just-the-big-ones model currently encouraged.
It also, IMO, helps to fix what I consider a problem in the NPC adversary rules, namely that in HW Luke can never grow up to defeat Darth Vader, nor Inigo Montoya grow up to defeat the Six-Fingered Man, since the number of masteries advantage the older villain has will never decrease: you can never catch up to anybody (and, seen from the other side, no one can ever grow up to challenge you). But with this sort of rule, in the time it takes Luke to go from 13 to 1w3, Darth goes only from 1w3 to 18w3 instead of to 9w5 -- it becomes much easier for the game system to model telling the universal stories of a child who grows up to avenge his parents, or the old veteran who is defeated in a surprise upset by the young up-and-comer.
Ryan Caveney
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