>Has anyone had problems with "do anything" abilities, such as "Resourceful",
>being over-used? The broader the ability is, the more often it will have an
>appropriateness penalty applied, but it's still cheaper in the long run to
>improve one ability than two. Could this be balanced by only allowing cheap
>advancement if the ability has been used without any appropriateness modifier
>during the episode?
As a Narrator i don't experience any problem with broad abilities. My players tend to use the most appropriate even if it has a lower rating.
Instead of appropriateness mods, i prefer to use mods based on relative "specialization":
During a combat contest (which is going badly for Uskil, BTW), Uskil ("fierce warrior" 18; "disarm" 14) tries to disarm Bregor ("axe-wielding madman" 5w) using his "disarm" trait to even the odds a bit; Bregor doesn't have any trait that includes such fancy maneuvers, so he should be at a huge disadvantage for this exchange, even though "axe-wielding madman" isn't inappropriate per se IMO.
Bregor doesn't have any trait that can be explicitly used in a disarming attempt; my rule-of-thumb is that Uskil gets a +20 bonus to reflect the difference in specialization (and to make it worthwhile to have narrow traits).
You can argue that it is basically 'appropriateness' applied positively, but i prefer to think of it as 'specialization', since Bregor's trait "axe-wielding madman" isn't IMO inappropriate.
-- - Mikael Raaterova [.sig omitted on legal advice]
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