Re: Buying & increasing (follower abilities and) keywords

From: Alex Ferguson <abf_at_...>
Date: Thu, 8 Apr 2004 19:37:21 +0100

On Fri, Apr 02, 2004 at 03:13:45PM -0800, Roderick and Ellen Robertson wrote:
> A straight buying of a Sidekick's keyword should depend on the keyword -
> after all, a Homeland keyword is not as useful (generally) as a Occupation
> keyword, and a Magic keyword has expensive magical abilities in it. So maybe
> 5/10/20 for Homeland/Occupation/Magic keywords. I don't personally *like*
> this option, but hey.

I don't like it much myself, though perhaps for the opposite reason. Making it this expensive is surely in effect an exercise in making it so expensive no-one will ever do it. (I doubt anyone would increase their _own_ keywords at such price, never mind some semi-reliable sidekicks.)

If one goes this this way, it rather assumes that either on the one hand, you won't bother increasing sidekick abilities at all, or on the other, that they'll get increased in a hyper-specialised manner. Not sure I'm wild about either.

RRy's other options seem more desirable in effect (increase keyword rating at modest cost, under assorted sanity/common decency constraints), but extremely fiddly in detail. If the effect is indeed simply, followers shouldn't overshadow or out-advance their base characters, isn't it better simply to say so, in about as many words?