> Secrets are readily improved, I note. In fact, that's the real
> advantage of something like the Vangath secret
In those cases, and in the _long_ run, sure.
But starting out with, say, Humakt's secret at a rating of 12 and trying to use that against a default resistance of 14, the largest probability (about 60%, 25% if you're prepared to bump with a HP) is that you will get at least a forfeit 1x, which will land you at -12 AP, a minor defeat: blammo, your rating is down to 10. Now you can raise it back up to your starting level for the low, low price of 3 HP. The only way to avoid this scenario is to spend some time raising the rating without actually using the secret, which of course is more expensive.
Alex:
> Actually the down-sides are several (Jonas just mentioned two, the
> first of which would be more correctly stated as "you have to make
> an increasingly large "minimum bid" in order to get the "special
> effect"
What I'm referring to is that you must bid all your current AP, and apply a two-way edge equal to your rating (it says target number, but I assume that's wrong). Which means that a negative result of 1x will land you at negative AP equal to your rating. After that it gets worse... So any level of failure on the exchange will definitely remove you from the contest.
David Cake:
> The 'automatic success in final action' secrets look really
> incredibly useful.
Yes, except I still have no clue what "automatic success" is supposed to mean in these cases. It has no reference to the normal rules for final actions. Otherwise I agree with your assessments.
Powered by hypermail