Quote from: Willie the Duck;1012905That was it! Doing something you are good at means you are no longer good at doing it. On one hand, that's not unlike primordial D&D (where hp are the base mechanism of being good at combat, and unnecessary fighting means you use up your hp, so the best way to always be the best fighter is to never fight), but this system just called that out a little too much. So it was a matter-of-degree type thing.

I'm trying to recall, do you 'have' to spend attribute points to be 'good' at it? I thought it was an option but is hardly required. Wouldn't Effort be more common than burning attribute points?

Quote from: Voros;1013185I'm trying to recall, do you 'have' to spend attribute points to be 'good' at it? I thought it was an option but is hardly required. Wouldn't Effort be more common than burning attribute points?

I guess maybe two people who can't really remember the game are great people to be discussing it, huh?
I seem to recall having to climb a rope ladder to some floating skyship, and doing so required you to spend (let's say) 1-5 dice from a pool of something like 10-20 dice from your non-combat, non-magic pool. Maybe we played it wrong, or I am remembering it wrong.

Quote from: Voros;1013185I'm trying to recall, do you 'have' to spend attribute points to be 'good' at it? I thought it was an option but is hardly required. Wouldn't Effort be more common than burning attribute points?

No, you don't have to spend points.  Spending points is putting Effort into the action, which makes your chances of succeeding better or doing more damage if it's an attack.  Edge reduces the amount of points you need to put in for Effort.  For example, 1 level of Effort is 3 points.  If you have an Edge of 2 in that stat then 1 level of Effort only costs 1 point.  You just need to make some choices.  Do you use your Effort to make sure you hit or do you think your chances are good enough and put it into damage.

"Powers" are also fueled by your attributes.  Again though, you can use Edge to negate the cost which eventually makes certain abilities free to use every round but add another choice to the mix: do you use your Edge to pull off the special ability, make your odds better or do more damage.

The whole "doing your thing makes you worse at doing your thing" never made much sense to me.  The attributes are more of a fatigue pool then anything.  If you are doing routine things all day, or fighting low level enemies, you shouldn't be spending many points at all.  If you are attempting something challenging or fighting tough enemies, well yeah, that's going to take something out of you.  You get rests that take an increasing amount of time to refill a bit of your pools, but again, after so much in a day you are going to want to stop and get a good night's sleep.

The biggest problem we had in the game was armor.  It really doesn't scale with the damage output of... well... anything.  NPCs, PCs, monsters, everything eventually puts out so much damage that getting to negate 1-3 points of it isn't worth the penalties armor imposes.

I know the new "revision" of the game is suppose to address some issues of the original, but we'll have to wait and see what it actually does.

Quote from: Willie the Duck;1013237I guess maybe two people who can't really remember the game are great people to be discussing it, huh?
I seem to recall having to climb a rope ladder to some floating skyship, and doing so required you to spend (let's say) 1-5 dice from a pool of something like 10-20 dice from your non-combat, non-magic pool. Maybe we played it wrong, or I am remembering it wrong.

Depending on the situation, you could be right.

Difficulties go from 1 to 10.  You multiply the difficulty by 3 to get your target number.  Every level of Effort you put into an action can reduce the difficulty by 1, which reduces the target number by 3.  Effort costs 3 points for the first level and 2 points for each level after.

If you are just climbing a rope ladder, I wouldn't even make you roll.  It's a Routine task according to the book that has a Difficulty of 0.

At most I would make it a Difficulty 2 which the book describes as "Typical task requiring focus, but most people can usually do this". Rope ladders are tricky for some people.  Now you need 6 or higher on a d20.  Remember that skills also reduce the Difficulty by 1-2 points.  So it's a good chance that you might only need a 3+ or maybe you reduce it to 0 and don't need to roll.

If it was windy or the ship was moving while you were trying to climb, maybe that would be a Difficulty 3 or 4 (TN 9 or 12).  So here you may want to start spending points.  So, apply any skills you have first then spend Effort.  Let's go with the Diff 4 and TN 12.  You have the Climb skill at 1 because there is a good chance an adventurer would, so now it's a Diff 3 (TN 9).  You put in 1 Effort level by spending 3 points from Speed and now it's a Diff 2 (TN 6).  If you have Edge in Speed then the cost is lowered by however much Edge you have.

So yeah, climbing a rope ladder dangling from a moving skyship took a bit out of you.  Once you are on board though you can use your action to make a recovery roll and get 1d6 points back if you want.

Unrelated I know, but ... wow, an owlkitten!

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