Re: (TFT) attributes

[Jay Carlisle <maou.tsaou@gmail.com>]

This came to me from Peter also

Hi Jay,

Can you forward my reply to the email list for me? My ISP's email server is
freaking out for some reason and not letting me do it.

My view of TFT attributes is that, yes, 30 is about the maximum for any
attribute, and that almost no one ever gets up there unless they are very
extreme cases. And those extreme cases pretty much never have a 30 in two
or more attributes; people with any attributes in the 20+ range are
essentially super-heroes, arch wizards, geniuses, national champion
athletes, and so on. I think the absolute most powerful characters I ever
made as GM were maybe 60 points, and I had very mixed feelings about them,
sometimes changing my mind and tuning them down. They're just way too good
at everything and it tends to make them uninteresting to me, and to make
all the inferior characters also uninteresting because they are so
outclassed.

If 30 is the average, then there are enough people at 30 and below 30 that
it balances out all the people above 30.

I do NOT believe for a second that the job tables are meant to be used to
for college-level statistical analysis to then use to set the attributes of
NPC's accordingly. Most people doing an average job all their life remain
average with little or no attribute improvement. People doing dangerous
jobs such as soldiers engaged in fighting all the time will get better, but
even they will not all be rising to massive attribute totals. Town guards
who have been doing it for 20 years are not all even 40+ attribute totals.

This means that there are some people who have the potential to rise and
rise, and PC's are among them, while most people are not like that.

The evidence for this is in all of the characters in all of the published
materials. Most all NPC's in published TFT products are 30-35 points for
opponents, with the really tough ones going up to maybe 40 points or so,
and anything more than that is the cream of the crop, and almost never has
any attribute above about 18, and pretty much none of them have two
attributes over 16.

And this matches reality and most semi-realistic fiction in practice, too.
The best people often outclass most other people in their best areas, but
not in all areas, and those people are rare.
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