On ‎17‎/‎10‎/‎2017 at 7:54 PM, Teveshszat said:

Yeah but that not what happens in the game. What happens is that even people who want well rounded character buy the high impact skills first becasue they do something in the game in contrast to most auxillery skills like games.
Than they will find themself with nearly no xp because of the escalating cost and therefore probably will not buy as many of the lower impact skills as they would if you had non escalating xp.
People go for what will make their character stronger and more powerful in story they want to tell and thats no low impact skills.
And that has nothing to do with min maxing but rather with how rpgs and all the aspects players could want fromit work.
In the end escalating xp will not help any player it in the best case just leads to gm giving out more xp and making it obsolete so why not just
not just remove when you have the chance.

But from this perspective, you still never buy a 'low impact skill'.

If I'm expecting a campaign to involve a certain amount of shivving people, then Martial Arts (Melee) 1 is pretty much the first port of call for the first 2XP if I didn't get it at character creation.

If Martial Arts (Melee) 2-5 all cost the same, then everyone will buy Martial Arts (Melee) 5, and therefore no-one would even consider a different skill with any of their first 10XP.

As it is, buying Martial Arts (Melee) 5 with no free ranks costs 30XP - meaning you've really got to want it, because you could essentially have rank 1 in every single skill in the game (when you throw in the ones you started with) instead.

Escalating XP is not an equivalent to just increasing price; rather it actively encourages people to pick skills they might only use once or twice in a session, regardless of the rate XP comes in at; because a rank in four or five different skills that each get used once in a session is frankly just as good as a skill you use a lot like Fitness, and it actively avoids creating the one-trick-ponies @Yandia was referring to who can "I hit it with my axe" or else stand there complaining their character has nothing to do.

TL:DR

The extent to which buying a skill makes you more powerful is the number of times you get to roll that extra dice.

Buying rank 5 of a skill you use a lot should be equivalent to buying rank 1 of a slack handful of 'rarely comes up' skills. Which means exponential growth of cost with skill ranks.

5 minutes ago, Magnus Grendel said:

But from this perspective, you still never buy a 'low impact skill'.

If I'm expecting a campaign to involve a certain amount of shivving people, then Martial Arts (Melee) 1 is pretty much the first port of call for the first 2XP if I didn't get it at character creation.

If Martial Arts (Melee) 2-5 all cost the same, then everyone will buy Martial Arts (Melee) 5, and therefore no-one would even consider a different skill with any of their first 10XP.

As it is, buying Martial Arts (Melee) 5 with no free ranks costs 30XP - meaning you've really got to want it, because you could essentially have rank 1 in every single skill in the game.

I did not say that people will not buy the high impact skills first. What I say is that when they have them there is stil xp left over to buy the rest.
See the question is not if I can buy all level 1 skills for the martial arts 5. It is what has more merit to my character in a mechanical sense you alo could say what has more impact.
The asnwer to that for a bushi is allways the martial arts 5 as skill ranks give less strife and more opportunites which he can use to fuel his various techiniques in combat.
So he still will go and buy martial arts and not ikebana 1 instead.
The only thing the high xp cost achieves is that he waits a bit longer until he gets the skill.

9 minutes ago, Magnus Grendel said:

Escalating XP is not an equivalent to just increasing price; rather it actively encourages people to pick skills they might only use once or twice in a session, regardless of the rate XP comes in at; because a rank in four or five different skills that each get used once in a session is frankly just as good as a skill you use a lot like Fitness, and it actively avoids creating the one-trick-ponies @Yandia was referring to who can "I hit it with my axe" or else stand there complaining their character has nothing to do.

Thing is that this encouragement is not seen as such and is not leaing to the desired effect. It just makes people wait longer until the get the skills they want.
Also one trick ponies have nothing to do with it.

See when I build a ninja I want high fitness, high martial arts (ranged and melee), high courtesy. I also probably want a moderate design and smithing skill and ofcoruse performance.
the priority for buying skills is fitntess over martial arts over performance over courtesy over smithing over design
The outcome is a character that can hold his own in court and also can do the ninja job. He even can do a bit of smithing and maintainging
armor and weapons. So in no way a one trick pony.
Still I want to look that I get all these skills on a high level very fast.
With excalating costs I have to allocate more xp towards this as they skills get more expensive very fast.

Buying other skills is not only not hepling the game plan and the focus of the character it is also actively hindering it as each xp I spend on other skills
is not allocated to the skills I need and has a high impact on the delay of the skill raising to higher level.
Now with a flat xp curve I reach the point where I have all the skills I need at the desired level far faster and now can go and buy skills like games or ikebana with it,
to flash out my characters hobbies and free time activities.

In the end when deciding if you buy a skill or not for the given xp players will look how impactful and important it is for the characters impact on the given play.
A skills impact is higher if it is more often used and has more mechanical effects to enable useage of it.
Escalting costs just slows the acquirement down and leads to "ok I just have to wait a bit longer before I spend xp" but does not change it to" ok I buy a low impact skill instead".
It does not prevent what you want it to and instead makes the character progression artefically longer.

7 minutes ago, Teveshszat said:

the priority for buying skills is fitntess over martial arts over performance over courtesy over smithing over design

Okay....but taking that example of a relatively small swathe of the skill set - yes, you have a priority for buying skills. But what escalating costs drives is the fact that whilst it's lower priority, I would have thought you're still going to seriously consider buying courtesy 1 over fitness 5.

8 minutes ago, Magnus Grendel said:

Okay....but taking that example of a relatively small swathe of the skill set - yes, you have a priority for buying skills. But what escalating costs drives is the fact that whilst it's lower priority, I would have thought you're still going to seriously consider buying courtesy 1 over fitness 5.

Why should I do that I buy all skillsI need at the start of the game at at least rank 1 and than go and enhance them with the xp I get later. So when it comes to what skil buy at rank 4 I allready have all relevant skill at atleast rank 1.

Then read 'buy rank 1' as 'buy rank 2'.

Ok lets deversify it further.

We have the prioirty list
fitntess over martial arts over performance over courtesy over smithing over design

I now have spent some xp allready and have fitness 4, marital arts (melee) 3, martial arts (ranged) 3, performance 2, courtesy 2, smithing 2, design 1
Now I get my next xp say we get 15 xp now I look what I can buy and go through the priority list
First question is what combination I can buy?
I could go for the fitness 5 + design 2 leaving 1 xp that I bank because I still have skills that are not at 5 in my priority list
I could also go for rank 4 +rank 3 leaving 1 xp that I bank because I still have skills that are not at 5 in my priority list
I also could go with a rank 2+rank 3 leaving 5xp unspent that I can bunk for the next increase of skills or for a ring increase I want.

The problem here is that you allways have xp left that you need to bunk because the next level of the skills that have the effects of high value for your character costs
much more on the next level.
If for example you would have a skill costs just 4 xp per level I could
Go for rank 3 rank increases not only 2 with the given xp. That means I need less xp to max out the skills I need for sound mechancial interaction
and can spend the xp I have left in the end on the fluff skills:
What is not happening is that player take spare xp and put them into fluff skills before they maxed out their mechanical useful skills.
The reason for that is that players want to do things iun the game and you can do this better with a better roll.
if you have game[shogi] is completly unimportant in that situation where you go and max the impact your char
has.
So no escalating xp does still not what you want and the only thing it really does is stall the character progression in game.
It also still makes extreme stats superior to any other combinationt that does not try to stack some stats/skill to the highest
possible at the start.

I just had an idea on how to fix the charcatre creation stat issue versus the the escalating costs in game. I think the escalating costs in themselves are not the issue, since plenty of games use them. But the problem is only because the allocation of the given stats at the start do not take the later costs into consideration. So, why not fix that?

How? Well, give the players a certain amount of free XP to start with too, but let them lose 3 points for each ring they start at 3, and 2 per skill they start with at two (and either losing 4 points for a skill at 3 or cap the starting skills at 2). That should solve the problem. Since the min-maxing to get an XP advantage would be gone, and people who want their escalating costs for later character development could have that too. It just adds a little more maths to the character creation, but the free XP could be used to customised the character a little more. And of course there could be also a restriction that says those free start XP cannot count towards the advancement charts (to avoid that the issue just gets relocated).