I was just thinking about something. Your best relevant attribute in a certain skill is what you get counted towards your score. Willpower is one of the BRAs for body skills. Now, suppose you have two people fighting. One has 3@10 strength and 1@1 willpower, the other has 1@1 strength and 3@10 willpower. All other scores being equal, these two would be a matched fight. I don't see how that's possible though. It would be like Superman fighting a very willful 2 year old girl. (I could easily believe that a 2 year old girl has 3@10 willpower.) Now you could argue that the guy with 1@1 willpower will lose his will to fight rather quickly, but the fact remains he only has to land one good punch and the fight is over. The one with 3@10 willpower will keep fighting forever, but he isn't strong enough to do much damage. Going by best relevant attributes, these two are equally matched, but I would give the fight to the guy with 3@10 strength in a heartbeat. Thoughts?
You're neglecting the averaged attributes. Strength figures into Martial Strike Value, and Willpower figures into Damage Value. These are not differences easily dismissed.
Let's flesh out the numbers. Let us say the combatants are evenly matched except for their BRAs. They're both average amateurs (1@5) in a fast, aggressive, weaponless style - say, Karate (-5 def SM, +10 off SM, balances to a +5 off SM for each combatant). Both have level seven Bod biases, and the world bias is equal to or above level seven. All attributes but Strength, Willpower, and Density are 1@5; Density is 1@3 for the first combatant (because of his immense Strength) and 1@1 for the second. That gives us equal Target Values (both 1@4) and equal Ranged Strike Values (1@5, not that it matters).
Fighter One has a Martial Strike Value of (40+15+15 / 3 = 30) 2@10, and a Damage Value of (15+15+13+11 / 4 = 13.5) 1@4.
Fighter Two has a Martial Strike Value of (15+15+11 / 3 = 13.67) 1@4, and a Damage Value of (15+15+11+40 / 4 = 20.25) 1@10.
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Now, the success numbers:
F1: Skill plus bias plus BRA plus MSV plus style bonus (15+14+40+30+10 = 109) minus TV minus opponent's style bonus (-14-5 = -19) gives us 90% attack success. Style multiplier (2) times skill level (1) times MSV level (2) gives us RF 4, that is, four attacks per minute. His strikes are base annoying, +DC for the style, +DC for 2@ MSV for Dangerous.
F2: Skill plus bias plus BRA plus MSV plus style bonus (15+14+40+14+10 = 93) minus TV minus opponent's style bonus (-14-5 = -19) gives us 74% attack success. Style multiplier (2) times skill level (1) times MSV level (1) gives us RF 2, that is, two attacks per minute. Her strikes are base annoying, +DC for the style for Damaging.
In fifty minutes, we can expect Fighter One to hit 180 times for a total of 900 intensities of damage, missing 20 times and botching never. That's an average of 5.00 intensities per hit or 4.50 per attack -- 18.0 intensities a minute.
In those same fifty minutes, Fighter Two will probably hit 72 times for 171 intensities of damage, missing 24 times, and botching twice (losing an additional attack each time). That's an average of 2.38 intensities per hit or 1.71 per attack -- 3.43 intensities a minute.
Of course, the fight won't last fifty minutes. On average, Fighter Two will be down and dying by second ninety, by which time Fighter One will have take five intensities of damage, leaving him with nine left at the end of the combat.
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Now, grant that these fighters have modern immunization, boosting their Resistance scores to 1@8, and F1's DV stays the same while F2's rockets to 2@1, halving her damage from every hit and dropping fractions. My money's still on Fighter One, but it's a much, much closer match.
Also remember that 3@10 Willpower isn't just a willful 2-year-old. She's probably 1@10, maybe 2@3 if we're generous. 3@10 willpower is nigh-godlike. Ambassador Sarek, who has spent nearly 300 years learning to control and focus his immense will, is possibly 3@1, 3@3, from how I've heard it told. While Superman likely IS a 3@10 Strength (he literally moves mountains), a 3@10 Willpower is more like... hmm... I would say Buddha - that is, the original Siddhartha Gautama in his transcendent state - might approach a 3@10 Willpower because he has truly gone beyond mortal limitations. 3@10 are supposed to be the people that enduring legends are built around - they're once-in-a-thousand-years people.
Osevens, if you think that, you've obviously never tried to take anything away from a 2 year old girl. It was just for the example.
3@10 is not the once in a thousand year people. It is the people who cannot actually exist in this world, because they cannot achieve 3@ attributes by any means possible in this universe. Superman is an excellent example of a 3@ strength, and so is Thor, but they share in common that they are not native to our universe (Superman is native to a fictional superhero universe similar to ours, and comes from another planet; Thor is native to the supernatural realm).
Similarly, examples of those with 3@ will powers would have to be those who were not native to our universe. 2@10 is that almost never encountered individual who most people never meet; I would say that Sarek of Vulcan is probably such a one, unless we allow that he used training methods for his will power that would not be available in our world and time. I am disinclined to allow that he might have done so, in part because I do not see the Star Trek universe as the sort of place in which a verser could pass the level 3 barrier in attributes merely by training with available equipment and techniques. (I might give that to Dune, for someone training with the Bene Gesserit pain box, but it would be a very long and arduous training process with a strong chance that the trainee would be driven mad on a botch.)
Scott hit exactly the points I was going to make, so I must again thank him for saving me all that time.
--M. J. Young
I just had a thought - rereading the archives of the Behind the Screens and seeing Skill LEarning explained - regarding BRA.
Why, when learning from an instructor, do you get half of his BRA added to your check, instead of half of his SAL? After all, wouldn't someone who was in the upper 1s on all of his Bod RA's still be teaching you based on his 2@ Bod skill?
I don't get it.
O.K., part of that is because it was assumed that most probably if you were learning from an instructor you were already getting 1) his SAL as an example, since in order to instruct he must know the skill and will probably show you how to do it--and if he doesn't show you based on his ability, then you shouldn't get that--and 2) his teaching skill ability level bonus if he has the ability to teach.
The desire was to identify a bonus you could receive from someone who did not actually demonstrate the skill (and thus you did not have the example SAL) and who was not actually a skilled teacher or trainer (and thus you did not get the teaching/training SAL bonus). The logical choice was the BRA, that underlying score that supports everything in the given bias area.
There were two other possibilities. We could have gone with the Psi BRA, that whatever skill was the basis for most of the communicative/teaching skills would be the basis for unskilled instruction. However, this we felt would give people with better communication skills the better chance at instructing, and that is not necessarily the case particularly in the bod bias area and often in the tech bias area, where more basic abilities in the bias area are more important than communication skills. Also, communication skills are already the foundation for abilities in teaching/training, so this would give those skills double impact. The other option would have been to use the instructor's bias level, that someone who had understanding of much higher bias levels would be better at instructing on lower ones. There were two obvious problems with this. One is that someone who understands time travel is not necessarily a better instructor in connection with steam power than someone for whom that is their top tech skill. The other is that the bod bias area would be somewhat crippled, since very few people have bod bias levels over 7@.
Thus the BRA became something of the default choice for this.
Help?
--M. J. Young
The logical choice was the BRA, that underlying score that supports everything in the given bias area.
Yeah, a BRA does support everything, doesn't it? (Couldn't resist)
John, I knew somebody had to go there sooner or later. I would've done it myself but I couldn't figure out how to do it cleverly. Well done, sir. Well done.