I really, really don’t understand this particular mechanic. Sure, a mildly subtle action might make an already subtle person only marginally more subtle, but isn’t that why leveling a quality requires more change points each time? I’ve advocated for a subtle revolution at least a score of times, but somehow continuing to stress the importance of subtlety doesn’t mean anything. And the same goes for continuing to evade my aunt, too. I get capping nearly all quirk-increasing actions at 10, to establish quirks higher than 10 as special accomplishments, but the caps at 4 or 6 for certain actions are just nonsensical.
It’s even worse with non-quirk qualities, as I learned recently to much chagrin. I had one point of Connected: Masters, earned from providing for Mr Wines’s revels. I was exiled to Venderbight, and cashed in that point to chop my scandal down a bit, with the intention of earning it back with another revel. Before I did so, however, I went to Polythreme to pursue the Jack case. I picked the fate-locked option to solve both sides of the matter, and was warped back to London. One meeting with Mr Spices later, I had gained a point of Connected: Masters… which means that I wouldn’t be able to earn more by providing for another revel. So I did a favor for Mr Wines, asked for a favor in return, did a favor for Mr Spices, and am somehow unable to subsequently earn Mr Wines’s good graces?
Picture it like this: certain opportunity cards require specific stats, yea? For example, you can go to a Coffee Café when your persuasion is between 89 and 119.
Completing actions within that card will raise your persuasion. When your persuasion is 120, you cannot access that card anymore.
Since you can’t access it anymore, you have to find a different way to increase your stat.
Usually, opportunities will open up to you ONLY after you are locked out of the previous one.
It’s completely understandable to me how minor quirkish actions no longer increase a quirk beyond a higher level. But it’s sad how minor counter-quirkish actions still lower a high quirk, as high quirks then mainly become limitations rather than opportunities to deviate further. To retain high quirks of any sort one basically has to be quite Austere in one’s choices to activities. No Hedonistic flinging oneself into any type of activity, because then high quirks get lowered little by little, as they gain nothing from small actions, but still lose from other small actions.
[quote=Tystefy]To be fair, Connected: The Masters is really, really hard to raise above 2.
After it becomes 3, you can raise It up to 6 via the carnival in a 10% roll, with a 50% of decreasing C:TM by 1 cp. You can do this up to 6.
After 6… good luck, boi.[/quote]
It’s not quite that hard. It can be costly if you do it through Mr Pages, or take a long time if you do it through Dr Schlomo. But it’s not like you have to beat those incredibly bad carnival odds you described just to get above 3. And every Christmas there’s plenty of Connected: The Masters of the Bazaar to be had during the 12 days of Mr Sacks.
It boils down to this: getting a Quirk to 5 is an easy, grindable thing. Getting it to 10 is a harder, but possible thing. Getting it to 15 is a very difficult thing that you’ll have to focus on during one-time storylets.
Drinking a whole bottle of wine makes you a Hedonist. A person who drinks a bottle of wine in a sitting becomes a little more Hedonistic every time and it’s harder to become more so the more you do it, hence the cp change. But at a certain point, it tops off at 5, on a scale of 0 to 15. Even if you’re drinking every night, it doesn’t make you any more of Hedonist than a 5. After a while, such behaviour isn’t Hedonistic. It used to be considered Hedonistic back when you were just a boring, teetotalling Victorian. But you’re a different person now. To a Level 5 Hedonist, it’s just commonplace, everyday behaviour. You’re going to need to kick it up a notch if you want to be considered even more of a Hedonist.
A person who drinks a barrel of wine dressed in nothing but a bedsheet makes you a bit more of a Hedonist, but not more than a 10. Even if you do that several times a day, every day, you’re still going to reach a plateau of how much of a Hedonist such an activity makes you.
Even then, the nightly drunken orgies will only get you to 15. After that, you’re pretty much as Hedonistic as you can be.
It didn’t used to be so. You used to be able to grind your Quirks up indefinitely. But having characters do noting but grind Quirks into the 100’s made for a pretty boring experience and not one FBG wanted to have in their game.
If you really want to get your Quirks up to 10, there are lots of guides for how to do that. If you just want it to be easy to grind your Quirks to 10, then I think that argument is going to, reasonably, fall on deaf ears.
I just wish it was a little harder to accidentally reduce quirks. If quirk changes can have ceilings, why not give them floors too? If I’m an incredibly hedonistic character, surely I’m far beyond the point where doing one very slightly austere thing would make me drop a level. At that point becoming less hedonistic should take effort.
Color me still peeved that the latest exceptional story forced me to lose either one quirk or another, so no matter what I’d gain no quirk and lose part of one. I had 15 in both.
On one hand I like the idea of knowing whether a choice is going to affect one of my rapidly shrinking Quirks. On the other, I don’t like the idea of players needing to know the outcome of every choice before they make it. I’m sure there’s a happy medium. I just don’t know what it is.
Huh. After reading some of those linked threads, I checked my quirks, and apparently both Daring and Subtle for me are at the cap of 15. Funny that, I’d never really paid attention to quirks, so I didn’t expect any of them to be in the impressive range. I bet one of the recent Renown grinds increased those?
I have to agree with Gillsing, especially when it comes to the Autere/Hedonist quirks.
No matter how bohemian the life i live, the fact that I go to the church wine tastings keeps reducing hedonist. And the Polite Invitation also does that, when I pick between the octagenarian and the delightful young thing. It makes no narrative sense, and it is mechanically annoying. Given that both quirks are useful (in a way other quirks are not) makes it doubly frustrating.
I also agree that if there is a ceiling, there should be a floor. If more wine does not make me more hedonistic, why does a stroll with the clergy makes me less so? It forces you to eschew role-playing just to maintain your quirks. I get capping at 15, sure, but I do not get losing them indefinitely for no other reason that being sociable.
[quote=Nigel Overstreet]Repeating them does not improve their advocacy.[/quote]I nonetheless feel entirely justified in making this thread. After some thought, though, I do see the logic in your explanation. If you’re used to staying in bed all day and start swinging from chandeliers, you’ll become more daring. If you’re used to swinging from chandeliers and continue doing so, you’ll become slightly more daring. If you’re used to swinging from chandeliers and you rescue a princess, you’ll become much more daring. But if you’re used to rescuing princesses, swinging on chandeliers doesn’t mean much.
My concern is that this system strongly encourages thorough metagaming, in that a player who maxes out on low-cap actions can subsequently benefit from a high-cap action, while a player who ends up taking a high-cap action early on will be unable to benefit from the low-cap actions which they would have benefited from only moments prior. That becomes an issue when high-cap actions are non-repeatable, such as with my Connected: Masters snafu. If I’d taken care of a revels and immediately gone to meet with Mr Spices, I’d have gotten 2 points of C:M. However, meeting with Mr Spices prevented me from increasing C:M via revels even if I’d already finished providing for the revels and simply not collected my reward yet. I wouldn’t exactly call the Jack case "repeatable", because playing it again with the same choices would cost 30 Fate and hundreds of actions.
I’ll elaborate by drawing a comparison to Renown. A player can meet with Urchins 5 times and then spend 15 favors through a Rookery Password for a total 30 cp of Renown, but using the Rookery Password first would lock the player out of the Carnival option. That may make sense in the game world, but it encourages metagaming in that players are rewarded for knowing the correct order in which to take certain actions. The Carnival options have notes on them which give appropriate forewarning, but that’s not the case for many other mechanically comparable situations.
So I suppose it’s not so much the staggered caps as it is the inability to repeat actions which change uncommon staggered-cap actions, like Connected: Masters or quirks. Perhaps there could be something linked to Time the Healer; if encouraging subtle revolution provides +1 cp above 5 and up to 10 but only does so once per week, it’s not exactly possible to grind the quality.
edit: as for Quirk floors, I’m not sure how I feel. Lionel Anchovies just got Steadfast 11, and if I want to keep it there then I need to avoid doing non-steadfast things; I am encouraged for having my steadfast character make steadfast decisions, which I think is pretty cool. The game is rather inconsistent and unclear in when and how quirks are affected, though, so it could be nice to have more instances of forewarning. edited by Anchovies on 7/3/2017
The limited amount of pushing quirks up, but unlimited exposure to (sometimes essentially unavoidable - hello, exceptional stories!) quirk drains.
The “doing the same mix of actions in different order” thing.
The metagaming of having an easy way to grind one quirk without losing another, so I have to avoid options that raise that quirk elsewhere, or risk losing other quirks (i.e. if I can get magnanimous to 15 easily, I will actually be behaving like a heartless and ruthless **s*ard all the time).
The unclearness of whether quirks are supposed to be measuring our characters’ inner workings, or their reputations.
The mostly uselessness.
The surprise when actions change different quirks than would seem indicated by their description (both the branch text before choosing and the result text).
Except you are not encouraged to make steadfast decisions. Steadfast decisions will not do anything more for you.
You are encouraged to avoid decisions that somebody marked "anti-steadfast". Which, for this particular quirk, often makes sense …
… but how about forceful and subtle? I can be both. I can easily perform more of both than necessary for maxing either on its own … and end up zero in both, as if I did neither. That doesn’t make sense. Being able to behave in two different ways doesn’t make me unable to behave in either of the two. Being known for doing two different things doesn’t make people forget both.
Whilst I fully appreciate and agree with the reasons for wanting floors, I don’t think they make much sense from a fluff perspective for two reasons; partly for the same reason ceilings make sense, its something to sequester yourself from comforts if you’re a occasional tippler, but it becomes more significant if your drinking has affected the availability of absinth, not less. The other reason is redemption, if I want my heartless character to abandon their wayward ways and join the church they should be able to through good deeds and the avoidance of temptation.
In short, it seems logical to me that it is easier to lose than gain a lot of quirks, but still quite frustrating.
I’ll confess though, I was shocked that I lost hedonist for attending the natural habitat of cakes, scones with clotted cream, homebrew cider and social acceptable gambling. (at a bloody vineyard at that!)
Exactly. The dichotomy does not always make sense. Plus, it is annoying that many quirks are simply associated with factions no matter if the action itself is irrelevant - see the aformentiond faction cards.
I assume that a quirk floor wouldn’t be ‘solid’. It would just mean that a high quirk (say, 12+) wouldn’t be lowered by an action that can only increase an opposing quirk to 5. If you want to lower a high quirk you could just do something which affects high quirks until the quirk is low enough that it’s affected by those minor actions.