Carefully and Patiently

[Kublai]

Ok, after years of playing, this question has finally wormed its way out of my head.

Why can I reduce the Casting Obstacle infinitely by using the Carefully method, but I can't do the same with the Patiently method? Why is there a cap on the latter but not the former?

[luke]

Ok, after years of playing, this question has finally wormed its way out of my head.

Why can I reduce the Casting Obstacle infinitely by using the Carefully method, but I can't do the same with the Patiently method? Why is there a cap on the latter but not the former?

There are two answers to this, both philosophical:

First, because there always must be a price to pay. In this case, that price can only be discounted so much.

The second answer is: Game Balance.

-L

[Kublai]

I see your point, of course, but I believe it would make more sense to cap the limit on how much you could reduce the Casting Obstacle and not the Tax Obstacle. You have so much more dice when Casting, is it really necessary to allow you to reduce it do Obstacle 1? Meanwhile, your Forte creates a much smaller dice pool, so that's where the real discount is needed.

Using the BW sorcery mechanic in your world, why would Sorcerer's develop methods for reducing the difficulty of the casting and not the resisting? Casting is easy, resisting is not!

Finally, with the advent of the facets, the majority of combinations are completely unusable since they would be impossible to resist. What's the point of having mechanics that are nigh-useless in gameplay?