Attribute points at creation...

Okay, so...new to the whole Feng Shui deal, just recently got and read through the core rules...and encountering a little confusion when I try to make a character.

Say I'm trying to make an Abomination...I know that boosting its Ref would improve its Guns and Martial Arts action value, but those both have an imposed max of 13. My choices are to add 5 to one Attribute, and 1 to another. What happens there if I chose to addthe 5 to Ref, which would otherwise bring them up to 15?

Many apologies if this was something obvious that I somehow missed, or if this has already been answered elsewhere in these forums, but this is a point of confusion I really need cleared up both for myself and for friends I wanna try the game with.

They stay at 13 as that is the max they can have. See pg. 16 of the Atlas FS rule book.
The skill bonuses that would have made them 15 are lost. See the FAQ at the link bellow.

blewer-d.tripod.com/fsfaq.htm

After character generation the starting max limints aren't an issue and you can increase them with experience points.

Hello and welcome to Feng Shui! I'm personally not crazy about the way the attributes and such are done but Jay is definitely in the know there and that link and ones like it answer a lot of similar "in between the cracks" questions like that one. Luckily, as he says, once you've played a session, all that limitation disappears but starting out, it's kind of a pain.

Do you have a group you're playing with or are you working on getting a group together, or your group interested in FS?

Hey! Thanks for the prompt and helpful replies! I was a little confused on that regard, but knowing that helps; so it wouldn't be a WASTE if I dumped the 5 into Ref, for instance, it just wouldn't benefit fully in the first session? If I understand correctly? Good to know.

I don't exactly have a group yet, just sort of trying to introduce some friends (most of whom are, like me, somewhat fresh to the tabletop gaming idea) to the game and build interest in it. Unfortunately, most of them are online, so it'd probably end up resulting in a chat-conference or forum type scenario. None of us has ever really tried tabletop-RPGing in the past, so it's somewhat of a new experience, but FS seems rules-light enough to be really fun even for beginners. That and, well, I'm hooked just from reading the core rulebook.

You bring up an interesting issue, if the limitation disappears after the first session and your max AV raises. I'm pretty sure it doesn't, so it IS lost if you allocate more points that you can have, starting out, but I don't have the experience in the game that Jay or some of the other people here do, on these kinds of fiddly rules so hopefully someone else will be along to answer this - good question!

That's awesome, jet, about playing, even if it is online. If you're interested, I set up a full online structure for online forum play-by-post but MINE fell apart, but you might be able to benefit from it. I changed a few things, for my own use, to streamline it so it's not 100% faithful to the FS system so I'm not sure if that would throw things too out of kilter for you or not. Everyone else, please be kind if you offer criticism - this was my own personal interpretation for my purposes: zanysite.com/wikki/pmwiki.ph ... i.FengShui If you want to use the Primary and Secondary Attributes, it would take you just a little rewrite to reassemble and reincorporate that back if you so desired.

Hmm...limitations like that, especially on the Abomination, certainly seem to kinda put a damper on the fun of saying "allocate 5 points to ANY attribute" if there's that much restriction on how much benefit you can get out of it...ah well, maybe I'll just stick the points in Bod and make him a big nasty cyber-demonic tank. ...with a big juicy Helix Ripper.

I took a peek at that wiki deal of yours. It seems like an interesting idea, but may be tweaking things a bit too far for ME to use, given that I'm still new and trying to learn the basic rule system...it'd probably be a good idea for me to stick as close to the basic rules as I can until I get used to them, especially since I may well end up having to be the one that GMs sometimes (gulp!). I love the amount of online, user-created content for this game though. Between that and the supplements I still haven't gotten my hands on yet, seems like there'll be no shortage of material to tweak and toy with as I get more into the swing.

Most of the rules on that Wiki are usable for the core system at the very least as reference, but yeah, some may require a bit too much ciphering for to be useful for new players, sorry about that. I was running a Survivor style game with everyone on an island and a Christopher Walken type celebrity as the host, and it had just gotten to a combat portion, and the last of my six starting players abandoned the game, spontaneously, about the third week in, in the play by post - I was even doing a twice a week update. I'd run it twice before but it was on personal forums of people I knew online but that weren't specifically for RPGs (Obiwan's UFO Free Paranormal page in fact) and I had a dozen players and they ALL played through the game all the way to the end... so you can just never tell.

I'm hoping that fairly soon, myself and another member will be able to release a very nice and helpful special free supplement for GMs and Players, that will provide some useful "corralling" of information into one place, but I really would rather not say any more about it currently, but I'm very proud to be able to work on it.

Regarding things like the Abomination and the skill max, keep in mind that while this or that particular skill is limited as noted, the attribute itself, and all its sub-attributes ARE still raised, when you raise them at character creation, for later use, once that max limit has disappeared, so while, yeah, it's a pain to put up with to start, it doesn't totally negate the raises later.

And of course, this goes without saying, but it IS your game, you're more than welcome to simply ignore the maxes if you so desire and make whatever ruling you want. It's what I did when I first started running the game, to help the players get interested and not roll their eyes at the fiddly bits, so you might consider that, and later on you can decide if you need to enforce the max AV rule later, if you don't use it initially. I also occasionally went the hybrid path, where I allowed players to exceed it but limited some other feature or skill or even attribute for the first session, or even removed a skill entirely. There are a lot of options and there's no real right or wrong answer, and although it can be confusing, in a way, I think I kinda benefitted from just jumping in, seat-of-the-pants style and saying "Hell yah sure, take that 18 Guns skill with your Ninja!" and later on when he was mowing down people, I thought, "Hmmm... mistake noted, will not be repeated."

Glad to have helped.

Yep, the exra points that would have went into raising it are permanetly lost. So it is a little waste. Also, look at how much it would cost to raise the attribute or skill with experience points latter on when you make your character. It might be you decide better to just accept the loss in AV, as improving Ref with experience points might take a good bit of time and will prevent you from spending the experience on other things.

So if you put the 5 in Ref your Ref is 10 and your Guns is at 13 your AV bonus is only +3.
After your first adventure as was mentioned the max limits dissapear. You don't get the lost AV bonuses back. You can use experience to raise as high as you like after your first game, provided you can pay for it.
So if after a game you use experience points to raise Ref from 10 to 11 your Guns would be 14. You could also just raise you AV in the skill with experience, so increasing it by one would make it 14. Just have to pay for it. So if after a game you use experience points to raise Ref from 10 to 11 your Guns would be 14.
You could also just raise you AV in the skill with experience, so increasing it by one would make it 14.

To look at what the experince costs are to get your Guns and Martial Arts to 15 depending on the route you chose I did some number crunching. See Chapter 12 of the Atlas rules if you want to look at experience costs.

If the 5 points are put into Ref during character chreation to get a Ref of 10. Raising only skills to get Guns and Martial Arts to 15.
Doesn't require atunment to a Feng Shui site.
14 + 15 = 29
14 + 15 = 29
29 + 29 = 58
Total XP spent = 58

If Ref was keep at 5 and improvement was done by increasing it to 10, so Guns and Martial Art become 15.
Requires attunement to a Feng Shui site.
24 + 28 + 32 + 36 + 40 = 160
Total XP spent = 160

If Ref was keep at 5 and you just raised Guns and Martial Arts to 15.
Doesn't require attunment to a Feng Shui site.
11 + 12 + 13 + 14 + 15 = 65
11 + 12 + 13 + 14 + 15 = 65
Total XP spent = 130

If Ref was made to 10 during character creation and Ref is increased by 2 (Ref of 12) to get Guns and Martial Arts to a 15 with experience.
Requires artunement to a Feng Shui site.
44 + 48 = 92
Total XP spent = 92