This is offensive. I'm not sure why my comment brought out the attitude.
I'll apologize for the wording then.
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It turns out that balancing multiple different forms of attack vs multiple different forms of defense is actaully a pretty hard problem.
Where everyone attacks with A, and everyone defends with B, any imbalances are obvious. And barring that, it gets down to either randomness or whatever interesting tactical maneuvers our system allows us.
But when you have different forms (or contexts) of attack and defense, and semblance of balance can quickly go out the window. It's still possible to keep things under control with careful system design, but allowing attacks to change context 'for free' (like letting evocation attack different skills) throws balance right out the window.
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1 argument against:
All Creatures are Equal before God costs around -3 refresh by itself, and gets you the ability to ignore the toughness powers the other guys has.
Letting evocation attack other skills lets you ignore defensive powers (for example, you can ignore any amount of bonus defense granted by speed powers), but you don't pay anything extra for it.
Next, as the characters become more powerful, this ability becomes more powerful as well. When the average (physical) defense is +2, and the average out of context defense is +0, making an out of context attack is around the same as +2 to attack. But when the average defense is +8 and the average out of context defense is +4, then your ability to change contexts is worth +4. And if you can pick and choose your context, then you can probably find an even better option, since the skill pyramid explicitly prevents you from being good at everything.
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Now, why am I jumping up and down about this sort of thing when it comes to attacks, but am nearly silent about it on the subject of maneuvers?
Because you can (in theory) defend against any maneuver already with the skill of the defenders choice.
Example:
Some guy is using investigation to try to
have intimate knowledge of your day to day routine or something like that.
All of these defenses might be possible:
(Investigation) I already know all the tricks people watching me might be using. It's going to be much harder to find stuff about me.
(Resources) My wall of money makes it very hard for you. Just about anywhere I go, the security guards take their jobs seriously, all the locks are up to date, and so on. Heck, the people who pick up my garbage are probably paid more that you are, so bribing them to look through my garbage is just not going to work.
(Discipline) When the war started, the White Council sent out this 'how to avoid being ganked' pamphlet. Sure doing all that stupid stuff is hard, but as a wizard who does powerful magic all the time, doing stupid little stuff to not die horribly is already something I'm do every day. These security measures are just another little ritual to add to my already ritual laden day. And I'm not going to screw them up anymore than I'd break a ritual circle by accident.
(Deceit) I lie so well that presenting untruths is second nature. You think you are going to find out anything true about me by going trough my garbage?
(Or any other justification you want to come up with)
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But wait, you say, that means that players will generally be defending against maneuvers with their best skills! Of course! they make offensive maneuvers with their best skills too. So the context of the maneuver is generally going to be negotiable, and probably not that unfair.