Generally I’m staying away from rule hack discussions, but some posts over at the RMForums and an email from another GM pushed me to write up a quick post on the subject of stat gains.
We are constantly tinkering with stats, stats as skills, and even debated the need or utility of Temporary and Potential stats. In the end I decided to keep Temp/Pot since it ties in with several spell mechanics in BASiL and “stat draining” effects. But I have been doing stat gain differently for quite a number of years. The stat gain roll chart is just another unneeded chart, and adds randomness into a rule that might not need one–you don’t randomly roll for skill rank development do you?
We use DP’s for stat gains. 1 DP + +1 to a Temp stat score, and like our skill rank cost progression it is +1 per point. So adding 1pt to strength is 1DP, but 2pts to Strength is 1+2, 3 pts is 1+2+3 etc. Certainly a player could opt to raise a stat quickly at the cost of most of their DP’s, but this method adds to the cost/benefit system we have built into our rules, and smooths out Stat gains over many, many levels.
That’s just our solution.