In that I now have been playing with GURPS

[xiphias]

I've started writing up a spreadsheet to do calculations for me.

I honestly think this used to be easier. As I'm sure you all know, writing up spreadsheets is a lot easier than programming, but it uses the same sorts of thought processes. And I'm sitting here working out mathematical formulas to calulate things instead of looking them up off of tables (because it's more fun), and I really think I used to be better at this.

Like, okay, ST is mostly easier to calculate these days. It's a flat 10 points per level. With a value of 10 being the average, the one that doesn't cost any points to get, and 10 points to get a +1, and -10 points to get a -1. So a ST of 8 gets you back 20 points, and a ST of 14 costs 40 points. Pretty simple, right? But they've now given a discount, up to 80%, for larger creatures.

You get a 10% discount on your strength cost for every size modifier you are over human normal. Up to an 80% discount. If you've got a +9 or higher SM, you still only get the 80%. You don't have to pay extra for being extra-strong if you're smaller than human normal -- it's NOT extra points to be a super-strong dwarf or pixie or something.

So, in Excel spreadsheet language, the point cost would be something like
=(((ST-10)*10))*(MAX( (MIN((1-(Size_Modifier/10)), 1)), 0.2) )
right?

It took me like half an hour to figure that out. And I think that sort of thing would USED to have been almost instinctive.

This is actually a lot of fun -- I feel like I'm knocking the rust off of my brain and getting it working again. Things are getting easier as I work with them.

Comments

[hangedwoman.livejournal.com]

I miss being able to do even remotely complicated things with Excel. There's a payroll person here who's leaving in a couple of weeks to ride a bicycle around Europe for 8 months (bitch), and I'm taking over one of her client reports. We hadn't worked together much before, and she was showing me some things in Excel, and I sped right past her and did it in a much simpler way. I started to say, "Yeah, Excel's my bitch", but thought better of it and instead said, "Yeah, Excel is ... something I'm pretty comfortable working with."