Exalted is full of math at least as complex as that, so you're playing the wrong game if this is true.
I am aware. However, the fact the game has a consistent problem with this is not an excuse to say that this is fine.
...how does this matter? Nothing in the background limits you to weapons. It specifically says it includes equipment and can represent stuff like income from a trading company and other effects. Saying that people don't want to step on each others toes by purchasing Arsenal is like saying they don't want to step on each other's toes by purchasing Artifact.
Shockingly, when all the fluff text of the Background, including the name and sidebar, bring to mind military resources, that's how people treat it. Also, there are many, many less combat related artifacts, and most of those that do exist are frankly thing you'd want to purchase with Artifact because their a general capability boost that you use fairly consistently. Its disproportionally useful for military/leader types, who can use it to pull out things like implosion bows or vehicles when they need them, and much less so for everyone else who is more personal scale focused.
I haven't looked at the background in almost three years, maybe even four. It took me literally seconds to figure out how it worked.
Good for you. Wait, I think you said something about this...
The plural of anecdote is not data.
Your experiences are not the only ones that matter here. I mentioned those threads to show that my experiences where not unique.
Again, I have to conclude you did not actually read the background since you seem to be constant asserting something that is simply not supported by a reading of the text.
Oh for fucks sake.
I literally posted the damn text of the background a page or so back. What I am asserting is that the background is a pain in the ass, no matter how useful it is, which tends to scare people off using it. Further, your reading of it is not one that I've commonly see storyteller's, much less players, use. You on, the other hand, are cherry picking to to try and prove its utility. Alright! I concede, it's useful. Its also such a pain that your better off using a rewrite.
This is because Command comes with preequipped troops (you use the elite soldier template). Yes, Arsenal alone isn't going to give you an entire legions worth of Perfect Equipment. That is not exactly a weakness... considering I could use Arsenal to hire 100 mercenary armies, this strikes me as not a problem.
Nice goalpost shifting. Also not my point: I was saying Arsenal doesn't give you enough dots to outfit your soldiers (who per the elite solider template in the Core, do not get exceptional weapons) provided you invest in Command at all. Which I assume would be the point of converting dots (given the fairly craptastic state of mundane gear, there isn't much point if you can't outfit everyone).
Also, how the fuck are you going to hire mercs, that is literally supported nowhere in the Background (beyond the 'ST may allow additional uses as they see fit'), there are no rules for using the background in that manner (since Resources 50 is blatantly not a thing) , and lastly, where in Autochthon are you going to find those mercenary armies. I mean, there's Estasia, but that's a huge can of worms, and I'm pretty sure that they don't go hiring out a hundred mercenary armies.
You're not just wrong, you're consistently wrong. You keep making claims which simply aren't true. I ran a campaign for a couple of years with this Background, so I know it works just fine. The fact you never managed to get it to work says nothing about the Background.
You got it to work! Good for you! Wait, I recall something again...
The plural of anecdote is not data.
You know, the fact that you accuse me of the same bloody thing you are doing is annoying.
Also, these weren't campaigns I was running. These are campaigns I was a player in. If I was running, it would be reworked.
I'm not denying you can make the Background work. It is useable, which is more then some can say. But its annoying to make work well, and on the players end it can be annoying when you buy something and don't get what you were hoping for out of it, which is very easy to happen with Arsenal as written.
Yes, maybe someone could have made the math clearer. That doesn't mean that it was not a perfectly fine answer to the original problem which was "Alchemical Artifact makes no goddamn sense, either from a rules or theme perspective."
Alchemical Artifact makes perfect sense, provided you not looking at this in a vacuum. Theme wise, the intent is obvious: Autochthonia has a lot of artifacts, alchemicals as very important heroes of the state have access to that. Rules wise, it causes some issues potentially depending how you handle Raising Backgrounds in Play, but that ones a bit messy in general.
Alchemicals Artifact background might not be perfect but it works, and doesn't require a background that eats three quarters of a page, and could really use a rewrite for clarity and cutting down the word count. Space is a concern for things like the MoEPs (hence why the writers were a bit peeved about the Encounter Suit: 'we burned wordcount on this?'). Could they have used an Infamy type background? Probably, but they never had a Broken-Winged Crane type expansion, and quite frankly everyone could use that type of background. So we should be cursing out the Core as usual here, it seems.
