Pay Up Front Disadvantage

A very important decision you can give characters is to have them choose if they want to pay for the entire power in advance, or if they want to pay a little less in advance, but keep paying as they use the power. This occurs for example when choosing between a skill or a condition. A condition is more expensive then a skill with the same power. This is because skills must be maintained monthly. So you pay every month, and together with the cost of training the skill, you will eventually reach a point where it was cheaper to pay for the condition.

There are advantages and disadvantages to paying everything up front. The advantage you have is that in the long run you'll save money. However, in the short run you'll have less power, making you more vulnerable and less effective at gathering money on missions. The same is also true for powers that cost willpower every time you use them, as opposed to powers that can be used for free. You pay less up front for a skill/item/con that costs WP to use, but in the long run you'll have spend more money regaining the willpower you've lost.

We'll call this period the pay up front disadvantage (PUFD). For conditions compared to skills this is 20 months. Because the average wealth of a character is 5 (=1dtp) 20 months will mean 20*5=100c = 1pt extra per point. This makes condition twice as expensive as a skill of the same power.

For powers that cost willpower something interesting is going on. The more you use a certain power, the more WP you need to restore, so the greater the PUFD is. When balancing a power like this the designer should estimate how often the power will be used.