Quote from: Bren;965527I have to echo Sable Wyvren's first post regarding improper use of defined mathematical terms. Especially since there is at least one game which was intentionally designed using an actual logarithmic scale: DC Heroes written by Greg Gorden and published in 1985. DC Heroes used Action Points and APs were built on a logarithmic scale for everything you would need in a superhero game.

Quote from: tenbones;965851And it's a damn fine system. Good call here. I need to crack open my copy of Blood of Heroes tonight!!!!

Quote from: dbm;965713I think that is a pretty good way of classifying things, though 'political' has baggage in my mind.  I'm struggling to think of a better word, however, as if you were to ask me what shapes strategy I would say policy...

Maybe go with a 'names' concept like Wizard of Earthsea had? To effect an entity you need to know it's true name, and this gets more and more complex as the size of the target increases. You could rationalise this based on how a large entity potentially has constituent parts that could be referenced separately, so your naming has to account for this.

So directly targeted magic ('that guy there') doesn't need a true name, but affecting a group becomes tricky and impacting a larger thing like a family or town starts to get more demanding. To my mind this has the advantage of being fuzzy rather than precise and that feels more 'magical' to me. It is also useful from a game perspective as finding a true name can become the object of a quest, and just because you can cast an uber-spell on enemy nation 1 doesn't mean you can cast it on enemy nation 2.

Hmm. Maybe uber could be your fourth scale category?