Why...

[melessqr]

...is it illegal to sell back fractional points of speed or buy fractional points of speed?

 

Melessqr

[Steve Long]

Technically this is a game design philosophy question, but since I can answer briefly, I will.

 

It's illegal to sell them back because they don't, technically, exist -- SPD rounds down the the next lowest whole point. If he sells off another Characteristic, a character is actually losing something -- he's giving up some benefit he would otherwise have. This is untrue with fractional SPD; technically the character is giving up nothing, and it's both unfair and unbalanced to get something for nothing. As a benefit to characters, the rules let a character buy his SPD Characteristic up by paying off the fractional remainder, but that's just a courtesy.

 

Characters can't buy fractional SPD as a Power (note the difference from what you've written) because it creates too many mathematical and conceptual problems.

 

The solution, if all of this troubles you, is to make all Figured Characteristics into Primary Characteristics with their starting values as 2, 2, 2, 4, 20, and 20, respectively. That solves all these problems nicely.