In Wild Talents 2nd Edition, how exactly do I calculate base will?

Question

I understand that in Wild Talents 2nd Edition, you calculate base will by adding together your charm and command stats, even if the stats are Hypercharm or Hypercommand. What I'm not sure of is if the combined normal stat + hyper stat exceeds 10, do you add the excess, or does it cap at 10? In addition, can you spend starting character points on increasing base will?

Answer 1

You can increase Base Will with character points. There's an opportunity cost associated with doing that though: incrementally increasing something you already have means fewer points for other things you don't get a little bit of for free already. But if a high degree of "internal resilience, confidence, and drive" are important for your character concept, go for it. I'm sure Wolverine put points into Base Will during character creation.

Because Base Will and Willpower are not dice pools, but points you can spend, they don't need to be capped at 10 like dice pools do. The reason dice pools have a hard cap at 10 is due to the math of the One Roll Engine: 11 dice is a mathematical inflection point that would hugely change the way the mechanics function (a pair or better becomes guaranteed even without any hd or wd), so that possibility is forbidden. That doesn't apply to Base Will/Willpower because they're not used to set initial die pool sizes.