So the question came up in play last night as to whether the costs to increase abilities from the chart on page 18 from TSOY 2nd edition are simple or cumulative (that is, does it cost 2 or 3 advances to go from unskilled to Adept?). Clinton pretty definitively says cumulative over here (http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=17672.0)
So I'd just like to point out for other accounting majors like myself that that means the sample PCs in the book are *not* costed correctly. They were obviously built with one advance equals one ability point, regardless of level ;)
I just double-checked Violet. She has one extra advance which I missed somehow, using the cumulative method. She's forgiven, being the iconic TSOY character and all. Oliphant's correct according to the cumulative method, although in his advanced layout, I seem to be missing one advance.
To quote Emo Philips: boy is my face red.
So I retract my statement. I costed out basic Violet first, and found the one over (which I assumed meant that ability costs were non-cumulative) and then I went and costed out ueber-Violet, and thought I got the same result, but now I realize what happened. I thought she had 20 advances rather than 25.
Also in the mean time, I figured out a faster way of costing TSOY characters than trying to retrace their advance scene. A basic character with no advances already has 23 "points" of pools, skills, keys and secrets. So if you add up the advance value of everything on the characters sheet, and subtract 23, you should match their number of advances. By this scheme, basic Violet is over by one (as we know), ueber Violet is good, basic Oliphant is good, but ueber Oliphant is over by 3!
Here's my numbers:
Pools: 7 + 3 + 3 = 13
Master: 2 * 6 = 12
Adept: 3 * 3 = 9
Comp: 8
Secrets: 7
Keys: 2
Total: 13 + 12 + 9 + 8 + 7 + 2 = 51 - 23 = 28 advances
So this totally blows my theory based on your earlier report that Oliphant of the future somehow secrete donated an advance to the young Violet using his powerful magics. In fact we learn that Oliphant is really an advance vampire bent on world domination, and this whole lovesick goblin scheme is just a clever front...