Advantages of faery races vs. build points

[when1wasaboy]

We had our first/character creation session for our game a few days ago, and I've been wondering about something. It seems like it costs an inordinate amount of build points to make various faery races, especially given the fairly limited advantages that are given them.

In this game, we have a kobold, a goblin and a leprechaun (the "short" contingent of the Irish mafia), and I'm wondering if I may have missed some advantages for them. It looked as though they simply had some slightly higher starting values, and the Kobold an advantage in learning mining skills.  I ended up drastically reducing the build point costs, because it seemed like even with the few bumps to starting values, faery characters ended up very under powered compared to starting humans.

Did I miss something? I confess to not being the strongest at understanding character creation, but none of my players figured it out either.

Aside from the difficulty with character creation, though, we're loving the setting provided. Also, for the record, Call of Cthulu 1920's supplements make really really good resources for this game.

[JustinB]

Hi OneWas,

The reason build points for some of the fae species are high compared to humans has to do with long-term play and the way people tend to build characters. In the long term, humans should only ever have one attribute that can get up to 8 and no attributes at rating 9. Even one attribute at rating 9 is a pretty powerful advantage, so fae species that have a +2 to an attribute have powerful potential and are paying for that potential up front. Similarly, fairies can fly, which is an extremely valuable trait and the species your players are running can all do Glamour which is essentially consequences-free illusion magic (no Control rolls).

That said, in a one-shot game it might make sense to reduce the build costs for the fae.