Haha. Welcome!  Can we call you 3-loans?

By this logic, any character that spends DP on anything new (secondary skills, combat maneuvers, etc) is an overnight change.

So, the math you use (which is supported) breaks out to a 3 minute 46 second mile.  At movement 8 that makes absolutely no sense (just slightly slower than the fastest mile ever run in isolation).  I haven't worked out exactly what round time makes it work better, but I propose that someone with 10 movement running completely all out should roughly hit or just beat that world record.  I know there's the usual argument of whether to mimic reality, but I think keeping close to reality for stats between 5-9 makes sense, and even 10s should fall close to world records.  I will do the full math when I build out my table and will offer the math behind it for consideration.

edit: in fact, remember that our world records include people with all of the benefits of modern science, medicine, etc.  So people hitting those records without supernatural aid in a setting at Anima's technology level would still be profoundly better than someone doing the same in our world.  I.E. pushing a 10 that much farther above average for the time

Yes, that's excellent.  I'm still going to put together one as I described to:

• See how it compares
• Expand to include high fatigue/inhumanly fast characters
• Nerd out with some numbers

It takes a little time, but if you take their movement value, then use the rules under the fatigue section, you can get a decent idea.  Those values give you how fast they can move at a walk, forced march, run, or full speed, and how long they can maintain it.  So, determine how long they can go on based on how much fatigue they are willing to use per day, and then calculate the total distance based on their speed.  You have to move the numbers a bit based on how "long" you consider a round of movement to be, but it's pretty doable.  I did this off the cuff for my players, and it worked out pretty well.  You may consider giving horses/camels/etc some adjustment to reflect that they are much better suited to extended travel/carrying than a PC would be.  I think I will build a chart of what I've outlined above, but I have no free time for a while, so I can't post it very soon.  Perhaps next week.

Seconded, thanks for looking into this for us.  I haven't played in a campaign where a character had a business in a while, but when I did, it was most excellent fun.  I'm hoping this wild hair I had can add great things to our mysterious adventure.

Thank you for the official stance, AS! This adds lots of interesting decisions to my campaign as the possibility of becoming Processed gets closer and closer!

The issue isn't so much where you place parenthesis, it's an issue of having to remember what is included and what isn't every time you multiply something.  It's the difference between saying "I have a weapon that does 90 damage, and anything that affects that is based off of that" and "I have a weapon that does 70 + 20 damage, and sometimes the 20 is included in scaling, and sometimes it isn't".

I would add strength before as well, though I admit I haven't played with any very high strength players/npcs, so I don't know whether that's too big of an advantage if it's truly supposed to be added after.  I never saw in the book that anything was added after calculating the combat table damage, but I don't have a book handy so I'll trust that it says so until I see otherwise.  I guess this is a houserule for me.

I didn't say difficult, I said complicated and cumbersome. The math is all simple addition and multiplication, but it's the adding off additional numbers, some added before, some added after, which makes it more cumbersome in combat.  I'm all for numbers heavy systems, but I prefer to take them without unnecessarily cumbersome calculations, particularly during the flow of combat.  Again, that's just my personal preference.

That being the case, I personally lean to just add all of the bonuses up before multiplying.  As mentioned before, the math otherwise just gets more complicated, and the last thing Anima needs is more cumbersome calculation during combat.  I would double the quality bonus for Destroyer.  YMMV.

Then perhaps I misunderstood the aim of the argument.  Is this purely concerning the ability to overcome a damage barrier, then?

That would make combat much more complicated, and the result isn't very nice.  For a +10 weapon, when you strike your opponent really well, that quality makes only a minor difference, while a minor hit gets a massive increase.

Using the +10 bastard sword example:

• 200% damage - 140+20 = 160, or a 14% increase
• 10% damage - 7+20 = 27, or a 286% increase

A weapon that is so devastatingly well made that it nearly triples damage on a minor nick but makes grievous wounds only a relatively small bit worse just doesn't make sense.  If you add the bonus to base damage, you get the following:

• 200% damage - 180 compared to 140 (28.6% increase)
• 10% damage - 9 compared to 7 (28.6% increase)

As you see, you get a stable increase at any level because the sword itself is just that much better.  Your ability with the blade determines the ultimate damage of the attack, and a better blade gives a consistent boost at all levels of attack result.  Another way of saying this: a +10 sword shouldn't give someone who is only just good enough to hit his opponent a huge boost.  Quality can certainly help your ability to strike (via better balance, lower weight, etc), but that is reflected in the attack bonus, not via massive damage bonus at low parts of the hit table.  I don't have the book in front of me to confirm RAW, but the math leads me to believe that adding to the base damage is the way to go.

Among other games, yes. Settlers was played.  Not a single 5 was rolled in the entire game, and it sunk me.  The dice have hated me in my last few Settlers games.

I've made my request for membership.  I was MIA all day yesterday because my friends had a board game marathon and I was predisposed.  Good problem to have, I suppose. ^_^

I'll discuss character ideas over there once I'm accepted.