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Looking at the Mind Control ability (fourth-tier Adept), it says:

Instead of applying Effort to decrease the difficulty, you can apply Effort to increase the maximum level of the target.

Does this mean that if you use Effort, you must use it to increase the maximum level of the target? Or if you use Effort, you can use it to increase the maximum level of the target, but you can also use it to decrease the difficulty? (All emphasis is mine.)

So if I were to try Mind Controlling a level 4 creature, I'd have to spend 2 Effort because of the creature's level. Could I also spend 2 Effort to decrease the difficulty?

Capellan
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The wording you quote is "you can", not "you must" -- therefore you have the choice of using Effort for either effect, or neither (if you choose not to use Effort at all). I would further read this as, if you have two or more Effort available, you could split the Effort to use some for each of the two effects.

In your example, by my reading, you could use Effort for both, but only if you have 4 Effort available -- because you're applying the effort both to reduce difficulty and to increase maximum target level, it's for the same action, so you can't apply a total of more than your maximum Effort (just as you can't apply more than maximum Effort to any combination of reduced difficulty and damage on a weapon attack).

Zeiss Ikon
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    The first word in the sentence is "instead", though. – Adriano Varoli Piazza May 27 '16 at 13:07
  • "Instead of", "you can" is commonly read in English as equivalent to "Alternatlvely, you may". The exact wording states capability, not compulsion. If it were compulsion, taking that tier option would forever take away the ability to use effort to reduce difficulty -- which is a core mechanism in Cypher system and Numenera. – Zeiss Ikon May 27 '16 at 13:59
  • You misunderstand me: I mean that "instead" -and "alternatively"- can be read as a logical exclusive or. "You can do this, or you can do that, but not at the same time." – Adriano Varoli Piazza May 27 '16 at 16:39
  • I might agree with you on this case, if it weren't a standard mechanism in Cypher and Numenera to be able to split Effort between two effects on the same action. If they'd intended this to be XOR, they'd have written it explicitly that way, IMO. – Zeiss Ikon May 27 '16 at 16:59
  • "Instead of" CAN describe a replacement. But the words "you can" tell us this is an option, not mandatory. The sentence could have been constructed more clearly. – Longspeak May 28 '16 at 01:48
  • I know. I meant -obliquely, sorry- that you could add that into your answer. – Adriano Varoli Piazza May 30 '16 at 15:32