The reason I usually have people go for multipliers like 1.2 or 1.5 with hefty drawbacks (or in alpha's case 2 plus suicide gamble,) is because that keeps the base stats meaningful. If everything had a multiplier of 3 by default, why wouldn't we just triple everyone's stats and have the same thing with less math? Or the meaning of a stat defensively would have to be worth more than offensively. Right now, if both a defending and attacking party have a have a POW of 15, the relative amount of damage inflicted would be the same as if they both had 1 POW. So even at equal POW your weapons are quite deadly, because well, it's a sword, and swords are pretty good at killing. Or a massive sword that can be wielded like a normal one.