Hi Steve, also one thing that I'm not quite clear on is why are you concerned about the number of points of the Offset result for the particular case that you are working on, are you trying to do additional control point edits to the curve?

You may be interested in this method of doing a tapered style extrude:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=941.5

- Michael