[Skarg]

I have used and experimented with many different systems for character improvement over the years. I tend to prefer realism and consistency, so I think about what the ranges of abilities are that all characters have in a game world, and how they can/do improve their abilities, what their scores look like over their lifetime, and so on, and scale PC improvement to more or less fit that.

For example, I want to be able to run the same PCs in the same gameworld for years and years (both game-time and possibly real-time) without them becoming bloated with abilities and more capable than practically any NPC due to having been handed several points per session and having survived a lot of sessions. And I don't want a game world where there is a massive power difference between characters due to huge experience gains. I also don't want to have to make a lot of 300+ point NPCs, or to keep adding piles of points to all the existing NPCs (because I care about consistency).

If I want PCs (and/or adventurers or whatever) to have a faster rate of improvement and higher abilities than most people in the game world, then I think about what that represents in the game world (i.e. not just "players like to improve their characters"), and have that be an explicit thing (e.g. the characters are blessed, or gifted, or this is a world where adventure just makes people get really capable quickly for some reason, so for what NPCs is that also true?).

I like the pre-4e skill tables where physical skill costs increase up to 8 points per level. I also like 1/2 points in skills, or lower levels of skill. And I like curved attribute cost tables and increased costs to increase attributes after character creation. I usually have limits on what experience can be used to increase what.

Usually I have a pretty modest scale of point totals throughout the world. For this purpose, I don't count social and circumstantial (dis/)advantages and mainly consider attributes and skills and learning-&-gift-type advantages (literacy, aptitude, acute senses, combat reflexes, etc), because those seem like intrinsic ability and learning, while wealth/status/reputation/allies/gadgets/injuries/diseases/psychoses/etc seem more circumstantial and not the same thing as I'm interested in when considering people's gifts and development. Most typical NPCs get 20-40 points or so. 80 points is a quite competent person. Over 100 points is remarkable, 200 really exceptional, and I usually have very few NPCs over 300 points - those are the world champions and great wizards and so on. Physical skills 9-10 is ok, 11-12 is pretty good, 13-14 is good, 15-16 is very good, 17-18 is rare, 19-20 are up there in the best, and above 20 is really exceptional. If too many points are being handed out that can be spent freely on skills, these levels won't be the case for long.

One of the reasons I really like that sort of scale is that I think the low-tech combat system (which is the main thing I love about GURPS and is the focus of play in most games I run) works well with those meanings for those levels, compared to how it plays if lots of people have skill 15+ and skill 20+ is not all that unusual.