Stop Spending Earned Character Points

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Plane

I'd like there to be some kind of mechanical incentive then...

I don't really see that that's a good idea. People are not performance optimization engines. Trying to arrange systems so that they would cause optimization engines to imitate the behavior of people doesn't make the systems more realistic...

[Maz]

You could consider playing with some of the options for spending CP during play. See for instance "Buying success" (p.347) or "Flesh Wounds" (p.417) in Campaigns.

If you do not normally use Extra Effort in combat (p.357 Campaigns), then you could allow spending CP on it instead of FP. For most people this will not really be "worth it", but if you have CP to spare then it is.
Note that there are more options in Actions 2 - exploit or Martial Arts.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Alden Loveshade

After every game session, your PC earns character points (hopefully). But what if you don't want them?

I'm in a campaign where the players have very variable keenness to spend their experience points. The one who's most relaxed about it had it save his character's life.

He got killed - not blasted to pulp, just failed a death check after being shot. There was a ghost NPC handy who could herd his spirit back into his body and apply significant healing, and he had the points available to buy and immediately use an Extra Life.

[dataweaver]

On the subject of why ordinary people don't become matters just by doing their jobs:

Remember that overtime (more than 8 hours a day) doesn't count towards On-the-Job Training; so if you're counting on that, your capped at two hours a day toward skill improvement — which means one skill point every 100 days on the job. If you work year-round, that's 3 or four skill points per year, spread out over multiple skills required by the job. If that's still too much for your sense of realism, use the realistic Points-based Learning option, on p.6 of Back to School (in the Learning and Realism box): improvement requires both study time and spending character points. Learning isn't just about putting in the time; it's also about challenging yourself, which is what the character point cost represents. For adventurers, they're always challenging themselves; so the limiting factor is the study time. For ordinary people, the on-the-job training covers the study time rules well enough; but assume that once the character is past the drama of “learning the ropes” and has basic job proficiency, he no longer earns character points just for going about his daily routine: he needs to get out of his “comfort zone” in some way to improve further.

The Points-Based Learning guidelines (Back to School pp.5–7) include some advice on what counts as being “under stress” for the purpose of being able to spend earned character points on a skill: if you're attempting a task that you can keep trying without costs or penalties, aren't under time pressure, or receive a bonus for extra time or favorable circumstances, it doesn't qualify for study. (The “favorable circumstances” bit references Basic Set p.171, which talks about a +4 bonus that the GM can award, and specifically says that “Ordinary people almost always receive this bonus at mundane tasks”.)

---

I personally prefer the Study Rolls option provided in Back to School, where you treat learning as a Job Roll but get “paid” in study hours rather than money. The existing rules handle regular study and self-study, and have special rules for intensive training; but they don't address on-the-job training: a Study “job” is separate from a regular job, and you can't do both simultaneously: you're either studying or working, or neither; never both. Which works well in explaining why the average man on the street doesn't constantly get better through on-the-job training.

If you want to allow for OJT in the Study Rolls system, try this: a normal job gets two rolls: a regular Job Roll to earn your pay, and a separate Study Roll to decide how much you learned, at a -5 penalty because you can't focus primarily on learning. On the other hand, your training counts against you for the purpose of learning: the more you already know about the job, the less likely you are to learn something new. Apply a -1 penalty to the Study Roll for every four character points in the Job-related skills. The learning rate isn't quartered (though if you don't have someone showing you the ropes, you still treat it as self-study); but that penalty for existing training will quickly kill any chance of success on the Study Roll once you have a decent investment of character points in the job. On the other hand, penalties to the Job Roll can be used as bonuses to the Study Roll to offset that “already trained” penalty (but not to get a net bonus): again, you need to challenge yourself to get better.

[dataweaver]

Originally Posted by Maz

You could consider playing with some of the options for spending CP during play. See for instance "Buying success" (p.347) or "Flesh Wounds" (p.417) in Campaigns.

If you do not normally use Extra Effort in combat (p.357 Campaigns), then you could allow spending CP on it instead of FP. For most people this will not really be "worth it", but if you have CP to spare then it is.
Note that there are more options in Actions 2 - exploit or Martial Arts.

Originally Posted by johndallman

I'm in a campaign where the players have very variable keenness to spend their experience points. The one who's most relaxed about it had it save his character's life.

He got killed - not blasted to pulp, just failed a death check after being shot. There was a ghost NPC handy who could herd his spirit back into his body and apply significant healing, and he had the points available to buy and immediately use an Extra Life.

I would have let the player spend points on buying success instead; much cheaper. Extra Life ought to be reserved for causes of death like being caught in a massive explosion: things where an audience would say “there's no way he could have survived that!” Short of that, judicious use of Flesh Wounds (to downgrade damage to survivable levels) and Buying Success (to prevent random rolls from killing you) can greatly increase survivability without it costing 25 points.

And for what it's worth, this sort of thing is what the aforementioned Power-Ups 5: Impulse Buys is all about: it takes options such as these and expands on them. Is the character a magic user? There's an Impulse Buy available where you can spend one CP to get 25 energy to spend on spellcasting. Need a windfall? Spend one CP to get gear or cash worth 10% of the campaign's Starting Wealth. And so on.

[tbone]

Originally Posted by dataweaver

This. In short, give the players something to spend their character points on other than character advancement. If a player still has areas where he wants to improve his character, he can spend his points on character advancement; if not, he can use them for Impulse Buys.

Seconded. Or thirded. I'm not personally familiar with the OP's phenomenon of players not grabbing at and spending every character point available : ), but I'd imagine you could have a great campaign where PCs face dangers and challenges beyond what even heroes should survive . . . yet squeeze through yet again, thanks to lots of Impulse Buys.

The tone might resemble an action-oriented TV series that centers on wild exploits, not character growth. The Impulse Buys focus means players are invited to play a bigger part in the scriptwriting (particularly, the part about how PCs wriggle out of yet another impossible mess or assured doom). Sounds fun to me!

[Plane]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

I don't really see that that's a good idea. People are not performance optimization engines. Trying to arrange systems so that they would cause optimization engines to imitate the behavior of people doesn't make the systems more realistic...

B293's Learning on the Job almost seems automatic (I'm not even sure you can opt out of it?) when you're doing a job...

If you have a job, time spent on the job counts as “study” of the skills used in the job.

so it actually seems like you might need a mechanic to not have it function optimally... otherwise the only way to opt out of learning might actually be not to have a job?

"a year of full-time work will give you two to three points" sounds like an obligatory command

Originally Posted by dataweaver

If you want to allow for OJT in the Study Rolls system, try this: a normal job gets two rolls: a regular Job Roll to earn your pay, and a separate Study Roll to decide how much you learned

I'm liking it so far...

Originally Posted by dataweaver

training counts against you for the purpose of learning: the more you already know about the job, the less likely you are to learn something new. Apply a -1 penalty to the Study Roll for every four character points in the Job-related skills.

LOTJ didn't originally have any built-in limits like this.

This kinda thing seems like it would penalize non-academic learners like Miles O'Brien too much.

Like you can't just "get your hands dirty" and learn indefinitely, that you at some point could reach the "soft cap" where only "self study" could get you better.

Originally Posted by dataweaver

penalty for existing training will quickly kill any chance of success on the Study Roll once you have a decent investment of character points in the job.

On the other hand, penalties to the Job Roll can be used as bonuses to the Study Roll to offset that “already trained” penalty (but not to get a net bonus): again, you need to challenge yourself to get better.

Ah, that solves the dilemma then, Miles is pleased.

That makes me wonder though: should we have some kind of soft-cap system like this on self-teaching too?

After all, who's to say how far you can go with "pure theory"? If they never actually put their theories to work, they wouldn't even be able to test cutting-edge ideas to see which they should adopt or abandon.

Originally Posted by dataweaver

Is the character a magic user? There's an Impulse Buy available where you can spend one CP to get 25 energy to spend on spellcasting

Hm let's see... magic ER 25 has base cost of 75 points... if you applied -80% in limitations you could get that down to 15 points, and making it "One Use" (like Favor) could warrant 1/5, but that still only brings it down to 3...

You'd need to go "below the limit" somehow like where you take something like -110% in limitations and reduce 75 to 5 instead of 15 for this to make sense as a perk...

Pretty sure impulses are also supposed to be more expensive than stuff you prepay for too. Like "Extra Life" would cost 50 unspent bonus CP on the fly, because buying it in advance is like a "Potential Advantage" which does nothing for you until you actually lose the points.

Pg 23 of IB actually has that:

25 points (50 points in campaigns with Extra Life)

IE basically "Schrödinger’s Advantage" from B33

I remember some example of that but forget which.

- - -

Anyway this seems to be based on Fantasy 131 (signature gear: "25 energy of enchantment") which M161 weirdly interprets as "somehow that means an insubstantial pool of energy I can tap into instead of established GEAR like manastones/powerstones"

(both stones are also things which don't mesh well with the "just use the energy cost" approach of Signature Gear unless you're referring to just a 1-energy version, because value rises exponentially due to the difficulty of making larger ones without quirks/shattering: it makes more sense to consult the price chart and compare that to Starting Wealth as usual for Signature Gear)

The timing problem exists here too: you shouldn't just be able to have a floating pool of BonusCP which can become signature gear whenever you need it, because that removes incentive to trade the BonusCP for the Signature Gear in advance.

So "Impulse Signature Gear" sounds like instead of getting 50% of Starting Wealth as a perk, you should only get 25% per "last minute trade-in" you make of bonus CP for Signature Gear.

Maybe even a WORSE ratio, come to think of it. After all, you could buy "Potential Advantage: Schrödinger’s Advantage: Signature Gear 100% SW [2]" as a perk.

B33 indicates this means you currently lack the SG but it acts like a UB to immediately acquire it when needed in the future, but you still pay full points for it...

How that differs from "Heir" is you don't get partial benefits prior to that point, but the juncture is guaranteed to come at a good time, whereas Heirs do NOT get a guaranteed upgrade whenever the points are available (the GM decides)

Where it differs from Secret Advantage is that you know what you have (or WILL have) but don't get any unknown benefits prior to then.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by dataweaver

This. In short, give the players something to spend their character points on other than character advancement. If a player still has areas where he wants to improve his character, he can spend his points on character advancement; if not, he can use them for Impulse Buys.

Yeah, Impulse Buys is a great resource for finding stuff to spend points on other than your character sheet. The general concept of Player Guidance - buying story elements with points - can be extended as far as you want too. You don't have to stop at 3 points for a Major addition. As long as the other players are OK with the change there's no particular reason you can't sell enormous changes in the backstory, or even the laws of the universe, for points.

Another option is to allow them to give them to somebody else. This isn't necessarily implausible - "I spent all my free time training them/gave them a fortune/introduced them to all my contacts..." can be quite reasonable. These points don't need to go to other players - you could transfer them to your dependents, allies, or secondary characters you only occasionally play or are keeping around to replace your paper man when he dies.

Which brings up another good sink for largish numbers of points that doesn't particularly change your character: buy Extra Lives. And if you *really* don't want to use them when the option comes available, you can always choose not to revive even though you've paid for the option.

[dataweaver]

Originally Posted by Plane

B293's Learning on the Job almost seems automatic (I'm not even sure you can opt out of it?) when you're doing a job...

If you have a job, time spent on the job counts as “study” of the skills used in the job.

so it actually seems like you might need a mechanic to not have it function optimally... otherwise the only way to opt out of learning might actually be not to have a job?

That would be where the “you must also spend character points to learn” optional rule from Social Engineering: Back to School comes into play: Learning on the Job is no longer automatic; is something that you explicitly have to choose to do, by choosing to spend points on learning — assuming you're allowed to.

Originally Posted by Plane

LOTJ didn't originally have any built-in limits like this.

No, it didn't. That's kind of the point of a house rule.

This kinda thing seems like it would penalize non-academic learners like Miles O'Brien too much.

Like you can't just "get your hands dirty" and learn indefinitely, that you at some point could reach the "soft cap" where only "self study" could get you better.


Ah, that solves the dilemma then, Miles is pleased.

That makes me wonder though: should we have some kind of soft-cap system like this on self-teaching too?

After all, who's to say how far you can go with "pure theory"? If they never actually put their theories to work, they wouldn't even be able to test cutting-edge ideas to see which they should adopt or abandon.[/quote] It's not self-teaching; it's self-study. As in, you don't have a teacher; but you still have books and the like that you can read. “Teaching” yourself without any materials to work with would likely be less like the Study systems and more like the Invention systems.

But getting back on subject: self-study still requires you to have study materials. And those study materials can be given ratings about such things as how advanced they are and how accessibly they're written. The former could then be used to grant you another offsetting bonus to the Study Roll; the latter could do things like impose a prerequisite skill level that you must first attain before you can make any sense of the book's contents, or adjust the self-study rate, with poorly written books granting less than the usual ×½ and especially well-written books granting more, possibly as much as ×1 for a book like A Young Lady's Primer.

Originally Posted by Plane

Hm let's see... magic ER 25 has base cost of 75 points... if you applied -80% in limitations you could get that down to 15 points, and making it "One Use" (like Favor) could warrant 1/5, but that still only brings it down to 3...

You'd need to go "below the limit" somehow like where you take something like -110% in limitations and reduce 75 to 5 instead of 15 for this to make sense as a perk...

GURPS doesn't work like that.

The Code is more what you call guidelines than actual rules.

In particular, don't over-rely on the Enhancements and Limitations system: the the Power-Ups dealing with Perks and Quirks, there's something about how you don't need to find a build of Modified Traits that ends up reducing a cost or value to a single point before you can declare it a Perk; the GM need only decide that he'd rather the trait in question cost a single point, and it will cost only a single point.

And those is especially true when Spells are involved: the original Magic system was decided independently of the 4e Powers system, and the two rarely line up with each other.

Originally Posted by Plane

Pretty sure impulses are also supposed to be more expensive than stuff you prepay for too. Like "Extra Life" would cost 50 unspent bonus CP on the fly, because buying it in advance is like a "Potential Advantage" which does nothing for you until you actually lose the points.

Pg 23 of IB actually has that:

25 points (50 points in campaigns with Extra Life)

IE basically "Schrödinger’s Advantage" from B33

I remember some example of that but forget which.

IB also has “spend one character point to get 25 points worth of magic”.

Originally Posted by Plane

Anyway this seems to be based on Fantasy 131 (signature gear: "25 energy of enchantment") which M161 weirdly interprets as "somehow that means an insubstantial pool of energy I can tap into instead of established GEAR like manastones/powerstones"

(both stones are also things which don't mesh well with the "just use the energy cost" approach of Signature Gear unless you're referring to just a 1-energy version, because value rises exponentially due to the difficulty of making larger ones without quirks/shattering: it makes more sense to consult the price chart and compare that to Starting Wealth as usual for Signature Gear)

The timing problem exists here too: you shouldn't just be able to have a floating pool of BonusCP which can become signature gear whenever you need it, because that removes incentive to trade the BonusCP for the Signature Gear in advance.

So "Impulse Signature Gear" sounds like instead of getting 50% of Starting Wealth as a perk, you should only get 25% per "last minute trade-in" you make of bonus CP for Signature Gear.

Per IB (and Basic Set, of I recall correctly), it's 20%. Note also that you don't get it instantly; you get it in the near future, at the soonest point that the GM can reasonably work its acquisition into the narrative.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Plane

B293's Learning on the Job almost seems automatic (I'm not even sure you can opt out of it?)

"You may add or improve skills by spending time studying them,"

Does not equal "you must add or improve skills if you spend time studying or working with them".