Giving large amounts of cp at once.

[Doppã]

Have you guys ever gave 100, 150 or more character points for each player at once? That will happen in my upcoming campaign 3 or 4 times, with different amounts. I’ve been thinking of 50 as the minimum and 250 as the max, but I would really appreciate your experiences with it.

This would happen after they take down specifically powerful “BBEGs”. The more powerful they are, the more points they give. Example: Lets say Big Bob is worth 1125 character points but the set is worth 1000. If the players kill Big Bob they’d have 1000 for themselves (divided among the players would give 200 each)

Ofc I would not count the NPCs point, but eyeball it.

[Refplace]

I have not, though I have held off letting players spend points till an appropriate time. That measn that sometimes they save up a lot then spend a bunch at once. That is especially good in a Supers campaign where you have large jumps in growth.

[Donny Brook]

I have never given that many CP at once. I usually give 2 points per session, with 'realism' constraints on how that is spent. At the end of an adventure arc I have may give from 10-25 points. Maybe sometimes with the addition of narratively appropriate Advantages (typically Social ones).

The most I've seen a GM give is 50 CP, and he was contemplating a significant shift in tone, practically moving the PCs to a new campaign (albeit in the same setting several in-game years later).

[malloyd]

Not that many. At least not as a choose your own - I do sometimes hand out specific advantage, and sometimes those can be worth a lot of points.

I suspect the main problem with handing out big chunks of points the players can spend on anything is you are basically committing yourself to repeating the campaign startup session. Your players will spend a significant period of time deciding what to spend them on, and you are going to need time to consider whether all those choices are problematic in some way - obsolete one of the other characters, break something when combined with the traits they already have etc.

[Anthony]

I've seen it done for origin stories (build your normal human; okay, now we have an origin story where you turn into a vampire or some such), or for specific advantages gained in play (guess you're all Very Wealthy now, gain 30 cp), but giving out a package of points without strong restrictions on how they get used will take in ordinate amount of time.

[Stormcrow]

If you do this, expect a shift in the kind of game you're running. It would be like going from the Wonder Twins to Superman, permanently, in an instant.

[Eric Funk]

Originally Posted by Doppã

Have you guys ever gave 100, 150 or more character points for each player at once?

Not that extreme. I have granted 5 points or so at once on occasions where they finished off minibosses for the campaign, then could spend them in "cinematic training" in town.

I would only consider the OP's situation if the large lump represented some Signature Gear points for assets for each individual warrior (fighter craft? mounts? similar power gear{magical/superscience gear}?) or as other posters suggest, a paradign shift for the campaign (all become vampires? All get Super-radiation bath? all seem to die but meet 1000 years later in five different ways...) Or just adding a new team feature such as DR(Ablative, Force Field, Gadget)50 [50],


To that, remember strictly the Rules As Written for noncinematic learning of skills not used is 200 hours of training and THEN you can spend 1cp to learn/improve a skill not used during the adventure (p.B292). (800h for languages! p.B25)

OP has not described the campaign setting (it sounds supers?)As a GM I hope you have some "plan" for what those points would mean to each character, either adding a Lens or some specific place they will spend the points -- ... Thinking about RPGs, when defeating a new boss with a scary power the player often gains a variant of that power (or or on a run-up have to seek an ability to more easily defeat foes of the realm, mega-man style...(all our supers now have a new power technique to add "ice" to attacks now)

Sometimes new training that adds "affects insubstantial" on powers, and eventually adding levels of +Cosmic to them could be in such steps to counter foes once defeated.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Eric Funk

To that, remember strictly the Rules As Written for noncinematic learning of skills not used is 200 hours of training and THEN you can spend 1cp to learn/improve a skill not used during the adventure (p.B292). (800h for languages! p.B25)

Not quite. 200 hours of guided learning (100 hours of intense learning, 400 hours of self-learning, or 800 hours of on-the-job learning) outright gives you one character point worth of a Skill or Technique (or an Advantage, with the GM's permission), you don't also need to spend earned points. Character points earned adventuring cannot be spent improving skills/abilities that weren't meaningfully used during the adventure, this is correct (mostly - you are allowed to learn things you didn't use if you were around people who were using them), so you'd need to use the learning rules to improve those, but you don't spend any character points in the process. If you went monster hunting and earned 5 character points, then decided you wanted to improve your shoemaking skills, you couldn't spend those [5] on Professional Skill (Cobbler), and would need to put in the nominal 200 hours per point of learning... but once you put in the time, you get the skill at the purchased level without ever needing to touch those [5] you earned while out monster hunting.

Originally Posted by Eric Funk

Sometimes new training that adds "affects insubstantial" on powers, and eventually adding levels of +Cosmic to them could be in such steps to counter foes once defeated.

The (currently indefinite-hiatus'd) webcomic Force Magellan, being about a superhero academy, gets into this. There's this humorous exchange that sheds some light on how characters learn Can Carry Objects for their powers.

[mburr0003]

Originally Posted by Doppã

This would happen after they take down specifically powerful “BBEGs”. The more powerful they are, the more points they give. Example: Lets say Big Bob is worth 1125 character points but the set is worth 1000. If the players kill Big Bob they’d have 1000 for themselves (divided among the players would give 200 each)

I'm not sure why you'd want to do exp this way... but if you do this, repeatedly throughout your campaign, please pop back in here and document your results.

I'd love to hear how this turns out. /thumbsup.jpg