New Xp System: Not a Fan

[HeatDeath]

Originally Posted by Skarg

* giving a weird huge incentive to take as high IQ as you can to get what is effectively a huge leap forward in character progression via talents & spells

This, in particular, feels like "Just like in real life." Highly experienced smart people become enormously capable polymaths, frighteningly more effective and capable, overall, than highly experienced powerlifters or gymnasts.

IRL, Lex Luthor circles the world three times while Superman is still putting his pants on.

[hcobb]

I.e. you train up DX and ST by engaging in combat and you train up Sword and Running through classroom study.

[Skarg]

Originally Posted by HeatDeath

This, in particular, feels like "Just like in real life." Highly experienced smart people become enormously capable polymaths, frighteningly more effective and capable, overall, than highly experienced powerlifters or gymnasts.

IRL, Lex Luthor circles the world three times while Superman is still putting his pants on.

Seems to me that advantage was already modeled well enough by the direct effects of higher IQ, talents and spells.

The new system gives an additional effective advantage in character development of 500 XP for every talent or spell a character starts with, since those don't cost XP.

In the case of spells which include lower-level versions of the same spell, that can be a savings of 500 XP per spell you might otherwise want to learn using XP (except that would be dumb, because if you start with it, you don't pay anything for it, not even another IQ/talent point).

And wizards who learn an earlier version of a spell are effectively going to be 500 XP
behind the progress of wizards who wait until they can learn the higher-level version.

Overall, there's now a huge incentive for wizard to start out with as high IQ as the GM's style will allow them to survive and earn XP at, greatly penalizing lower-IQ characters in terms of their development. In the early game, this is huge, since 500 XP would otherwise buy multiple attribute points, (even more if you start as a halfling).

All of that, it seems to me, is new weird side-effects of a hasty design that was focused on trying to be simple. The result is various gamey XP payoffs, low-level PCs not being able to learn talents or spells without deferring raising several attribute points, and other weird side-effects.

[larsdangly]

I think this game is freakishly well balanced. Even if you just focus on winning arena fights, it is hard to say whether you are better off being a hero or wizard, there is no clearly ideal stat distribution for either character type (at best you might recognize the inferiorities of some extreme cases), and lots of different combinations of talents and gear feel (and are) similarly valuable. Each of these options provides a different experience in play, yet you can't put your finger on anything close to an ideal 'build'. Multiply this ambiguity by 1000 when you consider the range of things that happen in a roleplaying campaign.

[Tywyll]

Originally Posted by larsdangly

I think the new XP rules are brilliant. When evaluating them, you have to remember what it was like when every PC had 50+ stat points; it was pretty game breaking and could get frankly boring. The present version lets you reach lofty heights in many respects, but always with a trade off that leaves you weak in some other way. Or you can be balanced and multi-faceted, yet not god like at any one thing.

Hard to remember something we never saw in play. Very few people ever had a campaign reach that level. Far less than, say, D&D characters reach 20th level these days. And there is plenty of material for high level hi-jinks these days than there was back when TFT was created.

Anyway, there is a super easy solution: give a lot more XP per session. That part of the rules is left quite vague and open to GM fiat. There is nothing to stop you giving 100 xp per half hour of play. Or 1000 if you want. It is your table.

That's certain an option, but for me I prefer Xp being based on in-game actions myself. I actually like xp for gold, for example, as it rewards tangible player actions rather than existing as fiat.

[JLV]

Originally Posted by Tywyll

So I'm really not a fan of the new Xp system. 12,800xp to reach 40 stat points, which at 100 xp per session is 128 sessions regardless of length of activities in them.

Then 128 sessions for stat 41, 256 for stat 42, etc.

If you are using older material (like Tolenkar's Lair) PCs can NEVER realisitally reach the level of the big NPCs. I know the old system could be slow as well, but still, it was more governed by player activity in the games (kill and be successful in Saves and such and you got more xp). It had its issues, but still.

Now, buying talents/spells outside of increasing IQ is great, and I love that. Also love increasing the Mana in your staff with Xp.

I don't know the point of this post, just griping I guess.

Think I'm going to stick with the old system, possibly also increase the xp awards (10 per hour of play, 20 for 3d saves, 30 for 4d, etc), Dx+IQ for killing blows. Maybe even xp for treasure gained (since I do like xp for gp in old school games).

There are some real pluses to the new system for XP generations, though I too probably will retain the old system for credit for kills. Still, having many more options and ideas for earning XP during the game is a real plus (though I'll disagree strongly with "meta" things like bringing pizza to earn XP).

Regarding attribute bloat, I've played this game for 40 years and it WAS a problem. Just because one person never saw it doesn't mean it wasn't an issue, and Lars actually does a pretty good job of encapsulating the *real* issue -- it was boring.

I know that Joe will take me to task for this, but I much prefer the new system in terms of how XP may be spent and new skills and spells learned compared to the old way of doing things -- it's smoother, more intuitive and requires less book-keeping -- all positives in my opinion. Plus, as others have said before, de-coupling the learning process from the rigid IQ limits (and instead using IQ to limit the complexity of the learnable tasks instead of the number of them) is just so much more useful and "accurate" in game terms than the old system was. Plus we get rid of all that nonsense about "forgetting" talents and spells.

In short, taking the bad with the good, I see the new system as an overall triple at the very least. And by adding back in the old "kills" way of earning XP (in addition to the new system), I feel like I am fast approaching "home run" territory for my games.

[Tywyll]

Originally Posted by JLV

Regarding attribute bloat, I've played this game for 40 years and it WAS a problem. Just because one person never saw it doesn't mean it wasn't an issue, and Lars actually does a pretty good job of encapsulating the *real* issue -- it was boring.

How, exactly? I mean, having a 20 in all your attributes doesn't make you invulnerable. A group of strong orcs with two handed weapons hit you just as easily as they hit a character with 10s in all of theirs. Other than being good at most things (and even in the old days, you were capped by IQ at how much you could be good at), how exactly did the system break down? I see that you would hit all the time in combat, and do a lot of damage with a hit. But that's true for most FRPGs at high level.

[TippetsTX]

Originally Posted by JLV

I know that Joe will take me to task for this, but I much prefer the new system in terms of how XP may be spent and new skills and spells learned compared to the old way of doing things -- it's smoother, more intuitive and requires less book-keeping -- all positives in my opinion. Plus, as others have said before, de-coupling the learning process from the rigid IQ limits (and instead using IQ to limit the complexity of the learnable tasks instead of the number of them) is just so much more useful and "accurate" in game terms than the old system was. Plus we get rid of all that nonsense about "forgetting" talents and spells.

Queue rant mode... no, but seriously, I do not begrudge anyone using the new XP rules. My preference personally is for something a bit closer to the original progression design, which, though not perfect, allows for for a more complete player experience IMO, providing characters a full heroic lifecycle; from novice to veteran to 'legend'.

That said, I think it is terrific that characters now have the option for horizontal advancement (in the form of talents and spells) as well as vertical (increasing stats). I would just like to go a little higher on the stats.

[larsdangly]

Originally Posted by Tywyll

How, exactly? I mean, having a 20 in all your attributes doesn't make you invulnerable. A group of strong orcs with two handed weapons hit you just as easily as they hit a character with 10s in all of theirs. Other than being good at most things (and even in the old days, you were capped by IQ at how much you could be good at), how exactly did the system break down? I see that you would hit all the time in combat, and do a lot of damage with a hit. But that's true for most FRPGs at high level.

It is true that 60 point characters in TFT are still subject to being killed. The issue is that they are tend to be the same as one another, because the value of an added stat point diminishes sharply as you move up through the 15-20 range, and becomes pretty insignificant above 20. Thus, you will always trend toward a 20-20-20 'build'. These sorts of characters are similarly good at everything, almost always succeed at all die rolls, and are just generally boors. This is a matter of taste so of course some people will have their own reasons for liking this style of play. But it's clearly outside the 'design space' of the core system, and I feel like most people who have experienced it remember it as a bad thing.

[larsdangly]

I have to say it again: it so easy to 'fix' this if you don't like it. Someone above suggested they liked XP for gold and faster progression. Problem solved! Give people 1 XP per silver and away you go. No one will come to arrest you. I'll bet no one will even give you a hard time on the forums - all you are doing is following the advice in the book that you should sort out your own way of awarding XP. Otherwise, your game can work the same way as everyone else's - you'll just have a lot of pretty advanced characters. I suspect they'll find they prefer adding lots of talents and spells rather than stat points once they've got one or two stats up to 16. But you never know what players will want to do.

Also worth noting that characters who are groomed in the environment of Melee and Wizard advance at a very different rate and will either be dead or 40 point characters quite quickly.

Another option I've really been enjoying (as a GM with NPC's at least) is repurposing the Supers rules from the Companion volume. These rules, and obvious extrapolations of them, let you create characters with a few powerful distinctive abilities. They are more fun and interesting than normal PC's who just happen to have a ton of stat points.