Alternate XP progression schedule

[platimus]

Originally Posted by TippetsTX

Or maybe all greater magic items are made by Elves who can afford to invest 100+ years in the necessary training?
;)

True. And/Or maybe 114 years is completely bogus.

[Skarg]

Originally Posted by hcobb

There are no magical items on Cidri.

Greater Magic Item Creation requires IQ 20, and DX 15 to succeed most weeks, plus ST 8 is 43 attribute points plus one spell.

That's 102900 XP. At 600 XP per year that's 171.5 years. With a 2% chance of death each month (Assuming youth potions, I guess?) that's one in 10^19 of wizards which are only 1 in 500 of the population.

The Mnoren never explored enough worlds to reach this much wizardly population.

Q.E.D.

Without the overstatement, a human wizard can make a greater magic item with IQ 20, and how about DX 10, ST 8. That's 38 points, which with the (sigh) RAW costs would be a minimum of 100 + 100 + 200 + 400 + 800 + 1600 = 3,200 XP. Not 102,900 XP. The consequence is it takes them on average twice the listed number of weeks to create a greater magic item, since they miss half the rolls (unless the wizards' guild loans them a +2 charm to bring their effective DX up to 12).

The rate of XP gain is entirely up to the GM, and is also entirely disconnected from GAME TIME and even from GAME EVENTS. Per RAW suggestion, a GM might play a "session" at lunch at school and hand out 100 XP because the other players made them laugh and were cooperative, AND that session might represent half an hour or less of game time. Or it could be the opposite extremes, or anything else.

And XP now seems intended to only be used for PCs (sigh), since the rates are based on what the players do (sigh), which leaves the RAW without any guidelines on what NPCs do to improve at what rates. And NPCs are probably going to be the ones making (or having made) most/all of the magic items that exist in the world.

[hcobb]

How about this for an Alternate XP progression schedule:

Attribute increase attempts always cost 100XP.

You pay 100 XP, name the attribute you are attempting to increase and roll 8 dice. If the total rolled is greater than your current attribute total you increase the named stat by one. Otherwise better luck the next time you've saved up 100XP.

Giants automatically increase their ST by one point on each birthday.

Gargoyles get a bonus roll (wanted or not) to attempt to increase their ST by one point on each even birthday.

Reptile People and Centaurs get a bonus roll (wanted or not) to attempt to increase their ST by one point on each third birthday. (21, 24, 27, ....)

Halflings, Goblins and Elves roll against 7 dice for ST attempts.
Dwarves roll against 7 dice for DX attempts.
Hobgoblins and Gargoyles roll against 7 dice for IQ attempts.

[TippetsTX]

Originally Posted by hcobb

Attribute increase attempts always cost 100XP...

Yikes! No thank you!

Points for out-of-the-box thinking, though.
;)

[Skarg]

Originally Posted by hcobb

How about this for an Alternate XP progression schedule:

Attribute increase attempts always cost 100XP.

You pay 100 XP, name the attribute you are attempting to increase and roll 8 dice. If the total rolled is greater than your current attribute total you increase the named stat by one. Otherwise better luck the next time you've saved up 100XP.

I think you've left out how often people get to make the attempt.

Also, since you don't even charge the 100XP for a failure, the cost is just 100 XP per attribute, with some sort of delay added. So experienced characters will end up with piles of XP to spend on talents and spells and wishes (and gold, if the GM allows that), and just waiting until they fail these rolls to advance in attributes. My first thought was to have each attempt cost 100 XP whether it succeeds or not.

I think the roll-over idea is a nice idea with potential - I knew a GM who did something sort of similar for an improvement system in GURPS and other systems, where you gained experience in things only when you failed significant rolls to use those things. In that case, it was a way to combine tracking of how much you were using things to do difficult things in a natural way that had those things improve with a built-in diminishing returns curve.

[platimus]

Originally Posted by Skarg

And XP now seems intended to only be used for PCs (sigh), since the rates are based on what the players do (sigh), which leaves the RAW without any guidelines on what NPCs do to improve at what rates. And NPCs are probably going to be the ones making (or having made) most/all of the magic items that exist in the world.

You know NPCs don't really exist, right? LOL

A lot of people write backgrounds for their NPCs as if they were PCs. How did NPC get to be who he is today? Gather 'round the camp-fire and let me tell you a story...

[Skarg]

Originally Posted by platimus

You know NPCs don't really exist, right? LOL

A lot of people write backgrounds for their NPCs as if they were PCs. How did NPC get to be who he is today? Gather 'round the camp-fire and let me tell you a story...

Well, they exist on paper, and however they exist in the game. I and most of the friends I most enjoyed playing with, were interested to some degree in immersing by taking the experience somewhat seriously and that included having the NPCs have some logical existence, at least in theory. We had a lot of NPCs who spent a fair amount of time with the players because (as TFT greatly rewards and almost requires) adventuring parties tended to have quite a few NPC members. Where are they from, what are they like? As we continued to play, we as players got more curious about the world, and we as GMs got more and more capable and interested in what's in the world and why it's that way, and one of the topics of particular attention started to be what's available at wizards' guilds - what (if any) magic items, gates, services, information, training? We tended to play out visits to guilds, which means there were natural questions at least about what you saw, who you talked to and saw, and what they said, and so the GM naturally would think about how many wizards there would be in a guild house, what their abilities would be like, and what they would choose to do with themselves. If you stop and think about that sort of thing, you realize that unless you are in a huge guild house filled with many powerful wizards, and they all are interested in doing all sorts of things for adventurers for coin, then there will be limited goods and services available, and having a self-consistent idea about how much that is, is something we very much enjoyed exploring both as GMs and as players. It leads to thinking of interesting situations and reasons for various sorts of intrigue and adventure and plotting, which can be naturally supported by the game system and the thought the GM puts into it. If the GM does not put much thought into it, but the players explore and exploit what they can find, you can get into paradoxes or at least embarrassing weirdness when the GM has to choose whether there were really as many wizards with the IQ and spells needed to produce the things he just said "ya sure" to in the past, and then how many wizards are there in the rest of the world, and how does that compare to the world population... it's nice when some thought has been given to that sort of thing, and it can hold some water and therefore enable play that can be interacted with without the world having weird situations that don't make sense.

[hcobb]

Originally Posted by Skarg

Also, since you don't even charge the 100XP for a failure,

Read my text. Cost is clearly stated as 100XP for an attempt, win or lose.

[platimus]

Originally Posted by Skarg

Well, they exist on paper, and however they exist in the game. I and most of the friends I most enjoyed playing with, were interested to some degree in immersing by taking the experience somewhat seriously and that included having the NPCs have some logical existence, at least in theory. We had a lot of NPCs who spent a fair amount of time with the players because (as TFT greatly rewards and almost requires) adventuring parties tended to have quite a few NPC members. Where are they from, what are they like? As we continued to play, we as players got more curious about the world, and we as GMs got more and more capable and interested in what's in the world and why it's that way, and one of the topics of particular attention started to be what's available at wizards' guilds - what (if any) magic items, gates, services, information, training? We tended to play out visits to guilds, which means there were natural questions at least about what you saw, who you talked to and saw, and what they said, and so the GM naturally would think about how many wizards there would be in a guild house, what their abilities would be like, and what they would choose to do with themselves. If you stop and think about that sort of thing, you realize that unless you are in a huge guild house filled with many powerful wizards, and they all are interested in doing all sorts of things for adventurers for coin, then there will be limited goods and services available, and having a self-consistent idea about how much that is, is something we very much enjoyed exploring both as GMs and as players. It leads to thinking of interesting situations and reasons for various sorts of intrigue and adventure and plotting, which can be naturally supported by the game system and the thought the GM puts into it. If the GM does not put much thought into it, but the players explore and exploit what they can find, you can get into paradoxes or at least embarrassing weirdness when the GM has to choose whether there were really as many wizards with the IQ and spells needed to produce the things he just said "ya sure" to in the past, and then how many wizards are there in the rest of the world, and how does that compare to the world population... it's nice when some thought has been given to that sort of thing, and it can hold some water and therefore enable play that can be interacted with without the world having weird situations that don't make sense.

That's a sturdy wall of text you built there! I don't plan on banging my head against it! LOL

[Skarg]

Originally Posted by hcobb

Read my text. Cost is clearly stated as 100XP for an attempt, win or lose.

Oh, I was mis-reading this part:

Originally Posted by hcobb

If the total rolled is greater than your current attribute total you increase the named stat by one. Otherwise better luck the next time you've saved up 100XP.

My old eyes kept reading that as "Otherwise better luck the next time [AND] you've saved up 100XP."