Experience Points

[JLV]

I'm actually pretty impressed by that!

However, one thing isn't entirely clear to me: Are the Attribute costs now based on the individual stat location? (That is, if I am at ST 12, DX 10, IQ 8, would I have to pay 600XP to raise ST one (to 13), 400XP to raise DX one (to 11), or 200XP to raise IQ one (to 9)? That's the way I'm reading the table, but it's not explicitly stated...)

And this also begs the question of what creatures other than humans (e.g., Halflings, Goblins, Hobgoblins, etc) do, when their stats are all pretty low to begin with, but I'm guessing that's probably addressed somewhere else.

I really like this, though, it looks like you have indeed combined methods 1 and 2 to make this problem go away. Thank you! (Both for the advanced insight, and for fixing the problem!)

[Dave Crowell]

Originally Posted by Steve Jackson

Improving Basic Stats
You may use experience points to buy a total of 8 additional attribute points. These may all go into one stat, or they can be divided up. After the eighth additional attribute point (which gets humans to a total of 40), attributes may only be increased by magic, such as a Wish.

I was just coming here to post a suggestion similar to this. Deal with "attribute bloat" by placing a cap on attributes. It seems quite reasonable to me that there should be some limit on improvement. There are physiological limits to human performance after all.

[Steve Jackson]

Yes; raising the low stat is cheapest. I want to tempt people to un-dump their dump stat!

[tbeard1999]

I think I like the proposed system. It may even make me go back to using 3d6 instead of the blasphemous d20...

Some questions/comments:

1. Are starting characters created per current TFT rules? I.e., 32 points divided between ST, DX and IQ; talent points equal to IQ (or spell points for Wizards).

2. Would it be better to divide the XP totals by 10, 25, 50 or 100? I generally find that players do better with smaller numbers...

3. Any particular reason you chose 40 points as the limit? Do you see this as depending on the type of campaign? Example - a normal low fantasy setting might have the limit at 40 (or even less), whilst a high powered epic fantasy campaign might have a limit of 42 or 45.

4. What about characters who start with more or less than 32 attribute points? Does a hobbit with 30 starting points top out at 38? What about a lizard man who starts with 38 (as I recall) points? EDIT - I re-read it and it says “8 extra attribute points”, which answers my question (at least with sub-32 point characters). Will the lizard man max out at 46 points, though?

5. Should the XP costs for raising attributes be modified for characters which have starting attributes that aren’t 8? A dwarf starts with ST 10 and DX 6. Should he pay the same EP as a human to raise his ST to 11 (which would be below average for a dwarf but above average for the human)? Or should be pay the same to raise his ST to 11 as a human pays to raise his ST to 9?

6. I like not tying mana to the particular piece of wood. That keeps wizards from getting hosed if they lose their staff. That was my primary issue with earlier versions of this idea.

7. Are you revising the resting time required for wizards to regain ST? If the rule is generally applicable, this implies something like 1 hour per point of ST recovered. Or 2-ish hours, depending on how many hours “half a day” represents.

[Rick_Smith]

Originally Posted by Steve Jackson

Yes; raising the low stat is cheapest. I want to tempt people to un-dump their dump stat!

Hi Steve, everyone.
I quite like the new rules above, actually.

I'm not sure that 'un-dumping the dump stat', is ideal tho. I like it when some characters have low ST and some have high ST. The rules give an experience bonus that encourages all humans to have 13, 13 and 14 divided up between their attributes. This also makes it easier for goblins to get their 8 extra attributes than humans.

I would prefer that of the 8 attributes that you can buy simply cost 100, 200, 300, etc., regardless of if you are increasing the dump stat or your strong one.

However, this is a minor quibble.

***
The thing that most surprised me is that figures could naturally buy only 8 attributes. Wow! But I think that it is a good design decision.

Since wishes are going to be VERY much in demand now, I think it would be wise to look at how wishes are made, and the economics of wishes. In particular, I suggest that wish granting demons have variable IQs.

I wrote up an essay on the economics of wishes here...

https://tft.brainiac.com/RicksTFT/GM...illsInTFT.html

If you would like to use this in the new TFT, I would be willing to sell you the rights for a few cents a word, as if I had submitted it to SJG as a submission.

Warm regards, Rick.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Steve Jackson

Yes; raising the low stat is cheapest. I want to tempt people to un-dump their dump stat!

It's always a problem when the xp system doesn't match the character creation system, because it encourages you to take a dump stat as it reduces the xp cost to reach your final goal. For example, let's say my goal is stats of 16/16/8.

If I start at 12/12/8, it will cost me 6,600 xp to reach my goal. If I start at 16/8/8, it will cost me 4,700 xp.

[Rick_Smith]

Originally Posted by Steve Jackson

...

Mana and the Wizard’s Staff
(Some of this goes elsewhere, notably under STAFF in the section on wizardry.)
Mana is a stat, not of the wizard, but of the wizard’s staff. When a wizard first creates a staff, it has 0 mana. By spending 100 XP, the wizard may add 1 to the mana of the staff, up to a limit of the wizard’s current IQ score. Each point of mana can be spent like a point of ST to power spells.
Once spent, the mana must be replaced. To “recharge” his staff, the wizard must either spend 5 ST points, or spend a half-day in contemplation, for each ST point replaced. (An exploit is clearly possible here using the Drain ST spell and a whole lot of prisoners. I don’t see it coming up enough in play to be a problem, and it encourages evil rulers to keep their prisoners alive so their evil wizards can farm ST. Maybe good rulers would do it too, at least as part of some punishments.)
If a staff is lost or destroyed, the wizard’s next one will have the same mana stat. The XP was spent, not to enhance a stick of wood, but to improve the wizard’s understanding of the spell.
A wizard may have only one staff at a time. If he loses his staff, the act of making another will disempower the old staff.
No one but the creating wizard himself may draw ST from a staff.
The “Staff of Power” spell doubles the mana that a staff can hold.

...

Hi everyone, Steve.
On my first read thru, I was paying the most attention to the experience part of the post. But thinking about the staff rules...

-- It sounds like a wizard can power spells with fatigue ST like normal, with damage (such as with the Death Spell type spells), and with mana from the staff. So a ST 10, IQ 14 wizard with a maxed out staff would effectively have 24 fatigue points to spend on spells. Correct?

-- I highlighted a section of Steve's post above. In a half day (12 hours), a wizard would regain 48 fatigue. Divide that by 5 (round down) and he can put back 9 fST. If I'm reading the rules right, in that half day of meditation, the wizard can recharge one mana point in the staff. This sounds wildly inefficient.

This is even worse because while resting the wizard could be talking to people, reading a book, watching a play, etc. But while meditating the wizard can do nothing else. Meditating is more restrictive than resting, so it should fill up the fatigue ST in the staff faster. But as written it is a lot worse.

How about, if the wizard does nothing but meditate for half a day, the staff is simply completely recharged?

Warm regards, Rick.

EDIT: Rereading what Steve wrote, I'm not sure if he means that you can spend 5 fatigue ST to recharge one point of mana in the staff, or if the wizard must sacrifice 5 damage to recharge one point. In that case, recharging the staff would be a long and painful task. If you have to sacrifice damage to recharge the staff, then using the staff's power is a last resort thing, and only having to spend half a day of concentration to put one fatigue into it makes more sense.

regards.

[Skarg]

Originally Posted by Rick_Smith

-- It sounds like a wizard can power spells with fatigue ST like normal, with damage (such as with the Death Spell type spells), and with mana from the staff. So a ST 10, IQ 14 wizard with a maxed out staff would effectively have 24 fatigue points to spend on spells. Correct?

I read it as also requiring 100 EP per point, so that wizard would also have to spend 1400 EP to get Staff-14. I think a non-Wizard would need 3x that in EP. (It might be good if the cost ramped up as its level increases, too.)

Originally Posted by Rick_Smith

-- I highlighted a section of Steve's post above. In a half day (12 hours), a wizard would regain 48 fatigue. Divide that by 5 (round down) and he can put back 9 fST. If I'm reading the rules right, in that half day of meditation, the wizard can recharge one mana point in the staff. This sounds wildly inefficient.

Yes, compared to the other rate. Though it also means the wizard has to drop 5 fatigue 9 times during the day, and has to be resting, while it might (?) be that the contemplation can be done while hiking?

[David Bofinger]

Trying to separate the new XP system into effects:

• The game system trusts the GM far more, but also puts more responsibility on the GM to get the awards right. This is a matter of style. It might be nice to have both systems in the game but we can live with just one.
• Maybe I haven't understood, but if the rate per session is 25 to 100, and the cost to improve an attribute is 500 XP, then it might take quite a few sessions to progress in attributes. Talents are cheaper, but there might not be a talent you specifically need at the moment.
• The rate at which characters acquire experience points is now independent of how powerful they are.
• The XP cost to provide a character with a particular level of attributes now goes up kind of polynomially rather than exponentially, i.e. much more slowly for high attributes. This might override the previous change and make attribute bloat more likely rather than less. Personally I never saw it as a huge issue anyway.
• The addition of a channel for wizards to improve themselves (staff mana) is a benefit to wizards over fighters.
• The separation of IQ prerequisites from memory for talents and spells is a small disadvantage for fighters. It's a more significant disadvantage for skill monkeys, thieves, scouts, etc.. It's a much nastier disadvantage for wizards.
• The last two points might all cancel out, who knows.
• I second someone's suggestion of dividing all XP awards by something, and I suggest "something" be between 10 and 25 inclusive.
• As you get experienced, talents look cheaper and cheaper, whereas inexperienced characters will be relatively lean, purpose-built characters. That might be good or bad, it probably needs play test to know. Someone had a proposal like this where talent cost stayed flat while attribute cost rose exponentially and I said that was a problem. It's still an issue here but less of one because the cost of attributes rises more slowly.
• The system encourages an evening-up of attributes, and for experienced characters talents are cheap so an experienced character will probably buy lots of them. That might reduce the variety of characters, especially at the upper end. This is something to worry about.
• Comparison with standard TFT plus Rick's mIQ mechanism:
  • 32 to 36 point characters: attribute cost has gone from 125 to maybe 600; talent cost from 42 to 100.
  • 41 to 45 point characters: attribute cost has gone from 1000 to maybe 600; talent cost from 333 to 100.
  The actual numbers don't mean a lot because XP awards will differ between systems in an unpredictable way. But the attribute to talent ratio is always higher in the new system. This may reflect Rick having created many new talents, several of which will be must-haves for any particular character, so talents were more useful in that system and making them more expensive was reasonable.

Trying to construct the same example characters as I have in previous :

Swordsman: ST 13, DX 11, IQ 8; Knife, Sword, Shield, Running: something like 3400 XPs. Presumably that (or a bit more, since he's short on talents) is what characters start on?

Conan the Cimmerian: ST 24, DX 18, IQ 14; maybe 60 points of talents; something like 45-50K XPs, of course this is a complete joke. By comparison, a character with these attributes and a quarter as many talents would cost about the same in the old system. Go above this level and the new system is cheaper, even with lots of extra talents.

All in all, I think this system might work OK. It's hard to know before play testing. I'm maybe a little worried the variety of characters might decline. But it's giving me an encouraging feeling.

[David Bofinger]

Originally Posted by Steve Jackson

You may use experience points to buy a total of 8 additional attribute points. These may all go into one stat, or they can be divided up. After the eighth additional attribute point (which gets humans to a total of 40), attributes may only be increased by magic, such as a Wish.

I misread this on the first time through. I'm not sure what it means for character generation. Does it mean that everyone gets their starting IQ in free talents initially?

I think it's very odd to have one system for 0 to 32 attributes and another for 32 to 40 attribute points and then a third one for 40+ attributes. What is the purpose of this cut and change? Why not one system all the way through?

The idea that only wishes can allow progress after 40 attributes ... I assume most GMs will handle this by making obtaining a wish the reward of the adventure, and then the players can argue about which of them gets it, so that each player gets a wish occasionally. Or the GM will house rule away the 40 point cap.

But the PCs will still be getting experience points, so they'll still be buying talents ... and by the time they would have reached 44 or 48 attribute points, they'll be liberally festooned with talents because why not. And then talents cease to be a defining characteristic of characters.

I think this leads to some very peculiar consequences. It's the one aspect where I don't understand why Steve wants to do this.

A single system approach:

• Everyone starts with ST 8, DX 8, IQ 8 and some XPs. The number of XPs might be higher or lower according to what sort of campaign it is. Maybe 3,500 would be comparable with standard rules?
• Everyone buys talents and attributes as they see fit.
• Nonhumans have an actual attribute that depends on the attribute calculated here by some formula or other e.g. "for a dwarf add two to strength".
• No cap.

What would be the consequences of this?