Leveling up skills

[Bill_in_IN]

Originally Posted by David Bofinger

The problem starts when the player says, "I imagine Kurt as a demigod, above average ST and DX, genius IQ, ..." and you have to tell them no.

My theory of character design is:
1. defining talents, e.g. "He's a merchant."
2. IQ, determined from Step 1
3. ST and DX, using whatever points are left
4. Other talents.

The game kind of implies doing 2 & 3 first, then 1 and 4, and this is broken.



Most characters get pushed into the combatant role because the campaign they are in is mostly about combat, and whether they live or die depends in large part on their grace and tankishness.

I concur.

Originally Posted by David Bofinger

As soon as the mechanics differ between periods, players are pushed into optimising by choosing abilities during the period when they are cheapest. So RAW characters get their IQ during generation then load up on DX and maybe ST afterwards.

Also the inelegance offends me.



And in a few games it might make sense. If all characters are ordinary children in our world, and at game start they get thrown through a mystic portal to a secondary world and start acquiring new skills, then it makes a lot of sense to use different mechanics in the two phases.

...


It's a consequence of constant talent cost and rapidly rising attribute cost, and hard to fix unless you decide to hate at least one of those two.

With a couple of NPCs in my game, I experimented with beginning characters with a twist. These two characters come from privilege. Like nobility/knights, they have been trained/educated their entire lives to be warriors and leaders. So, their back story allowed for them to have more talents than their total IQ per current RAW. For example, one has an IQ high enough to be an Expert Horseman and a pole weapon expert because his IQ can accommodate it. So, he's an expert with a javelin and a spear thrower while on horseback. Not an ominous character but well-equipped to be a pimple-faced officer in the Army. The thought process is that they have been collecting XP since they were children. They increased their Attributes from much lower than 32 points even though that is where they are starting in the game. After introducing this aspect via NPC backstories, I could entertain doing such a thing with a PC provided that the general process was properly tracked. It would make character generation a bit longer and the checks for avoiding rule violations would also have to be done. However, I would reserve it for PCs that have a backstory that justifies it. In this case, the child of royalty or noblemen has years of access to training and education that is inaccessible to others. So, while I still insist that they start at 32 points, they can have more talents than the total of their beginning IQ. The assumption is that they started at a lower Attribute total as a child and has been spending XP on learning talents while much of their ST, DX, and IQ has progressed to the young adult total of 32 points.

So, this character generation process would be it's own side project between the GM and player. The new PC can be introduced into the same time period as the rest of the game but the generation process goes into more detail to account for the backstory. To some degree, this happens with every character that is generated but the average beginning character has an average life up to that point and are limited per RAW in their talents at creation. Some GMs want a small backstory for new characters. The process that I mentioned allows for a more extensive backstory and it's effect on character generation. As a GM, I wouldn't make it the norm by any means but we do strive to have an interesting array of PCs and NPCs in our games. You don't really have to change the base rules to do this. You just have to allow some framework for the character to have actually started its XP earning and Attribute development at a time that is earlier than their introduction to the game. At character generation, a GM could allow for more talents based upon their back story and attributes.

[TippetsTX]

So this thread has strayed a bit from Timm's original proposal.

We seem to be in agreement that RAW progression, especially for talents, is unsatisfying, but there are different theories for how that can be fixed. I'm a fan of any that expand choices. My own approach requires a willingness to abandon many of TFT's default design assumptions which clearly won't appeal to everyone, but TBH, the closer you try to stick w/ RAW the more limited your options IMO.

[David Bofinger]

Originally Posted by TippetsTX

We seem to be in agreement that RAW progression, especially for talents, is unsatisfying, but there are different theories for how that can be fixed. I'm a fan of any that expand choices.

I go further than that, by encouraging internal disagreement on the subject. I think the system of experience needs to vary according to the kind of campaign. It ought to be possible to have a low level gritty campaign where attributes stop progressing at a low level, an epic campaign where characters start as demi-gods, a hero to zero campaign, etc.

My suggestion is to put parameters in the experience system:

• Initial attribute total S
• Cost to raise attribute A until attribute soft cap C, then doubles every point thereafter
• Cost to buy talent (per point) or spell T, typically might be 40% of A

The experience rules include a bunch of suggested values for S, A, C and T, for different kinds of campaign.

[David Bofinger]

Originally Posted by Bill_in_IN

[noble characters] start at 32 points, they can have more talents than the total of their beginning IQ

It sounds like some characters are just going to be better than others. Not many players will want to pass up the improvement, especially if it lets them make the character more rounded and comes with other advantages. I think you'll find lots of players wanting to play noble scions, and if you don't want entire parties of younger sons then you'll need to restrict it and anyone who misses out will be upset. Better to make the benefit cost, which takes us to the neighbourhood of mIQ.

[Bill_in_IN]

Originally Posted by David Bofinger

It sounds like some characters are just going to be better than others. Not many players will want to pass up the improvement, especially if it lets them make the character more rounded and comes with other advantages. I think you'll find lots of players wanting to play noble scions, and if you don't want entire parties of younger sons then you'll need to restrict it and anyone who misses out will be upset. Better to make the benefit cost, which takes us to the neighbourhood of mIQ.

Thus far, I have only used it for NPCs. You made a good point about the use of such a starting character shift. One would have to be very specific in the RARE ability to provide such a path for a PC.

[Jpot]

HOW rules set does away with attribute increases, and introduces an Endurance stat (EN), with 10 starting points to give. 5 pts go to skills/spells at 1/2 and 2/1 cost (Heroes & Wizards). Meanwhile, it focuses on "skill levels" so that the characters do not become innately more powerful, but they can become very skilled. Each point spent on skills increases the Adj Attribute score by +1. Most up to max of 3. Cost is 100x pt level. (+1 is 100xp, +2 is 200 and so on.)
I'm trying to work through what it eventually looks like as I've never played it that way.

[David Bofinger]

Originally Posted by Jpot

HOW rules set does away with attribute increases, and introduces an Endurance stat (EN)

I've never really understood separating off EN (or as GURPS calls it HT) from ST. Why did they think this was a good idea?

[Bill_in_IN]

Originally Posted by David Bofinger

I've never really understood separating off EN (or as GURPS calls it HT) from ST. Why did they think this was a good idea?

I have no idea why GURPS picked the use of hit points like D&D. In D&D, there was a separation in character ST and how much damage they can take. You could have ST 17 and 100 HP. If I remember D&D correctly damage wasn't directly reduced by armor. The armor class reduced the DX or To Hit roll. Once the hit was made, you rolled damage and it all was marked off. I can't remember of GURPS (late 1980's) did that.

To me, it's quite simple. The stronger the character, the more damage they can take. The more armor a character has, the more damage is blocked. That's one reason why I preferred TFT over D&D.

[Shostak]

Originally Posted by Bill_in_IN

I have no idea why GURPS picked the use of hit points like D&D. In D&D, there was a separation in character ST and how much damage they can take. You could have ST 17 and 100 HP. If I remember D&D correctly damage wasn't directly reduced by armor. The armor class reduced the DX or To Hit roll. Once the hit was made, you rolled damage and it all was marked off. I can't remember of GURPS (late 1980's) did that.

To me, it's quite simple. The stronger the character, the more damage they can take. The more armor a character has, the more damage is blocked. That's one reason why I preferred TFT over D&D.

In GURPS Strength and Health are Basic Attributes. Hit Points in GURPS is a Secondary Attribute that derives from Strength, as does Basic Lift. Fatigue is a Secondary Attribute that derives from Health.

[Jpot]

Originally Posted by David Bofinger

I've never really understood separating off EN (or as GURPS calls it HT) from ST. Why did they think this was a good idea?

I can’t speak for SJ, but from what I understand HOW attempts to blend TFT with the “feel” of the Moldvay box set D&D (edition I first played). Since the rules did away with attribute increases, EN still enables a character to have a little extra something to make them heroic - and it could extend dungeon crawls. Most NPCs and creatures do not have this stat, but GM can add to adversaries that are meant to be recurring or tough.