Adventure Song:
Aug. 22nd, 2014 10:16 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexandraerinI'm pretty fond of character progression systems that are based on achieving goals rather than amassing points, especially when the most concrete and objective way the system presents to get those points is to defeat (which is inevitably read as "kill") opponents. This is not a new thing; I've long preferred it, and even in point-based systems, I'm more likely to fudge them to create a pleasing arc than anything else.
Increasingly, I've been fond of "at the GM's discretion, about every 2-5 adventures depending on magnitude" school of doing things, but one of the things that I've always wondered about is how to strike a balance between rapid enough advancement to satisfy those players who are eager to get into the deep end of the pool while not overwhelming players who are still learning how to play the game, never mind what all those fancy special abilities they got at level 1 mean.
But today it occurred to me that this is exactly what the GM's discretion should be used for. Advancement of the character's abilities should come when the players are ready. If you think about it, it makes sense, right? You have to master the abilities that you have before you're ready to improve them or take on new ones.
The very very very basic rule is this: at the end of an adventure--not just a session, but the completion of a quest or a goal--a player who is comfortable with what they're doing can request advancement, which the GM will in the usual course of things grant, given two fairly easy to satisfy conditions.
The first condition is that the player must actually understand the major parts of their character's abilities. If there's a class ability or side bonus they just plain don't use, that won't hold them back, but if a level 1 wizard still has to be reminded that they don't have enough spell channels every time they try to cast a new spell while sustaining another, they aren't ready for wizard level 2.
The second condition is that the player must be able to point to something that shows their mastery, which can be anything from "there was that cool thing I did with my wizard magic" to "hey, we just completed an important quest and I helped with my wizard magic". If nothing suitable has come up, the player can specify they are taking some down time to return to wizarding school, meet with their mentor, or just put in some serious practice, et cetera. The GM can turn this into a sort of "threshold test" by requiring them to duel a rival, solve some puzzle that taxes their class abilities, complete some task, etc., thereby satisfying the condition, but if that seems cumbersome, it can just be "A month passes. Welcome to level seven. What are your new spells?"
(A threshold quest would be the same basic idea, for the whole party.)
Advancement can be handled on a group or individual basis, with the caveat that no individual in the group should get more than 2 levels above the lowest level in the group. If someone is lagging behind, it then falls to the rest of the group to help that player to the point where they're ready to catch up.
Power game theorists reading this are probably thinking "FOOL! IF PLAYERS CAN REQUEST ADVANCEMENT AFTER ANY ADVENTURE AND THEY JUST HAVE TO POINT TO HAVING DONE THE THING THEY EXCEL AT EXCELLENTLY TO JUSTIFY IT, YOU'VE CREATED A SYSTEM WHERE 1 ADVENTURE EQUALS 1 EXPERIENCE LEVEL."
And you know? If that's how a group wants to roll, that's how the group wants to roll. I know plenty of people who use 1 adventure = 1 experience level verbatim as a house rule for every edition of D&D, either because they want to get to the epic level stuff quickly or because when you meet less than once a week that's the only way to see the higher levels. And I don't see a problem with that, if that's how the group wants to do it.
On the other hand, if one player wants to race to the top and the others aren't into or up for that... there is going to be some tension, and having rules that force compromise and discussion about the rate of advancement are probably one of the better ways to handle that, other than saying "find another group, LOL".
I'll probably present a very bare bones experience point system as an alternative just because some people would rather defer to a numeric system than leave these things up to individual judgment on both sides, but I think this has a lot of probabilities.
Increasingly, I've been fond of "at the GM's discretion, about every 2-5 adventures depending on magnitude" school of doing things, but one of the things that I've always wondered about is how to strike a balance between rapid enough advancement to satisfy those players who are eager to get into the deep end of the pool while not overwhelming players who are still learning how to play the game, never mind what all those fancy special abilities they got at level 1 mean.
But today it occurred to me that this is exactly what the GM's discretion should be used for. Advancement of the character's abilities should come when the players are ready. If you think about it, it makes sense, right? You have to master the abilities that you have before you're ready to improve them or take on new ones.
The very very very basic rule is this: at the end of an adventure--not just a session, but the completion of a quest or a goal--a player who is comfortable with what they're doing can request advancement, which the GM will in the usual course of things grant, given two fairly easy to satisfy conditions.
The first condition is that the player must actually understand the major parts of their character's abilities. If there's a class ability or side bonus they just plain don't use, that won't hold them back, but if a level 1 wizard still has to be reminded that they don't have enough spell channels every time they try to cast a new spell while sustaining another, they aren't ready for wizard level 2.
The second condition is that the player must be able to point to something that shows their mastery, which can be anything from "there was that cool thing I did with my wizard magic" to "hey, we just completed an important quest and I helped with my wizard magic". If nothing suitable has come up, the player can specify they are taking some down time to return to wizarding school, meet with their mentor, or just put in some serious practice, et cetera. The GM can turn this into a sort of "threshold test" by requiring them to duel a rival, solve some puzzle that taxes their class abilities, complete some task, etc., thereby satisfying the condition, but if that seems cumbersome, it can just be "A month passes. Welcome to level seven. What are your new spells?"
(A threshold quest would be the same basic idea, for the whole party.)
Advancement can be handled on a group or individual basis, with the caveat that no individual in the group should get more than 2 levels above the lowest level in the group. If someone is lagging behind, it then falls to the rest of the group to help that player to the point where they're ready to catch up.
Power game theorists reading this are probably thinking "FOOL! IF PLAYERS CAN REQUEST ADVANCEMENT AFTER ANY ADVENTURE AND THEY JUST HAVE TO POINT TO HAVING DONE THE THING THEY EXCEL AT EXCELLENTLY TO JUSTIFY IT, YOU'VE CREATED A SYSTEM WHERE 1 ADVENTURE EQUALS 1 EXPERIENCE LEVEL."
And you know? If that's how a group wants to roll, that's how the group wants to roll. I know plenty of people who use 1 adventure = 1 experience level verbatim as a house rule for every edition of D&D, either because they want to get to the epic level stuff quickly or because when you meet less than once a week that's the only way to see the higher levels. And I don't see a problem with that, if that's how the group wants to do it.
On the other hand, if one player wants to race to the top and the others aren't into or up for that... there is going to be some tension, and having rules that force compromise and discussion about the rate of advancement are probably one of the better ways to handle that, other than saying "find another group, LOL".
I'll probably present a very bare bones experience point system as an alternative just because some people would rather defer to a numeric system than leave these things up to individual judgment on both sides, but I think this has a lot of probabilities.