From: acb@romeo.cs.duke.edu
Date: Sat 18 Aug 1990 - 09:56:33 EEST
One of the more common complaints about RQ is the experience system. First
off, it leads to skill check frenzy, where the player tries to use as many
skills as possible to get as many checks as possible. Second off, it causes
the players to concentrate on skill check gathering as opposed to the
adventure itself. It also requires book-keeping on the GM's part to remember
if a player succeeded in a skill that he would not immediately know yes or no.
It also doesn't make much sense.
To correct for this, I have eliminated skill checks completely and replaced them with an experience point system. I do not have complex calculations to determine how much a particular encounter was worth; instead, I evaluate the characters' performance and reward based on that. I haven't actually used this system enough to tell what a good number of experience points is for a typical adventure, but in part that depends on your style/power level of play. Players should be limited in what percentage of their points they can put in a single skill, based in large part on what they do on the adventure. You might even wish to give a certain part of the experience as "You get 50 riding experience points, and 250 general experience. Since we didn't do any combat, no more than 10% (25 exp. points) can go into any single combat skill." Note that I think it is perfectly reasonable to have skills like 65.34%, which means you have 34 of the 66 points needed to go up to 66%.
Anyway, the way the system works is: to go from x% in a skill to x+1% requires x+1 experience points. (Thus from 0% to 1% is 1 experience point.) In total, we get this table:
% cost % cost % cost % cost
1 1 26 351 51 1326 76 2926
2 3 27 378 52 1378 77 3003
3 6 28 406 53 1431 78 3081
4 10 29 435 54 1485 79 3160
5 15 30 465 55 1540 80 3240
6 21 31 496 56 1596 81 3321
7 28 32 528 57 1653 82 3403
8 36 33 561 58 1711 83 3486
9 45 34 595 59 1770 84 3570
10 55 35 630 60 1830 85 3655
11 66 36 666 61 1891 86 3741
12 78 37 703 62 1953 87 3828
13 91 38 741 63 2016 88 3916
14 105 39 780 64 2080 89 4005
15 120 40 820 65 2145 90 4095
16 136 41 861 66 2211 91 4186
17 153 42 903 67 2278 92 4278
18 171 43 946 68 2346 93 4371
19 190 44 990 69 2415 94 4465
20 210 45 1035 70 2485 95 4560
21 231 46 1081 71 2556 96 4656
22 253 47 1128 72 2628 97 4753
23 276 48 1176 73 2701 98 4851
24 300 49 1225 74 2775 99 4950
25 325 50 1275 75 2850 100 5050
I have found this experience system is good for creating characters: you just build them with a certain number of experience points, based on how good they are. I replace every x1 on the previous experience charts with 40 exp., so the age roll isn't so important. It tends to equalize skills somewhat.
This system also allows for a similar skills system. To work this, I give various skills a relatedness factor. For example, bastard sword is .8 like broad sword. To get your effective skill with the weapon you're less effective with, take the square of the SSM (similar skills modifier) and multiply that by the difference between the skills. Add that to the lower skill to get your effective skill. Training up the lower skill costs (1-SSM) as much.
Thus if you have 80% bastard sword skill and 40% broadsword skill, your effective broadsword skill is 40% + (.8 * .8 * (80% - 40%)), which works out to 66%. It would cost you 20% as much to train up your broadsword skill to 80% as it would if you had no bastard sword skill.
Hopefully by next issue I will be able to combine this with my fighting style concept. I have a fair idea how it should work, but I'd like to flesh out the details before I write it all out.
-Andrew
acb@romeo.cs.duke.edu
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