Forum

Current Rules for additional Abilities are:

-You get a skill to 18
-Storyline Progression

While these are fun, I wonder if their would be a good place for a more progressive development of Abilities. I played quite a bit of Forbidden Lands, and really liked the ability to continue to by abilities, and that it just spent at a different rate of XP than skills.

So I wonder what it would take to change it around so you can buy them by trading in your advancements from your skill rolls into eventually buying an advancement. It would slow skill improvement, but some players might enjoy the opportunity to have more abilities in exchange for slower skill progression.

Thoughts:
-At the end of session, you can trade skill points down for ability points. After you have accumulated 10 ability points you can buy an additional ability.
-After rolling for skill advancement if you succeeded instead of taking a skill point boost you can mark it on your ability track. After you accumulate 5, you can take an additional ability.

The numbers on this are somewhat arbitrary, but I wanted to see if people had any thoughts.

I made a similar suggestion of 5 advancement marks for a HA based during the Beta phase. That was based on the original advancement rate of one new HA per 5 sessions (assuming that players would bank an advancement per session). I think 10 would line up with buying special abilities in other games with a similar advancement system (Mongoose’s RQ2), although I am working from memory.

I am actually tempted to see if if could retrofit the Pendragon / BRP advancement system where there are no advancement rolls awarded but where you tick a skill when it is successfully used in an adventure and then roll to advance all those skills after the adventure. It also had rules for training etc. in downtime which gave PCs a reason to seek out training. Main thing would be working out how long it takes to learn a HA.

On the topic, i would be interested in an alternative method to advancement rolls too. Say the table find them it to random.

A basic point buy experience system for instance (like forbidden lands).
Skill advance costs next rank and a heroic ability cost 25 or something along those lines. Then you award X amount of experience per session.

I am actually tempted to see if if could retrofit the Pendragon / BRP advancement system where there are no advancement rolls awarded but where you tick a skill when it is successfully used in an adventure and then roll to advance all those skills after the adventure. It also had rules for training etc. in downtime which gave PCs a reason to seek out training. Main thing would be working out how long it takes to learn a HA.

I dont think the rolling for advancement like in BRP works as well here because the spread of success is so small. I think thats why they switched it to roll to see if you advance at all (in brp adding 1-6 to a % skill is a pretty small advance. Where as adding +1 to a skill on a d20 is pretty big.

But yeah I see where your going.

If you were training a HA i'd probabaly be the same multplier. you have to find a trainer that has the right abilities and itd take ~5 downtime actions with that trainer, to eventually advance the ability? Where as 1 downtime action with a skill is enough to give it a single advancement.

On the topic, i would be interested in an alternative method to advancement rolls too. Say the table find them it to random.

A basic point buy experience system for instance (like forbidden lands).
Skill advance costs next rank and a heroic ability cost 25 or something along those lines. Then you award X amount of experience per session.

Considering the spread of abilities and skills you could probabaly port over the XP system fairly cleanly from Forbidden Lands:
You ask all the same question (mayhaps replace a few since it doesnt have the same conditions).

And then to raise a skill its the value of the next level of the skill: If you raising from 12-13 it costs 13.

And then just a flat rate for Heroic Abilities like you said: 15, 20, 25. Youd probabaly want to adjust it on the fly depending on how often they are gaining XP.

It could theoretically make for a slower advancing campaign as well.

I am actually tempted to see if if could retrofit the Pendragon / BRP advancement system where there are no advancement rolls awarded but where you tick a skill when it is successfully used in an adventure (in stressful circumstances) and then roll to advance all those skills after the adventure. It also had rules for training etc. in downtime which gave PCs a reason to seek out training. Main thing would be working out how long it takes to learn a HA.

I dont think the rolling for advancement like in BRP works as well here because the spread of success is so small. I think thats why they switched it to roll to see if you advance at all (in brp adding 1-6 to a % skill is a pretty small advance. Where as adding +1 to a skill on a d20 is pretty big.

But yeah I see where your going.

If you were training a HA i'd probabaly be the same multplier. you have to find a trainer that has the right abilities and itd take ~5 downtime actions with that trainer, to eventually advance the ability? Where as 1 downtime action with a skill is enough to give it a single advancement.

I’m not sure I understand what you’re getting at?

BRP and Pendragon (which is BRP using a d20, at least the version (4e) I have is) does use ‘roll to see if you advance’. You tick the box on a successful use of a skill (1/adventure) and then roll for each ticked skill to see if you advance after the adventure. You have to fail that roll to advance the skill just like in Dragonbane. I also note that 1-6% increase on a d100 (average of around 3-4; EDIT the default is 1d6 or 3 but the BGB for BRP gives options for 1d8(4) or 1d10(5) for faster advancement) is not too far off +1 on a d20 (which is what Pendragon uses)- in fact I seem to remember early versions of RuneQuest just advanced you by +5%.

The main difference is there is no awarding of advancement checks at the end of a session, and advancement rolls are made at the end of an adventure (BRP/Pendragon) not session (Dragonbane), which if anything actually slows down advancement - although you might be able to advance more skills. From memory, training in BRP also isn’t automatic success - you get a roll per period of training, but I seem to remember your trainer gives you a bonus.

@zcthu3 -

I actually misunderstood what you were describing before. Thats interesting to know more about how that end of the system works since I dont play alot of BRP, and have never actually played Pendragon.

@zcthu3 -

I actually misunderstood what you were describing before. Thats interesting to know more about how that end of the system works since I dont play alot of BRP, and have never actually played Pendragon.

No worries, I thought I’d missed something, but wasn’t sure what