Advancement in Tales from Wilderland

[Rich H]

Playing through TfW, how far along this road do people think a character should get? Once we establish that we can take a stab at breaking it down by adventure?

Okay Rich, I'll bite!

Let's also include Darkening of Mirkwood. Personally, I'm of the opinion that should a character survive through the entirety of the campaign (including all the adventures from TfW) they still shouldn't have scores of 6 in Wisdom, Valour, and a weaponskill; so they shouldn't accrue 169 XP.

Just throwing it out there for the moment but I think a rating of 5 in Wisdom or Valour, with the other trait having a rating of 4, and a rating of 5 in one Weaponskill is pretty high. I don't think they should be any higher. So I reckon that's a total XP spend of 78 points - it's late and I'm tired so someone check this for me.

Over a 30 year period, that's 2.6 XP per year.

Assuming 1 adventure each year, that's 2.6 XP per adventure.
Assuming 2 adventures each year, that's 1.3 XP per adventure.
Assuming 1.5 adventures each year, that's 1.7 XP per adventure.

These seem extremely low, so perhaps we need to accept that there should be more XP available, which would therefore lead to higher ratings in Valour, Wisdom, and a Weaponskill than I initially laid out above.

Thoughts everyone?

[Angelalex242]

Well, 169 might be the 'base rate.' You can modify it up for fast growth, or slow it down for slow growth.

Before we do anything else however, we need the total number of adventures spread across all modules.

If there's 17 modules, for example, it might be 10XP per shot. But if there's only 8, it might be 21.

The mythic 6 Valor/6 Wisdom/6 Weapon can be thought of as 'You have achieved your place among the Wise.'

The characters become gofers of the White Council, and so on, and they become 'big names' of the world, mentioned in the same breath as Elrond and Dain and Aragorn and so on.

The real trick, though, is that a human, by then, will be too old to keep adventuring. Dunedain/Dwarves/Elves, however, will still be ready to go in time for the War of the Ring.

[Rich H]

The mythic 6 Valor/6 Wisdom/6 Weapon can be thought of as 'You have achieved your place among the Wise.'

I think the only issue with that is that I wouldn't build many legendary NPCs with those values. For me characters with 6/6/6 (gulp!) across those traits would actually outshine people like Elrond, Gandalf, and Aragorn. Not by much, granted, as Gandalf (for example) may have a Wisdom of 6, Valour of 5, and Sword of 5 (maybe even just 4), but they [the PCs] would still be *better* in those areas. Mind you, NPCs *are* built using different rules to PCs but I still think it's useful to think of them with Valour and Wisdom scores as they are a barometer for PC competence.

This is all assuming that such ratings can't go higher than 6. I think there's a perfectly valid case for ratings slightly higher for truly exceptional circumstances/characters.

But is that a problem? Shouldn't our PCs be the stars of their gameworld? I think so, but they can be the stars and it not relate directly to the highest attribute rating.

Well, 169 might be the 'base rate.' You can modify it up for fast growth, or slow it down for slow growth.

I don't think 169 XP should be the base rate, that's the amount of XP needed to max out in Valour 6, Wisdom 6, and a Weaponskill of 6. There's nowhere really to go beyond that. The base should be lower to allow it to be reduced or increased using your logic of slow or fast growth, respectively.

I quoted 78 XP in my above post to get a spread of 5 and 4 in Wisdom/Valour and 5 in a Weaponskill. Perhaps that should be the lower point, with 169 being the upper. The middle point between those two is... 123.5.

Call it 124.

What would 124 XP buy us?

Wisdom or Valour at 6, with the other at 5, and a Weaponskill of 5. That all costs 119* XP, so there's a bit left over to spend. Obviously other combinations can be derived - eg, more of a focus on the Weaponskill.

That kind of feels about right. The PC hasn't 'maxed out' in all 3 scores but they do have extremely impressive capabilities - fitting for someone who has survived the trials and terrors of DoM + TfW?

*again, someone check as I'm tired and shortly off to bed!

...

A spread of 124 XP over a 30 year campaign nets us a rate of XP as follows:

4.13 XP per year.

Assuming 1 adventure each year, that's 4.13 XP per adventure.
Assuming 2 adventures each year, that's 2.065 XP per adventure.
Assuming 1.5 adventures each year, that's 2.75 XP per adventure.

Does that seem about right? 4 XP per adventure? Obviously an average that can be tweaked depending on the adventure's content but bear in mind that if you increase the accrued XP in one adventure it should ideally be offset with a lower amount in another in order to maintain the progression throughout the course of the campaign.

I think the game is designed with the idea that PCs will be involved in one adventure per year.

You could therefore represent XP accrual as:

Slow Growth/Power Progression: 2 XP per adventure.
Medium Growth/Power Progression: 4 XP per adventure.
Fast Growth/Power Progression: 6 XP per adventure.

... I appreciate that I've consciously rounded down on the slow progression and then rounded up on the fast progression in order to created some difference between the three 'tiers'. It should also be noted that if you wish to award bonus XPs during the campaign then some of the above points should be 'banked' in order to do this. If you award additional XP to those above then the rate of progression will obviously be increased.

So, a GM would pick one of the above rates depending on his own personal tastes as to how powerful he'd like the PCs to be in his campaign (if they all survived to the end).

Thoughts/comments?

[Angelalex242]

Hmmm. Well, it's up to personal tastes of LMs, of course.

Equally important, however, because the growth of common skills is exponentially slower...

How many AP should they have to go along with that XP total?

Consider it takes 60 AP to get a single common skill from 0 to 6.

And there's 18 common skills.

If characters started with 0 in everything, they'd need 1080 AP to max all common skills at 6.

Compare that to the 169 for maxed out XP...

Characters need 6.5 AP for every XP gained to keep common skills growing at a similar rate.

To keep that up by the normal rules, you'd have to gain an AP every time you rolled the dice for a common skill, and even that might not do it.

[Rich H]

How many AP should they have to go along with that XP total?

That's impossible to assess due to the variable number of skill rolls in an adventure, the impact of traits in awarding APs, the number of great/extraordinary successes achieved, and many other variables. There's no real or consistent control over these so the calculation is too complex. It'd just be finger in the air guesstimates. I'd go with 6 per adventure, on average.

[Angelalex242]

That keeps common skills growing far, far slower then combat skills/valor/wisdom.

Is that intended by the system?

[Rich H]

That keeps common skills growing far, far slower then combat skills/valor/wisdom.

Is that intended by the system?

I think it probably is, yes.

[Angelalex242]

Hmmm. I am now revising my opinion on where to spend initial XP.

You can always make up for a slow start with your weapon with XP, which is fast. But you can't make up weaker common skills. It'll haunt you for the rest of your character's life.

I must now conclude it's stupid to by Weapon 3 in cgen (Even though I've done that with both of my characters to date.)

[Rich H]

But you can't make up weaker common skills. It'll haunt you for the rest of your character's life.

I must now conclude it's stupid to by Weapon 3 in cgen (Even though I've done that with both of my characters to date.)

There's a fair bit of hyperbole there with a sprinkling of exaggeration! Not sure you should be haunted or consider yourself stupid for buying a Weaponskill of 3!

There are many Commons Skills so you may not pick the best options, and they are only used in very specific situations. At least when you increase a Weaponskill you get to use it in pretty much all combat situations, possibly with the exception of Bow skills.

I know if my gaming group would have all gone with Weaponskills of 2 they would have found themselves in serious trouble, they needed to have a couple of skills of 3. So each PC may have increased a couple of Common Skills by a point or two (at the lower ratings) but they may well have not survived their first combat encounter. If you fail a Common Skill test it generally causes something slightly annoying and sets back the progress of the Fellowship a touch, whereas if you're not particularly effective in combat you're going to die so being weak in such an area is far more critical.

It each character gets approximately 6 APs per adventure, across 30 years (and 30 adventures) that's 180 APs which would give a character decent coverage across all (?) Common Skills or allow them to really excel in tow or more skills with ratings of 5 or 6. Seems like that's how it should be.