Advancement to Experience Ratio

[Morgoth]

I think that is also a valuable analysis; one I had not considered.

My personal feeling is that 5 common skills at Rank 6 might be specializing too much, especially with 4 favored skills and the propensity of traits to grant auto-successes.

What about this is a model for "proficiency" (this assumes 8 common skills starting at rank 2, which may not even be possible for all cultures):

Skill Rank 4 in your 4 Favoured Skills (the thought being that should generally grant success most of the time, and where it does not, your higher favored attribute score should be enough to carry you through). = 112 AP
Skill Rank 5 in 2 additional common skills = 96
Skill Rank 6 in your 2 trademark common skills (the one's that really define you) = 144 AP

That equals 352 AP, a little bit leftover to push a couple other skills.

This gives you 8 common skills with Rank 4 or higher, the Rank 4 ones also being your favored skills and thus pretty reliable. I mean, I don't know, that seems pretty balanced and acceptable with respect to the idea of parity with weapons/wisdom/valour.

Thoughts?

True, you might not need 6 ranks in your best skills. But then again, you don't really need 6 ranks in your weapon skill either. After all with 4 ranks in your weapon, you'll hit Raenar (the great cold drake...so far the most powerful enemy) 65.2% of the time in forward stance. That's not even spending hope! So, no you don't need 6 ranks in a weapon skill, but it would be nice right? And it makes sense that if weapon skills go up to 6, that eventually you should have a 6 in that skill, right? Same goes for common skills.

[shaneivey]

It's SUPPOSED to be 2 AP per 1 XP. But in my games we never get that many AP, so I've loosened the restrictions; I generally disregard the stricture making the second and third AP "dots" consecutively more difficult.

[Morgoth]

It's SUPPOSED to be 2 AP per 1 XP.

Is this in the books somewhere, or just your thoughts?

[Sprigg]

I don't remember seeing anything in the books stating a ratio of AP/XP, but I haven't cracked them open in a while. Our ratio did end up somewhere around 2:1 ap:xp though. Some sessions they didn't do anything particularly great, so only got 2 AP that session (my minimum). Other sessions, it balanced out because they got 4, maybe more. By the end of the first adventuring phase, they had something like 8xp and 16 AP, I believe, for four sessions.

I also give AP to the whole party instead of single characters, so a character's actions have to be particularly creative, risky or awesome. The Beorning can only take 2 endurance damage before becoming weary and has a wound, yet still jumps off the broken tree to try and spear the Troll in the throat? If he succeeds, the party gets an AP (and I might even give a small bonus to the attempt).

[Morgoth]

That's interesting Sprigg. Do your players seem to all be contributing equally, or are some doing most of the work while the others gain the same benefits?

[Sprigg]

The whole group is pretty team-focused, and each character is specifically good at a couple different things, so the workload is spread pretty evenly.