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Another idea I had...

The AP system is meant to simulate skills in that category, not points to be used on any skill.

So...what if you had to keep track of AP for each skill group separately, and could only use AP from that group to improve skills in that group? (You cannot improve Custom skills save through AP gained in Custom...)

To compensate for this, AP cost per point drops from 4 to 2.

As it is, I had 15 AP gained in two chapters of gameplay...but then I spent 12 of them on stealth 3. Why did my occasional custom and vocation rolls help make me stealthier?

An Alternative idea is that getting 3 AP in a skillset automatically improves your lowest skill in that group by 1. If the skills are evenly ranked, the one you used more gets raised. By this system, you cannot improve rank 3 skills till all skills in the category are rank 3, and so on. The Dwarf will never get Craft 4 till his Battle and Lore skills are at 3, and so on.

Angelalex242 wrote:The AP system is meant to simulate skills in that category, not points to be used on any skill.

I don't think so. Acquisition of advancement points is limited by category to encourage you to use various skills, rather than focusing on a few skills you're good at. Unlike other games, improving your skills is not a matter of using your skill to get practice in it; advancement points come from dramatic moments.

Consider the following situation. The company is traveling through a grassy plain in autumn; the grass has grown tall, obscuring sight. The loremaster calls for a perception test of Awareness to see if they notice someone approaching. Several characters pass, but one of them is Tall, and he invokes this trait to earn an advancement point in Perception, saying his character could see better over the grass to spot whatever might be getting closer. Being Tall has nothing to do with how quickly you improve your perceptive abilities; he gets the point because he is making use of his traits to make the game more interesting.

By allowing characters to gain advancement points at a controlled pace, and then to spend them on any skills the players want, the game simulates the gradual improvement of skills the character practices with during a fellowship phase. You get advancement points for making the game more interesting and dramatic; you are rewarded with the opportunity to improve your character as you see fit.

This sounds a god idea, but would have unfortunate (and drastic) knock on effect... the game is very balanced currently. It is not a game of being a power gamer, but for making the character you want to play...

However if you implemented this rules there would be powergaimg style builds and cultures; the balanced approach!

That is a very specialised character, say the huntsman who has 3 explore, 3 healing and 3 hunting, would easily fill up his specialised group (in this case survival)

However a more balanced character, awe 2, athletics 2, awareness 2, explore 2, song 2 and craft 2 (same number of "points" to build... just an example) Will earn less AP's in a category, but would be likely to be able to get 2 AP's in each catigory... when the huntsman has 18 AP's in survival (more than enough to get hunting 4, 6 advantures) our balanced character would have 12AP in all groups; enough to raise all his skills to 3....

so while the balanced character will never overtake the focused character in one area he will very quickly get very good at everything.

This is an over simplified example - but gives you a clear idea of the problems!

On a related note, what level of AP should we be expecting from a session? 2 AP?
And XP for one adventure?

To get an idea on character imrpovement speed, basically Thx

Xavi

Elmoth wrote:On a related note, what level of AP should we be expecting from a session? 2 AP?
And XP for one adventure?

To get an idea on character imrpovement speed, basically Thx

Xavi

Depends how long your session is for both APs (exposure to skill rolls) and XPs (awarded each session and sometimes as bonuses within and at the end of an adventure) so it's different for each group. Personally, my sessions are about 3 hours in length - in that time I'd say the PCs get 1 or 2 (occasionally 3) APs and 1 (occasionally 2) XP in general, although for XP I've moved to a mechanic of awarding them all based on the completion of the adventure rather than tying it to session length - so, per adventure I work within a range of about 4 to 10 XP which depends on the size and challenges of the adventure.