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graham1982
2017-02-05, 01:44 PM
I'm working on a ruleset for an online game, and I'm wanting to completely do away with Experience Points and Character Levels. Instead I'm wanting progression to work based on actual practice - I.e. you get better at blacksmithing by making swords, not by killing goblins.

So far I've got all of that working well enough. The bit I can't get to fit is Traits / Feats. Basically the special abilities that a character has for things that don't quite fit. I want there to be the option to have these special abilities, and to gain more as your character progresses. But I can't work out a clean way to manage this without XP or Levels. It's got to be possible to gain access to these abilities through normal character progression, but in a way that isn't arbitrary.

Can anyone suggest any way to achieve this? Something that fits in with character advancement, but still makes it a challenge to gain these abilities?

Sooth
2017-02-05, 04:31 PM
A few things that I have done in the past when I ran games with similar premises:

* At the end of each milestone, I would ask each player to pick three ability scores that they felt should be improved and to give me a brief explanation why if it wasn't terribly obvious (because they demonstrated particular resolve in this encounter, or they learned an important social lesson, etc), and I would pick 1-2 of them to raise by a fraction which would eventually add up to whole point increases over the adventures.
* After so many micro-gains to their abilities (whether they be skills, HP, or however you track it), I would let them pick a feat. In this way I could pace their feat growth to be proportionate to growing other things. I could also ask them to pick a feat that they could justify based on their actions in the game-world, or specify, "just pick any feat."
* Scrapped the entire class system altogether and rewrote literally everything I wanted in my game as a series of feats. (I did this with my version of d20 modern, haven't gotten around to doing it with Pathfinder).

I know you mentioned wanting to do away with Experience Points, but have you considered using Experience Points in a different way? It's difficult to think of any game that actually completely does away with increments-toward-gains yet manages to function in the way you described.

You could create a finite number of "categories" for XP, which each represent a different kind of aptitude. Such as Combat, or Magic, or Social, or really, as many categories as broad or narrow as you wish, and award XP in those categories for engaging in certain practice. When you have enough XP in a category, you can buy a feat related to that category. Sometimes it will be obvious -- anything a Fighter can grab for a bonus feat counts as Combat, surely -- but for many of those weird feats out there, you'll simply need to make a call on-the-spot as to whether the player can spend XP from that category to buy it.

Or you can award feats based on actual awarded gains in a category, i.e. you've been practicing Blacksmithing for weeks, and gained all the skill ranks you're going to gain for a while... so here's the Skill Focus Feat. You've been tanking for the party for so long that you've gained Hp, AC, etc, so you get to choose a feat related to being really tough now.

Sooth
2017-02-05, 04:37 PM
In regards to more decisive things like class features, that's a tough one. You're going to have to make a call that compromises between "GM Discretion"ing everything, and doing a ton and ton of work.

Like, you could spend hours/days giving a rough price-tag on everything you think your PCs might be interested in taking, or you could just play it by ear and go something like, "Oh, Barbarian Rage? Yeah, we'll say that's worth... 3 Feats, sure." Or find some suitable compromise in between. If you find a more elegant method than any of those that's neither arbitrary nor work-intensive, I'd be delighted to know XD

graham1982
2017-02-05, 05:08 PM
I should have clarified better - when I say "online game" I meant a computer game, specifically a MUD. As such, the GM is the computer and not another human, so something rule based is much better than something subjective .

I am using something vaguely akin to XP, but on a per stat/skill basis. Every time you successfully use a skill, you gain points towards it based on the success chance - higher chance of success means less points. When the points exceed a certain threshold - based on the current skill or stat level - then it increases. This means that the only way to get better at something is by doing it.

I could make feats available based on skill levels, but actually unlocking them in a way that doesn't feel arbitrary isn't easy - why can I get Power Strike at Swords 50 but not at Swords 49? And when I do unlock it, how do I actually make it so the character gains it? Just magically being able to do it feels a bit naff.

Sooth
2017-02-05, 05:40 PM
I should have clarified better - when I say "online game" I meant a computer game, specifically a MUD. As such, the GM is the computer and not another human, so something rule based is much better than something subjective .

I am using something vaguely akin to XP, but on a per stat/skill basis. Every time you successfully use a skill, you gain points towards it based on the success chance - higher chance of success means less points. When the points exceed a certain threshold - based on the current skill or stat level - then it increases. This means that the only way to get better at something is by doing it.

I could make feats available based on skill levels, but actually unlocking them in a way that doesn't feel arbitrary isn't easy - why can I get Power Strike at Swords 50 but not at Swords 49? And when I do unlock it, how do I actually make it so the character gains it? Just magically being able to do it feels a bit naff.

Ah, that does change things. I played a MUD like that for a while - Accursed Lands, it was called.

Here's an idea:

Say that Feats are something you have to actively Train to get. The training could be with an NPC, or it could be a built-in game menu -- whatever. You can't just "Gain" them, you have to train them deliberately and work toward them incrementally like you would with a skill.

When you "train" a feat, you actually roll a relevant skill check and the success determines whether or not you gain progress. So "Swords 50" might be the recommended level to start training the feat, but you could do it at Swords 49 with a little more time and/or luck.

Then you can decide whether the feat does anything at "partial training" levels or whether it simply unlocks as soon as you've trained that last milestone.

You would also have to decide what the cost for training is: is it just a matter of time, or does training take an IC currency like money or an OOC currency like XP? Is there an enforced cooldown between how long you can train? Accursed-Lands had this mechanic in place where, once you practiced/grinded a skill so much, it would give diminishing returns based on your Will (the more stubborn you were, the longer you could grind, basically) -- and you would "empty the cache" so to speak by training other skills.

graham1982
2017-02-05, 06:41 PM
Hmm - I quite like that. Can almost make gaining feats into mini quests. Combine certain skill requirements in the form of actual in game achievements - Power Strike might mean beating him in a fight with two different weapons, thus needing to be skilled enough in two different weapons to do that - with finding the correct trainer and possibly needing to provide other things - such as payment.