Thread: Increasing POW - How?

Originally Posted by frogspawner

Hmm, both these aspects may limit character advancement a bit more than people might like, I suspect. (Until a Legend expansion book appears, that is... )

My group really doesn't like the pace of character advancement, nor do they like rolling for improvements. One player wants to boost his INT by 1 point so that he gains another combat action. He has yet to make a single improvement in the campaign. Looking back, I should have switched early on to a "sessional experience" system (2-3 static improvements, not rolls, per game-night) instead of the "accomplishment experience-base improvement rolls" as the rules suggest.

My players were being nicer than they ought to have been and didn't communicate their dissatisfaction until we neared the end of the campaign.

Originally Posted by Afon y Bydysawd

My group really doesn't like the pace of character advancement, nor do they like rolling for improvements. One player wants to boost his INT by 1 point so that he gains another combat action. He has yet to make a single improvement in the campaign. Looking back, I should have switched early on to a "sessional experience" system (2-3 static improvements, not rolls, per game-night) instead of the "accomplishment experience-base improvement rolls" as the rules suggest.

I'm with you on this; I find the suggested pace and amount of Improvement Rolls to be extremely slow. If you take the rules literally and play once per 2 weeks it could take about 6 months (real time) to get enough Improvement Rolls to increase an average characteristic by 1 point and that prevents you from increasing any skills. It's ok if you're set up to play a game with minimal improvement but you need to have realised that in advance. On the other hand, the speed of increase possible through training is quite extreme. Easiest way to improve characters quickly is through training. That said, there is no mechanism for improving characteristics through training that I recall.

Originally Posted by deleriad

I'm with you on this; I find the suggested pace and amount of Improvement Rolls to be extremely slow. If you take the rules literally and play once per 2 weeks it could take about 6 months (real time) to get enough Improvement Rolls to increase an average characteristic by 1 point and that prevents you from increasing any skills. It's ok if you're set up to play a game with minimal improvement but you need to have realised that in advance. On the other hand, the speed of increase possible through training is quite extreme. Easiest way to improve characters quickly is through training. That said, there is no mechanism for improving characteristics through training that I recall.

In RQ 3, IIRC (don't have the book handy), you can train characteristics the same way as skills thru training. Something like the characteristic x25 hours to get a gain of 1d3. I do seem to remember something in the BGB that paralleled; I would adopt something like this. With regards to POW, thats a tougher question unless you want to have POW teachers as well.

SDLeary

Originally Posted by deleriad

I'm with you on this; I find the suggested pace and amount of Improvement Rolls to be extremely slow. If you take the rules literally and play once per 2 weeks it could take about 6 months (real time) to get enough Improvement Rolls to increase an average characteristic by 1 point and that prevents you from increasing any skills. It's ok if you're set up to play a game with minimal improvement but you need to have realised that in advance. On the other hand, the speed of increase possible through training is quite extreme. Easiest way to improve characters quickly is through training. That said, there is no mechanism for improving characteristics through training that I recall.

Indeed, we have quickly increased the number of improvement rolls as well. We play once every 2 to 3 weeks, and people want to see improvement, they wanna have fun seeing their character grow. Plus there are so many areas of possible improvement, the RAW rolls just don't cut it. After a standard 5 hour session, most of my players get 3 improvement rolls. For particularly heroic actions I sometimes give out a hero point (we use glass beads to represent them) which players can exchange for an additional 3 improvement rolls. We still use the heroic abilities as well. Even with all that, after our first campaign which recently ended only two characters survived, and for our upcoming Pavis campaign all other players will have to make a new character. The two survivors are a Lhankor Mhy Acolyte and a sneaky assassin. I'm sure there are lots of little inconsistencies, but people love the game, we have several people on a waiting list for joining we're in a gaming club, and we could play twice a week if only I could keep up with the prep, so we must be doing something right.