Advancement in RQ

[AlphaStrike]

I've just been reading through the rules - which look very good - but i'm a tad confused about advancement. Characters are awarded with an average of three improvement rolls for each 'story' which averages several sessions of play. That doesn't seem like much progress to me. Do players gain additional improvement rolls through practise and research between adventures - or is this something they have to do to justify the use of the improvement rolls they were awarded through adventuring?

I'm a tad worried that players will feel like they aren't progressing very fast. :?

 

[mthomason]

And here I am more worried about the fact they sometimes get more than one point in those three rolls!

It's very much a decision for every individual group to take, just as many D&D GMs give out anything up to five times the listed XP rewards because they want to get the campaign up to L20 before the year is over.

Personally I want to keep characters from progressing more than, say, twenty points in any one skill in the course of a (real) year, but thats because I like my campaigns to stretch out a good five years or so and not get into the realms of superhuman-like abilities even then.

The modified system I'm using for improvement rolls is:
All skills that were tested at least twice in that session get an improvement roll. If you beat the skill, you get a point - if not you get nothing. It ought to work out faster than the usual system at the beginning, but gradually work towards being far slower.

This also stops players doing unrealistic things like improving skills they never use through experience (I'll force them to do research/practice for that!)

 

[atgxtg]

That is one of the changes of the new edition. Yes, players need to spend improvement rolls for training and practice. Practice or Research is required for all improvemnt. THere are benefits to doing research or having a mentor (improved chance of improvemnt and a greater skill imrpvoment)If you fell that that is too slow for your campaing there are a couple of options:

1) Increase the Awards:You can award more improvement rolls. As GM yuou can make 5 or 6 rolls the average award.

2) The old RQ Method: Go back to assigning checks for skills used under stressful condtions and allowing improvement rolls for checks. Training and practice will not require skill checks, just time and possibly a teacher.

 

[Zotzz]

I Personally like to hand out experince at the end of a game session since it lets everyone go home feeling like they advanced thier character a bit. However with this play style the 3 advancements of 1d4+1 will create charactes with a few uber skills. To solve this I was going to give out more then 3 advancements per session but use something like 1d2+1 points per advance instead.

 

[GbajiTheDeceiver]

I'm surprised that the fact that there's a gain of 1 point if you roll under on your improvement roll hasn't been mentioned yet.

Surely this one factor alone will lead to more rapid advancement than anything else?

 

[B_Steele]

I know in my home game I will be giving 2 advancement rolls at the end of each session (every three weeks or so, because of time constraint), and all players will vote on who did the best job roleplaying to give that person a third.

The 3-4 per story is a little stingy in my opinion, but that is the beauty of the new Advancement system...totally flexible!

Cheers all,
Bry

 

[Enpeze]

I know in my home game I will be giving 2 advancement rolls at the end of each session (every three weeks or so, because of time constraint), and all players will vote on who did the best job roleplaying to give that person a third.

The 3-4 per story is a little stingy in my opinion, but that is the beauty of the new Advancement system...totally flexible!

Cheers all,
Bry

ah you like to honour the MVP.

3 XPs are not many. I would give 3 per session and not per story. That should be fine to counterbalance the deadliness of the game system.

 

[AKAramis]

Note that the companion previews show us that research, and by extrapolation, probably also out of play time in general, can be leveraged to produce experience.

Note: RQ3 had extensive study rules, too.

 

[atgxtg]

I'm surprised that the fact that there's a gain of 1 point if you roll under on your improvement roll hasn't been mentioned yet.

Surely this one factor alone will lead to more rapid advancement than anything else?

It will at the high end. THe over 100% crow advance 2-5 times faster.

For everyone else improving three things, event with a guatanteeed +1% isn't as fast as improving 6 or 8 or 10 things.

IMO, the 3 roll system is going to make character "classes" appear. It is simply more efficient to spend the IP rolls that way.

 

[GbajiTheDeceiver]

IMO, the 3 roll system is going to make character "classes" appear. It is simply more efficient to spend the IP rolls that way.

That's a good point. People will develop their characters along preconceived lines (although the old training and research systems also allowed for a limited amount of that) rather than having to accept their improvement rolls in the skills they actually used.

Nothing wrong with that if it makes RQ more accessible to people, of course. A lot of the target audience would be so used to classes that they may probably freak at the total lack of them. But where to draw the line on the end justifying the means?

 

[King Amenjar]

Is there an official word yet on whether characters who reach 100 or higher always fail their advancement rolls and so are limited to going up by a single point from that point on, or whether 96-00 always counts as a failure, so therefore is successful?

 

[Zotzz]

I thought I read somewhere that every 100 points that a skills advanes the fumble range shrinks by 1%.

fumble on a roll of:
100 = 96-100
200 = 97-100
300 = 98-100
400 = 99-100
500 = 100

If this is true it would seem that you would still get your full 1d4+1 skill point advance.

I dont have my book in front of me so there may be another rule that changes this.

 

[atgxtg]

I thought I read somewhere that every 100 points that a skills advanes the fumble range shrinks by 1%.

fumble on a roll of:
100 = 96-100
200 = 97-100
300 = 98-100
400 = 99-100
500 = 100

If this is true it would seem that you would still get your full 1d4+1 skill point advance.

I dont have my book in front of me so there may be another rule that changes this.

THe thing is to make an improvement roll you have to roll over your current skill value to get the 1d4+1. Otherwise you get 1 point. So under MRQ if your skill is 100% or higher you can't roll over it, so you will improve by 1% every time you spend an IP on it.

Bt comparison in RQ2 and 3 there was a miminum chance of improvement that kicked in at the high skill scores. On the other hand, a failed improvment roll meant no improvment. Thenet effect is that MRQ characters avance in skils over 100% faster than RQ2/3 characters.

 

[Zotzz]

Ahh.. I though you only had to fail a skill roll with the skill you where trying to raise.

Advancing on fumble makes more sense if you dont get the free point no matter what the result of the roll is.

 

[atgxtg]

Is there an official word yet on whether characters who reach 100 or higher always fail their advancement rolls and so are limited to going up by a single point from that point on, or whether 96-00 always counts as a failure, so therefore is successful?

No, I don't think there is. THat is one for the player PDF.

 

[atgxtg]

Ahh.. I though you only had to fail a skill roll with the skill you where trying to raise.

Advancing on fumble makes more sense if you dont get the free point no matter what the result of the roll is.

Maybe you do get the 1d4+1 for auto failures and fumbles. It would simply slow doewn the advancemnt as the characters progressed, and only slightly at that.

Either way won't have a signficant impact on a campaign.

 

[mthomason]

I'm surprised that the fact that there's a gain of 1 point if you roll under on your improvement roll hasn't been mentioned yet.

Surely this one factor alone will lead to more rapid advancement than anything else?

Thats precisely what I've stopped because of that very reason, balancing off by giving more rolls per session.

 

[simonh]

I know in my home game I will be giving 2 advancement rolls at the end of each session (every three weeks or so, because of time constraint), and all players will vote on who did the best job roleplaying to give that person a third.

As has been pointed out, the 3 improvements at a time suggested in the rules mean that most players will probably improve the same skills each time, so characters will become highly specialised. Reducing this to 2 skill improvements at a time will almost certainly increase this effect even more.

I'll probably use a 2-tiered system of 3 improvements most of the time, with occasional awards of 5 or even 7 improvements. This won't make characters any more powerful in their 'specialist' skills because they have to spread these improvements across their skills. What it does do is allow them to develop a slightly broader skill sets than they otherwise could. This has worked well for me with Heroquest and IMHO elads to more varied and interesting characters


Simon Hibbs

 

[AlphaStrike]

Great - thanks for all the replies to the thread, guys. It's nice to get so many opinions on the subject.

At this moment in time, I think I'll go with an average of two/three advancements per session, and give them out after each session. Maybe 'my lot' are an impatient bunch, but I really don't think they'd be happy with having to wait 3 or 4 weeks/sessions (about the average length of one of my adventures) before seeing their characters improve.

One thing that really attracted me to the new addition is the idea of fleshing out the characters' lives outside of adventuring. How many D&D characters have effectively been highly skilled hobos, wandering from one place to another without any roots? The idea of research and training offering benefits to characters might counter that. 'Real' people wouldn't want to abandon their lives to adventure constantly and I felt these rules might reflect that. As well as the satisfaction of completing a scenario, characters would look forward to pursuing their own interests and concerns. That seems so much more believable to me. And, yes, I know you can encourage this with D&D (and I have had the occasional player forge a few magical items or pay lip service to a relationship), but it has rarely seemed an important part of a character's life. For me, research and practice should offer some tangible reward to characters - though not as much as adventuring or they'd never want to do any (I had a very brief Ars Magica campaign where the characters refused to leave their castle: they were too busy training!). :lol:

 

[AKAramis]

Is there an official word yet on whether characters who reach 100 or higher always fail their advancement rolls and so are limited to going up by a single point from that point on, or whether 96-00 always counts as a failure, so therefore is successful?

No, I don't think there is. THat is one for the player PDF.

Dang it, that should be in the core!