Improvement Roll Maths

[Se Chris]

So, for a pet project I'm working on I calculated how many improvement rolls it would take, on average, for a character to reach a certain level of skill.

Now, it's not exact by any means - the nature of the probabilities involved makes it more complicated than I'm willing to work out, even with Excel, so there are lots of assumptions and 'close enough' calculations, but I reckon the end result might be useful to people as a sort of general gauge.

So, here it is:

This assumes that a new skill starts at 10%, which is about right for what I was using it for, but it'll be about three rolls off for skills which start at around 20% instead.

 

[gamesmeister]

Interesting stuff.

So if you assume that a 'veteran' PC has half a dozen skills around the 70% mark, and a further half a dozen around 50%, the PC would require approximately 224 improvement rolls (ignoring any increases from previous experience.

So if you aim for 3 IRs per session (note I prefer to give out increases per session rather than per "story", which is a bit of a wooly concept), you're looking at almost 80 sessions, which will work out at the best part of two years if you play weekly.

Previous experience would reduce this number to a certain extent, especially if you focus your starting points across just a few skills rather than spreading them about.

It still seems quite slow progression to me though.

 

[Rurik]

Good Stuff. I loves the maths.

A question: So is it official that an improvement roll of 96-100 always gives a rolled bonus?

The table seems to indicate so (or at least that method was used in the table). That subject has been discussed on the board here before, and I beleive the concensus was that once a skill was over 100% you always 'fail' your improvement rolls so can only go up 1% at a time.

 

[Rurik]

After grokking the table here are some thoughts.

First is a practical breakdown based on average starting characters trying to reach 90% in their 'core' skills from starting points of 50%, 60%, and 70% (reasonable values for starting characters).

50% - 90%: 21.82
60% - 90%: 17.38
70% - 90%: 12.38

Not too bad, but as gamesmeister points out the whole curve seems a bit steep. I guess the moral is it is ok to be liberal with Improvement Points.

A change I've often considered is allowing characters to add a characteristic to their Improvement Roll. For skills based on one characteristic it is easy to know which skill to use, but with skills based on two one would have to be chosen and indicated to be the one gives a bonus. I suppose Alternatively you could just use INT as a bonus to all Improvemet rolls.

What this really has me thinking on is just how expensive improving a statistic really is (I'm looking at you POW). POW gain is very difficult and sets a character back 3 IP's per attempt. I'd be curious to see a table of how many improvement rolls it takes to get POW (err, I mean any characteristic) from 3 to 21.

 

[zozotroll]

I have abandoned the 3 IP for POW. In fact I will be useing 1IP from now on for it specificly.

The problem was the Shamin. Drop a couple POW to make charms. Then you need a few to use for enchantments. If you regain that POW, you fall way behind on skills. And spell selection is so narrow that you need several charms just to have any variety at all.

A fighter type doesnt need POW to get better armor, he just needs silver. But no amount of silver helps the shamin.

It is not a lot of fun to have a charecter that cant do its primary thing. Yes very slow advancement is probably a good model of a real shamin, but it is not that much fun to play.

And with the wrong group I can see a lot of iritation directed at the poor shamin.

I have not had anybody try a priest yet, so I dont know if they are in the same boat or not. Probably are though.

 

[Se Chris]

Good Stuff. I loves the maths.

A question: So is it official that an improvement roll of 96-100 always gives a rolled bonus?

Not official, just the way I was doing the maths for a pet project. I'd be inclined to say that 96-00 always counts as a fail because:

a) 96-00 always counts as a fail when making a normal skill test, and an improvement roll is a skill test of sorts.
b) 96-00 always counts as a fail when making a characteristic improvement roll, so skills might as well get the same treatment.
c) Advancement is sloooooow, and slowing it down even more doesn't much help.

Still, if you prefer to adopt that system the table doesn't change much - the only time the maths is complex is in the run-up to 100%. After that, it's just a straight line.

 

[Ari]

After grokking the table here are some thoughts.
...
I guess the moral is it is ok to be liberal with Improvement Points.

What I've been doing is allowing the characters to choose the standard 3 improvement points as desired and then I choose (or roll randomly) for another 3 improvement points, typically skills (occasional a stat) that they used in the session/story but decided they didn't want to expend improvement points on.

I find it helps round out the characters a bit more.

cheers, Ari

 

[weasel_fierce]

Im pretty liberal with giving points in lores and languages as we play, but I like the idea of just using 2-3 improvement rolls assigned by GM, and 2-3 to use for free

 

[Puck]

I find it helps round out the characters a bit more.

This is something that I was more than a little afraid of. Using the raw would mean that players will probably increase in combat skills and magical abilities, but the secondary skills like Athletics*, stealth, etc. will get bypassed; not to mention skills like lore, craft, and play instrument.

*I hate the thought that climbing, swimming, jumping all got slammed into the same skill ability. Just does not seem right.

 

[Rurik]

I find it helps round out the characters a bit more.

This is something that I was more than a little afraid of. Using the raw would mean that players will probably increase in combat skills and magical abilities, but the secondary skills like Athletics*, stealth, etc. will get bypassed; not to mention skills like lore, craft, and play instrument.

*I hate the thought that climbing, swimming, jumping all got slammed into the same skill ability. Just does not seem right.

Well imagine how neglected Climbing, Jumping, Swimming, etc would be when it came out to doling out Improvement Rolls if they weren't all lumped together.

I am leaning towards 3-4 rolls per session plus arbitrary rolls in skills that got used (an automatic survival roll for being stuck on a mountain in a storm for example). The nice thing about 4 rolls is that a Shaman or Preist can try to improve their POW and still have a roll left for say Theology or Summoning.