Alternative Experience System

[p_clapham]

I was working on a hack of mutants and masterminds a little while ago. I think I had each attribute level equal one character point, and ten skill points equal one character point. Does that sound about right? Having a attribute point being ten times more valuable than a skill point?

[Mankcam]

I allow skill checks for successful skill use and each additional successful use adds a +1 to the skill check, up to a maximum equal to their Skill Category Modifier. I don't use the INT mod as this replaces it.

Has worked well for many years.

Also, in reference to earlier posts, I support Rosen's concept of making social skills like Status and Relationships very important, it really encourages good role playing in my opinion

[sladethesniper]

I like that other people use alternative experience systems as well.  We do pretty much the same thing (10 XP per session, +10 XP if you did something pretty awesome, 1 XP = 1% in a skill, each successful skill use = 1 roll at the end of the session/episode, a successful roll you get 1d10% in that skill, a failure, you still get 1% in that skill).  Status/relationship/alliances/loyalty are all used in my games, although they are pretty much only used by the GM to determine if a players request of their friend, contact, employer, benefactor is approved...but the only way to get more of these non-attributes is through roleplaying and successful outcomes.

 

I like the way that Rust explained it on page 1 about role playing to get to the roll of the dice, which is pretty much ideal, but there are always some gamers that have difficulty with that process...to wit, trying to play a character that is a genius alchemist, while the player is not or highly experienced ex-military characters are trying to plan out a gritty ambush and subsequent cult temple invasion while the players are very much not tactically minded.  In those instances...I will let them describe their actions and let them roll...if their descriptions were decent or at least made sense, I give them some positive modifiers, but if their plan was just stupid, I will let them roll but not give them penalties, since in this case the characters would have the benefit of the doubt...

 

-STS

[Atgxtg]

The trait system from Pendragon actually originated from Chaosium's old Thieves World Boxed set, as a way to handle NPCs. And it worked is a fairly similar fashion, except that there were three scores. Basically something along the lines of Trait/Average/Opposing Trait. So, for instance, someone could have Brave 60%/80%+ Cowardly. 

 

The way it worked was that rolling under the Brave score (60%) would mean the character acts bravely, and a roll of 80% or greater means the character acts cowardly. A roll in the middle range (61-80) means the character acts someone in the middle. 

 

I could see checks and improvement being used to adjust this like any other skill. Basically you could give it three check boxes.