Instant Gratification
One feature I've always liked about Chaosium's system for Call of Cthulhu (based off of their Basic Role Playing) is the opportunity for character improvement after each adventure. Unlike level based games like D&D, or even point buy games like White Wolf's World of Darkness, your character has a chance to advance each of their skills after each adventure; the only caveat being that you have to use the skill successfully at least once during the adventure. Talk about instant gratification! You could easily do this with D&D, just do away with purchasing skill ranks at each level and allow the player to do a skill check after each adventure with every skill that was used successfully within each adventure. If they succeed, allow them to roll 1d4 and add that many ranks to that skill.
posted by Joshua D. Haney at 11:17 AM
2 Comments:
Totally and utterly agree dude! I play a game of the GMs own design called Immortals that uses a similar point buy system (Power) for buying everything - skills, crafting items, creating spells on the fly. It can even be traded in small amounts with other charaters and NPCs. Power is awarded at the end of each session so character development can go on at the end of each adventure, rather than once in a blue moon.
I think you're talking about two different things. The Call of Cthulhu system works for two reasons: (1) your skill has a basic percentage success chance like old D&D thief skills (2) you have to roll OVER that number to add to your skill, so the better your skill level, the LESS likely it is to go up. What the original poster suggested would produce a skewed game because people with already high skill levels would go up in skill QUICKER. But you can't really have a Cthulhu-esque system in D&D either (where higher skills go up SLOWER) because D&D skills are for opposed rolls, and high level characters need ever higher skill levels, so that would make a skewed game too.
However you CAN have your DM say:- every time you use a skill in an impressive way, right it on a piece of paper. When you go up in level put all the pieces in the hat and take out 2+Int Bonus pieces. Those are where your new skill ranks go.
Idea of trading power is weird but interesting - I'm sure some systems for non-immortals effectively allow this where gold buys power (training etc converts directly into power; training has to be paid for).
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