Flashbacks vs. Exp Progression

As last week’s post might indicate, I’ve been playing a lot of Assassin’s Creed lately. The game itself is, of course, entirely framed as a flashback as Desmond explores ancestral memories. However, even within this framework, the game has introduced the concept that it’s glossing over certain memories until they become relevant: it will sometimes feature sequences much earlier than the current date of the main narrative (e.g., the story of what happened to Ezio’s girlfriend who was in his introductory scene then never mentioned again). This is, of course, not that unusual for fiction: TV shows, in particular, have time to periodically do long-form flashbacks to give context to the current situation (and if your show’s about immortals, they might do that every week…).

Despite their utility in other media, long-form flashbacks are really hard to do in tabletop games. A lot of games have experimented with short-form flashbacks, in the sense of player-directed 30-seconds-or-less statements to get a bonus on a roll, but asking players to spend the bulk of a session (or more!) in a flashback has a couple of hurdles:

• If the game features exp progression, it’s often really hard to figure out how to use stats from earlier in the characters’ careers without accurate record keeping.
• Many players aren’t going to want to play their characters earlier in their careers (i.e., with worse stats) for extended periods.

Obviously games that eschew progression are going to have an easier time of this, but my group’s never been happy without numbers that go up, and I’m sure a lot of groups are in a similar boat. And, besides, an interesting vignette about something that was previously glossed over has just as much place in D&D as it does in SotC. So here are a few ideas on how to do that in a way your players might enjoy:

• Get in the habit of giving out and taking away cool things (powers, gadgets, etc.). Take away some of them in downtime with the explanation that you’ll eventually run the flashback explaining it. Periodically introduce cool things that have been mostly used up (such that they were much cooler at full power) with the explanation that you’ll explain how they got it in an eventual flashback. The goal here is for players to look forward to flashbacks where they’re potentially less powerful in stats for the joy of playing with toys that they don’t otherwise have access to.
• Since you’re primarily running long-form flashbacks when they’ll provide some kind of expanded context for the current situation, include a mechanic in the flashback to provide benefit in the present based on success. For example, “Let’s flash back to the time you were trying to gain treaties from the barbarian tribes which would now be a big help against the Dark Lord.” This creates resources that the players have theoretically had access to for a while, but which weren’t relevant (and, thus, weren’t quantified) until the flashback.
• Keep flashbacks extremely rules light and just let the players succeed without rolling on just about everything within reason that they try. After all, they clearly survived the events none the worse for wear such that it wasn’t even relevant until now, so might as well let them have unusual success. Don’t even reference stats unless you have to. The session should mostly resolve around revealing more information about something, possibly even something that the PCs didn’t realize until now that they hadn’t shared with one another (possibly because it happened before they even met; see Leverage’s The Rashomon Job).
• Just let them use their up-to-date stats and get exp normally. Gloss over how a player is using a power he just got last session in a flashback set years ago as imperfect recollection.
• Everyone had AMNESIA! And didn’t know it! Until NOW! (Don’t actually do that, it’s overused.)

Anyone else have tricks for running long-form flashbacks that players are happy to participate in?

Achievement-Based Leveling

Harbinger returned my attention to achievement-based advancement as mentioned in one of my previous posts. Obviously, my original concept was designed for a video game that could track all the achievements for you, but with the correct phrasing of achievements you could allow your players to take on the role of the computer: there’s a ton of bookkeeping potentially involved, but it’s the fun kind of bookkeeping where players do it for you and it’s in their own self interest to keep on top of it.

Effectively, you’d need all the possible achievements typed up and printed out (potentially on several sheets of paper), kept with the character sheet, and checked off by the player as they’re fulfilled. You’d probably also want to have a blank line next to each achievement for the player to summarize when it was achieved in case the GM has doubts.

A lot of inspiration for this is taken from the Dungeon World variant of Apocalypse World.

System

The core intention of the system is to provide players lots of directed goals, accomplishing any of which will support the concept and intended playstyle of the game. Additionally, the intent is to reduce grind/repetition: each achievement can only be gained once, so repeating the same action has little further system benefit (unless there is a more difficult version of the achievement that incorporates the same actions as the easier version). To that end:

• Each player character has a list of possible achievements. These are short phrases with a method of accomplishment that requires minimal interpretation by the GM.
• Achievements are divided into groups based on similar theme. These groups might vary based on the kinds of actions incentivized by the current game and campaign.
• All achievements completed in a category are totaled, as well as a global total of achievements completed. Achievements vary in difficulty to accomplish, but each contributes the same amount to these totals: there will be low hanging fruit that players can get early on, and harder achievements that will serve as higher level goals.
• The total achievements are used to allow characters to level and to determine what classes they have access to when leveling.

Note: Any numbers below are purely arbitrary and used for illustration. Actual numbers used will depend on how many achievements you come up with and how fast you want the players to level. A game with a ton of achievements that expects several sessions between levels will need higher numbers than a game with fewer achievements and a faster leveling pace.

Level Up

A character’s total level is determined by total achievements across all categories. When a character accumulates the requisite number of total achievements for each level, he or she is eligible to level up. This level up can happen instantly, at the end of a session, or after training (however the GM would normally award a level up).

For example:

1. 0 total achievements
2. 10 total achievements
3. 20 total achievements
4. 30 total achievements
5. etc.

Note that the achievement total is linear: in theory, as you level up you’ll run out of low hanging fruit and be left with the harder achievements, keeping the expected time between levels that normally is accomplished by a curved exp-to-level requirement.

Class Requirements

This system expects D&D 3-style multiclassing; some modifications should be required for versions where you’re less free to multiclass. When you level up, you can choose to take a level in a class that you meet the sub-requirements of. Level 1 in any class has no requirements: you can always multiclass into the first level of a new class. The subsequent levels have increasing requirements in specific achievement totals within different groups appropriate to the class.

• Barbarian: Combat and (Neutral + Chaotic)
• Bard: Combat, Spellcasting, and Lore
• Cleric: Spellcasting and (Deity’s Alignment)
• Druid: Spellcasting and Neutral
• Fighter: Combat and Adventuring
• Monk: Combat, Lore, and Lawful
• Paladin: Combat and (Lawful + Good)
• Ranger: Combat and Defeat
• Rogue: Adventuring and Neutral
• Sorcerer: Spellcasting and Adventuring
• Wizard: Spellcasting and Lore

For example, a Paladin’s requirements might be something like:

1. None
2. Combat 2 and (Lawful + Good) 1
3. Combat 4 and (Lawful + Good) 2
4. Combat 6 and (Lawful + Good) 3
5. Combat 8 and (Lawful + Good) 4
6. Combat 10 and (Lawful + Good) 5
7. etc.

Note how this interacts with leveling up: a single-classed Paladin with 30 total achievements is qualified to level up into level 4… but might not have gained the requisite Combat or alignment achievements since the last level to take the next level of Paladin. In that case, the player would need to choose whether to hold off on leveling until the necessary achievements are completed, or to multiclass.

Example Achievements

All achievements are both things that characters might describe as learning experiences in character and also actions that the GM believes supports the style and goals of the campaign.

Quest

Each completed quest in the game counts as an achievement. These are not required by any particular class, but contribute toward leveling up. It’s the GM’s choice (based on overall number and difficulty of achievements) whether only large quests count as an achievement or even smaller goals might count. In the former case, players will often have the same number of Quest achievements, but in the latter there might be divergence due to personal quests.

• Quenched the Black Flame of the Boneyard
• Recovered the Princess of the Platinum Lands
• Slew the Dragon Gygyragax

Combat

Combat achievements are devoted to doing interesting and dangerous things in physical combat. They are typically required by non-casting classes.

• One-shotted a 1 HD creature (full HP to unconscious/dead) with a melee attack
• Was attacked and missed by 3 different enemies in a single round
• Hit a target with a ranged weapon at its maximum range increment

Alignment

Alignment achievements are subdivided into Good, Evil, Lawful, Chaotic, and Neutral. They are required for several classes with alignment restrictions.

Note that a GM might choose to determine a character’s alignment based on achievements: Subtract the lower of Good and Evil from the higher, and then subtract Neutral; if the number is positive, the higher alignment is the character’s; if it’s 0 or less, the character is Neutral on that axis. Do the same for Lawful and Chaotic. For example, a character has achievement totals of Good 5, Evil 1, Lawful 1, Chaotic 0, Neutral 2; this character is Neutral Good.

Good

• Took damage while defending an innocent
• Accepted the surrender of a repentant foe

Evil

• Sacrificed an innocent to gain another achievement
• Killed a surrendered and bound foe

Lawful

• Delivered a defeated criminal to the rightful authorities
• Accomplished a city-based quest achievement without breaking any laws

Chaotic

• Set a prisoner free
• Accomplished a city-based quest while breaking laws without being caught by the authorities

Neutral

• Killed a dangerous and untrustworthy foe when taking it prisoner was an option
• Allowed an innocent to die to accomplish a greater good

Spellcasting

Spellcasting achievements are based around doing interesting things with magic, and are required for most casting classes.

• Used a 1st level attack spell to defeat a target
• Used a 1st level attack spell to accomplish a non-combat goal
• Used a 1st level defense, heal, or utility spell to defeat a target

Lore

Lore achievements are based around learning more about the setting, and may often be similar to more general Quest achievements. They are required for certain educated classes.

• Found a rare tome in a monster’s horde
• Spent 100 GP at one time to buy books
• Translated a warning in a dungeon

Adventuring

Adventuring achievements are more general actions appropriate to dungeon-delvers, and are required for classes of a more mercenary bent.

• Possessed 1000 GP worth of cash and gems at one time
• Disabled a level 1 trap (either intentionally or by blundering into it)
• Defeated a 1 HD enemy during a surprise round

Defeat

Defeat achievements are triggered based on getting in the blow that drops a creature unconscious/dead or by being the primary negotiator that convinces an enemy to surrender. As such, each defeated creature generally only contributes to one player’s total. They are used for hunting-related classes.

• Defeat 5 goblinoids
• Defeat 15 goblinoids (10 more)
• Defeat 30 goblinoids (15 more)

To End an Era of Exp, Conclusion

Over the past three installments, I’ve argued that experience points are outdated and no longer solve the problems they did originally. Meanwhile, I believe they’ve been frequently misused by becoming a staple of RPGs where they often lead to an unnecessary psychological reinforcement. In theory, games are fun without having to reduce them to a single axis of progress, and doing so can cause players to fixate on exp accumulation rather than what’s actually cool in the game.

So, assuming you’re with me this far, here are a few of the potential solutions to remove exp but still include advancement. They are likely to be more useful for video RPGs, particularly MMORPGs, but may still be useful in some way for tabletop games.

Time-Based

Eve Online is one of the few games of which I’m aware that have eliminated the ability to grind for progress by the simple mechanism of divorcing skill progression entirely from game actions. Instead, players designate which areas they’d like to improve, and timers begin counting down until that skill level is learned. I believe there may be some degree of requirement to do a few in game tasks to open up a new tier of skills, but that may just have been my limited understanding of the very complicated systems for the little time I played.

Reducing improvement to a pure time-based system is pretty much anathema to grind, at least for advancement. When you’ll improve at the same rate no matter what you do (and even if you don’t even log in), in theory there’s no reason to do anything besides what’s fun. There’s at least nothing boring to do that might have a better exp rate.

Conversely, time-based progression can create a game where late-comers can have a hard time competing with earlier players, as there’s no way to bridge a skill gap other than an earlier player forgetting to set the next skill to train. In the real world, this is solved by older generations making way for the younger, but such a thing is unattainable in video games until and unless permadeath suddenly comes back into vogue. Effectively, it may make sense to supplement a time-based system with something else that doesn’t discourage new players and alts.

Use-Based

A game with use-based skills gives a chance to increase a skill whenever it is used (or at least whenever it is used in appropriately difficult situations). Many video games include some kind of use-based system for skills. WoW has use-based weapon skills (or did the last time I played), and EverQuest had athletics-related scores that went up as you used those modes of movement.

Strangely, most use-based games also have an experience system that leads to actually leveling up. WoW weapons skills were mostly superfluous, and just a way to force more grinding: you’d only really be much under the level cap on weapons that you never used, and would have to spend a couple of hours training if you got a good magic weapon of an unused type. A lot of this is ease of balance: modern games gain a lot of mileage by being able to assume that a player of level X can do Y. And some games that go entirely use-based, like Oblivion, can generate some odd behaviors (in Oblivion, it’s often better to create a custom class that has skills that are easy to raise but you don’t plan to use; that way, you can game the level-up system by only leveling when you want to).

Despite making balancing harder, there’s still likely some mileage in use-based skills, particularly in a game that’s not rigidly class-and-levels-based. Specifically, if you can come up with a good way to make skills improve faster when the player is actually being challenged, and tie raising particularly useful skills (like defenses and mez resistance) to more interesting foes, you can avoid the grind while having a system that isn’t tremendously different from exp. The challenge-detection algorithms would have to be pretty good, and constantly subject to exploit-detection, of course.

You could even hybridize such a system with a time-based one, granting reduced time to improve a skill rather than a direct skill up.

Achievement-Based

Nearly every modern RPG, especially every modern MMO, has some form of achievement system. Do a certain countable thing enough, or do an unusual or difficult thing once, and the game can track it and award an achievement. For most games, these are largely for bragging rights, though some do grant decent bonuses for achievements (or collections of them).

What if constellations of achievements replaced experience for leveling? For level 2, you need three easy quest achievements, one medium difficulty quest achievement, two exploration achievements, and one first tier monster-killing achievement. You’d see them on your level-up screen: “oh, I need one more exploration achievement to level, let’s go explore!” Maybe you’d have to move on after killing the easiest group of monsters sufficiently for an achievement, or maybe subsequent achievements for that group would just get harder (“Achievement 1: 20 Total Goblins, Achievement 2: 60 Total Goblins, Achievement 3: 120 Total Goblins. Man, let’s just go kill zombies instead, I only need one kill achievement to level, and I don’t have any zombie ones yet.”).

The essential idea is that achievements allow you to granularly toggle rewards to what’s theoretically fun about your game. Exp is a lowest-common-denominator; you can’t make players do other things if they’ve found one supremely efficient source of exp. But if leveling required a variety of tasks at any time, it might be easier to convince players to try them.

This isn’t a mechanism for the faint of heart: it requires actually having a good idea of what’s fun about your game, and not trying to use the system to force players to go after filler. It also might require some multiple choices to avoid alienating different classes of player (“One exploration achievement or one PvP achievement” might be a good way to catch two different player agendas, for example). But, at the end of the day, you’re going to design an achievement system anyway, and a large number of your players will want to pursue it, so there’s no reason not to get some practical use out of it as well.

Final Thoughts

Experience is an easy fallback for designers. It’s so pervasive that most designers probably don’t even consider doing something else. Even if you do, that something else is going to require a ton of balance to prevent exploitation, and it’s probably an easier sell to just deliver a small variation on the traditional experience point.

But experience already demands a ton of balance, it’s just not getting it. It lies at the root of a host of player behaviors at odds with what should, theoretically, be foremost on a designer’s mind: delivering the fun. It, by its nature, steals the focus of whatever you’re doing and pulls it down to an accountant’s zeal for leveling up.

None of the ideas above may ultimately be ideas that survive vetting at the hands of a cunning playerbase, but I’m firmly of the opinion that trying something is better than using the same old mechanic without question. Nearly every other remnant of OD&D has been gradually replaced over the last 30 years of game evolution. Some of what was lost was of much more debatable value than experience points.

Why are they the last sacred cow to fall?

To End an Era of Exp, Part 3

Experience points started off the hobby as a necessary (or at least convenient) tool for allowing characters to grow. But the evolution of systems has trended towards the more granular and the evolution of game play has trended towards more coherent stories. It’s questionable why many games still rely on exp for advancement, but first we need to understand the power of advancement itself.

Conditioning

Back in 2005, Dan Bayn wrote a very persuasive article about Advancement Addiction. To sum up: psychological conditioning theories potentially indicate that linking character rewards to game play makes players increasingly crave these rewards and associate them with fun. Experience (and advancement in general) isn’t just a convenient counter to justify a character gradually growing more competent, but is a powerful psychological driver in itself. Players of games with any form of classic advancement begin to confuse the advancement with the fun. Try an experiment at your game table:

1. Run an all-out, dramatically exciting game session that hits stated character in-story goals, but claim that kind of session doesn’t count for advancement rewards.
2. Run a pretty slow and mundane session (maybe a combat slog with boring foes), but give out a bunch of advancement afterwards.
3. Get your players to give their honest assessment of perceived fun and which type of session they’d like to see more of.
4. Now do the same thing again but flip which session gives rewards and see how that changes opinions.

Clearly, you’re hoping your players are cool enough to realize the trap you’re setting and admit that the better game was better. But even excellent players having an excellent time still miss the thrill of building up their characters, as Harbinger of Doom mentions in his Spirit of the Century actual play writeup. There’s anecdotal evidence that players that primarily focus on indie games without much in the way of advancement can get over the urge, but I think it’s pretty reasonable to suggest that most players of classic RPGs are conditioned to expect rewards in the form of our characters kicking more ass the more we play. Somehow it doesn’t feel fun to have a character that doesn’t get more powerful, even if the character started out with tremendous power to start with (start a Nobilis game with double the suggested character build points and then count the sessions until the players start asking when they can make their literal demigods more powerful).

So advancement addiction is a hard thing to overcome, and you may not even want to. But why does exp make everything worse?

Reinforcement Schedules

Experience, by its nature, is designed to make advancement more granular. You don’t get a level or even just a skill point, but a collection of experience points that can be traded for such once a certain accumulation is reached. Experience is generally, by virtue of being so granular, designed to be awarded at variable rates. In classic use, you defeat a goblin for X exp and an orc for Y. In more story-based games, you get X for a slow session and Y for a session where a lot was accomplished. Experience awards explicitly reinforce doing the stuff the game/GM wants you to do vs. doing other stuff (potentially more fun stuff, if experience is not correctly synched).

The classic example (exp for monster defeats) is the one that frames all understanding of exp awards. Awarding experience for more difficult defeats implicitly creates a world in which defeating challenging opponents is the most valuable teaching tool. This is not necessarily wrong, but leads to all player characters essentially being violent thrill seekers each looking for the next challenging fight. Sure, they prioritize threats for all the classic reasons—stealing treasure, defending innocents, pursuing a villain—but the classic style means that it’s a completely valid choice to rough up targets that could be just as easily left alone (i.e., who runs from random encounters?). Classic experience awards incentivize making every PC a bully.

Variable rewards certainly have their uses, of course. Sometimes a GM has to rely on the exp card to get players to tackle a challenge in a way that’s probably more fun for everyone (e.g., face the tunnel of challenges or hire a pack of sherpas to guide you safely to the other side of the mountain?). It provides a carrot for players when there’s no reasonable in-story justification for doing things (always remember. though, that the stick version of the same behavior is often called “Railroading”).

Ultimately, however, most GMs cheat, especially when there is a big change in power with each level. If the next big part of your campaign involves a lot of challenges appropriate to 5th level characters, you probably don’t want to let the characters get much past or short of 5th before they get there. So monsters get added if the players are falling behind and taken away if they’re getting far enough ahead, all based on some kind of dogmatic interpretation of how many encounters the game designers thought was appropriate between each level.

Module series are forced to do this shamelessly: if Module 1 starts at 1st level and Module 2 expects the characters to be around 4th level, you can count up the exp awards from every fight in the book and see that the module writer made sure you’d get pretty much exactly to the right spot for Module 2. If your players skip fights, you’ll need to make up the exp somewhere. If you add any improvisation on your own part, you may want to scale back something from the official text. In many ways, the GM is trapped using a mathematical system to attempt to justify “this is a 4th level adventure so I want you to be 4th level now.”

Maybe you buy into the math, and you carefully arrange it all to add up. I know I frequently just start going holistic: “it feels like it makes sense for you to level up now.” The GM may or may not continue the fiction of experience points and their relationship to character advancement, but, in a tabletop game, it’s actually not really that big of a deal. A competent GM will make sure to lay out challenges that feel reasonable and give out experience or just pure advancement when it seems appropriate. In a GM-run game, I feel like experience points are generally an unnecessary complication for an already worrisome addiction to advancement, but it ultimately doesn’t matter because the GM can compensate to make the fun and the advancement continue to line up.

The real problem is that video games don’t have a GM.

Skinner Box

To paraphrase a quote of forgotten attribution, “Gary Gygax doesn’t have to let you keep fighting goblins if it’s not fun anymore, even if they’re still worth exp.” When a GM is running a game, it’s very unlikely that the players will be able to experiment fighting with a bunch of different monsters and then choose to only fight the monsters with the best risk to reward ratio until they level up and then start going after bigger targets with an even better risk to reward ratio. You can’t decide goblins are an easier fight than kobolds and then only fight goblins until you feel capable of moving on to the easier of ogres and worgs.

In video games, players do this all the time.

As mentioned in the first post in this series, “adding RPG elements” to a video game almost always includes exp. Computers are great at counting things. If a goblin is worth 1 exp, a computer can give you an accurate exp count after going through a whole warren of goblins without missing a beat. Theoretically, computers are also way more impartial than a GM, so the exp numbers that would likely get fudged in a tabletop game can be rock solid. Hell, there’s often a benefit for letting a player keep fighting stuff at the current level until he wants more challenge and moves on.

But the problem is that computer games automate the problem too well. A variable reinforcement conditioning that is debatable behind a tabletop game is so obvious as to be a running joke about video games, especially MMOs like World of Warcraft. Click the attack button a few times and you get a reward! Click it enough and you get a big prize! It’s very clearly a Skinner Box, and a lot of that is due not just to rigid interpretation of the awarding of exp, but due to the capacity to choose targets.

That’s right, we’re talking about grind (and we have been this entire series!).

Just to pick an example that fits my MMO of choice at the moment, City of Heroes features a wide variety of high-level enemy groups. One group uses a lot of crowd control and stays at range. Another has lieutenants that are completely impervious half the time and all of them drain endurance when they die. Still another turns invisible and always drops piles of slowing effects at your feet until you can barely move. Then there’s a group that does basically normal damage, automatically clusters up for area effect attacks if you’ll let them, and their major trick is that, when you defeat them, they sometimes resurrect themselves with less powers so you can defeat them for exp again. I’ve never really been in a pickup group where the members wanted to fight anything else but Freakshow if they could help it.

As a designer of video RPGs, particularly MMORPGs, the use of experience points has the subtle and invasive effect of causing your player behavior to flow like water seeking the lowest point: an unfortunate mass of your players will eventually hit on the behavior with the best time or risk to reward ratio in the game, and perform that behavior far more often than the fun inherent in the behavior supports. They can’t help it, everything in the game told them that leveling up is fun, and, in fact, implied that it’s the whole point. They’ll murder Freakshow, Earth Revenants, or your game’s grind-mob du jour for hours and hate you for how boring it is, while hundreds of more interesting fights await them. With exp in play, you can’t make players participate in things because it’s more fun unless you also make it worth a better exp ratio. Sure, you can write quests, but that just shifts the goalpost. As soon as you have one category of quest that gives better rewards no matter what it’s about, watch the players do that category more.

At the end of the day, if your game has exp your player has a number on his screen (perhaps represented as a colored bar). You have taught that player not only that making that number go higher is fun, but that it is implicitly the point of your game. It doesn’t matter how well written and scripted your quest or how interesting the AI is on your monster, its success and failure will really come down to whether there’s anything else comparable that makes the exp number go up faster. The only solution is to discard exp entirely.

And if you’ve followed me along this far and are now screaming, “oh yeah, even if I buy that it’s a good idea to kick out one of the core features of every RPG video game, what would I do instead!?” then I ask for only one more week of your patience. Next week, in the final installment of this series, I’ll talk about things you might do instead to replace exp with something less conducive to grind.

To End an Era of Exp, Part 2

Last week, I gave my (potentially ill-informed) explanation of why the concept of experience points entered the hobby at its earliest moments. Exp was simply the best solution for the design goals at the time. But times quickly began to change…

The Rise of Story

Anecdotes tend to point to Dragonlance as one of the (if not the) first official module series that included a story. Players had likely begun playing that way long before, but modules had always been much more focused on simply providing a venue for play: here is a dungeon, here is how your players can get into it, here are things they will find when they explore it. It didn’t need much of a story to be useful, as it provided an interesting place to fight bad guys who had treasure.

Dragonlance was a departure. It wasn’t just a setting that had novel tie-ins featuring stories set in the world. It was a module series specifically intended to make playing through the novels possible. The Dragonlance novels are a well-regarded fantasy epic, and you could produce a reasonable approximation of the events within simply by playing through the modules. Within the modules there were villains, and countdown timers, and quests, and other techniques that were fairly uncommon at the time to mold the play experience into the feel of a fantasy epic.

The modules did very well and became the model for most subsequent printed adventures. Quickly, the official examples of what constituted an RPG session became less Howard and more Tolkien: treasure and glory more and more became side effects of the pursuit of much grander goals. The PCs weren’t just trying to get rich and level up, they were trying to save the world, or at least accomplish much more character-specific long term goals than wealth and power.

By the 1990s, this had become so much the default method of play that a series of games that flat out replaced the moniker of “dungeon master” with “storyteller” became the new hotness in RPG circles. Most games abandoned the concept of levels entirely, instead relying on more granular improvement that was easier to map to non-game experience: in fantasy stories, characters rarely improve all their skills at once (save perhaps between novels). In fact, the core assumptions of the hobby had changed pretty drastically:

• Advancement was largely granular, increasing stats individually
• There was a renewed effort to balance characters mechanically against one another (even, perhaps especially, in games that still retained levels)
• PCs in-game tracked progress by their accomplishment of goals set before them, be they personal or for the good of civilization; characters might even come out of chargen with all the wealth and glory they’d ever want
• Death became less and less common, as allowing a character to die unexpectedly would ruin all the plot threads the GM had invented to tie that character and his or her goals to the world and story

But, despite these shifted assumptions, almost everyone still used exp…

To End an Era of Exp, Part 1

There is no rules concept more thoroughly tied to RPGs than Experience Points. They’ve been with the hobby since the earliest editions of D&D and are the first thing added to give “RPG-elements” to a video game that didn’t have them before. If your RPG features character advancement at all, chances are that advancement is tied to some variation of exp.

Why?

In the beginning…

Anyone running a game blog focused on the return to old school D&D can tell you that the earliest forms of gaming don’t really match the assumptions of most modern games. Whether or not that’s a failing, it’s pretty obvious that some things have become significantly different as the hobby has evolved.

The first editions of D&D (and experiments that led to it such as Braunstein) were iterations of the concept of simply zooming in on the individual units in a wargame and playing them rather than acting as their commander. That is, the first RPG characters were operating on game engines modified from wargames. This is another thing very obvious to those that have been in the hobby a long time: anecdotes indicate that the earliest versions of D&D relied heavily on players also owning a copy of TSR’s wargame, Chainmail, as a reference.

I don’t have sufficient knowledge of Chainmail to speculate on whether it used an exp mechanic, and would welcome any input on that in the comments. Unit advancement in early computer war sims leads me to believe it must have had some impartial way to advance, or at least differentiate, units from novice, to trained, to veteran. This is an abstraction that works very well for wargames: it’s pretty much impossible to track the individual capabilities of units when you’re managing dozens, so it makes sense to divide them into fixed tiers of competency.

It was only natural that the earliest RPGs did things the same way, based as they were on wargame rules. Most early systems were heavily level-based, and D&D even used titles for levels clearly defining the gradual improvement of competency tiers. The question was how to discretely allow characters to progress from one level to the next.

An interesting facet of level-based games that didn’t really even go away until D&D’s third edition was that character classes weren’t explicitly balanced against one another. In a straight up fight, a fighter was simply better than a thief, and a mage would eventually become powerful enough to exceed them both. There needed to be some mechanism by which balance could be achieved, and it made sense to do that by speed of gaining levels. A class that was half as capable as another would level up twice as fast, thereby using higher level to compensate for less effectiveness at the same level.

Finally, old school play was dominated by the concept of the adventurer in the style of Conan or Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser: a charming rogue that used wit and combat savvy to improve his place in the world. These were not superheroes, gamely laying down their lives for the good of a community, but whirlwinds of disaster separated from villains mostly by a preference for preying on other predators rather than upon the innocent.

This ethos expressed itself in gaming revolving around the dungeon crawl: your character’s primary goal was the discovery and robbery of hidden places guarded by creatures whose deaths no one in civilized society would mourn. Certainly, these warrens of monsters were often a significant threat to the surrounding humans and demi-humans, but the player character’s primary motivation was treasure and glory. Life as an adventurer was difficult and deadly: the monsters were going to do everything in their power to beat you, and you were going to do everything in yours to ensure an unfair fight in your favor, or to bypass the monsters entirely unless combat was absolutely required to take their treasure.

All these assumptions cascaded into the need for experience points:

• Advancement pinned to across-the-board upgrades with levels
• Classes not balanced in capability against other classes at the same levels
• Roguish and often competitive PCs seeking to minimize effort and maximize wealth and glory
• A high chance of dying and having to start a new character fresh

With these four inputs, exp simply made sense as a concept. It provided a somewhat objective method to determine when character could advance in level. It allowed weaker classes to advance faster than stronger ones. It gave players a carrot for clever play by allowing them to improve faster. It gave players a stick for incautious play by providing something that death would take away (either via resurrection penalty or simply starting a new character at nothing). It was an excellent fit for the needs of the era.

But those four assumptions have less and less of a place in RPGs every year…

Levels vs. Verisimilitude

The concept of increasing in level has long been a boon to progress-based RPGs, as it creates a potentially unlimited path of advancement for player characters. And players love to advance their characters. RPGs without levels typically have to pin their advancement scheme to a fixed scale, often striving for realism. Barring hideously expensive powers generally not expected to be possessed by the populace at large, it may be hard to keep a determined player from becoming amongst the best in the world at a specialty very quickly, possibly even at character generation. For some RPGs, this is a boon, but others are built around a continually ramping series of challenges. For these games, basing advancement on levels makes balance and maintaining player interest far easier.

But it makes world building far harder.

The hallmark of levels is how much of a difference there is between one level and the next: a progressive ramping up of power. It’s difficult to make a level-based game where a several-level power difference doesn’t make the lower-level character completely ineffective in most challenges vs. the higher level character. It’s hard to make these settings “gritty” or even marginally realistic; just in the realm of combat, a kid with a gun or a punk with a knife very quickly becomes completely negligible in a way he wouldn’t in the real world. And the real world (or at least Hollywood’s interpretation of it) is how players expect the game world to work intuitively until it’s proven otherwise.

This intuition is less of a problem for actual play; players can very quickly adjust to being superheroes. But it makes world building problematic: a designer’s default assumption is to create a world space that just doesn’t make any logical sense if there is a multiple-order-of-magnitude difference in capability across the spread of levels in the world. High level characters and creatures are so much more powerful than low level ones that it very quickly makes little sense if they don’t completely dominate the socio-political landscape of the setting, creating a massive base of the population that will literally never do anything of historical note if they don’t level up. Even attempting to mandate that high level characters are rare is a very hard assertion to make when having to design adventures that continue to challenge leveling heroes: a single high level mook could live a life of power and prestige dominating a lower level region rather than waiting to serve as a speedbump for high level adventurers going after his boss.

Massively multiplayer online RPGs have this problem worst. Tabletop GMs and the designers of single-player computer RPGs can more easily contrive situations that less arbitrarily segregate power levels in the game world. Sealed underground warrens, extraplanar threats, and a constant pressure to deal with the next big challenge can keep the goalposts moving long enough to keep suspension of disbelief afloat. And, at great need, a high-level PC can be allowed to journey back and realize the massive power now wielded over most of the cultural landscape. But MMOs can’t do this as easily. Gameplay needs to funnel players from zone to zone where threats increasingly ramp up, resulting in huge fields of high level creatures and NPCs waiting for the slaughter. Balance and protecting against jerks requires that safe areas include lots of friendly, high-level NPCs. The world can very easily become an inexplicably ramping heatmap of levels along the optimal player path.

So, how do you solve the problem?

In a tabletop or single player computer game, it’s about consistency. If leveling is a common result of the physics of the world, logic can be applied to the problem: powerful political figures are very high level, cities are built to account for the abilities of powerful creatures that might attack them, and the only reason to field armies of lower level individuals is to try to level them up into higher level individuals before a single champion of the other side crushes them. If leveling is an unusual fact, making the PCs more and more exceptional as they grow, the world needs to reflect this as well: player characters very quickly exceed threats on a mortal scale (no 20th level city guards), more and more adventures take them to places of great danger that are somehow blocked off from casual interaction with the world, and there is an expectation that they will be able to enact great change on the political landscape should they so desire.

In an MMO, it’s much harder. Unless you’re doing very complicated things with instancing, a player character can’t have a significant effect on the world. And, as more and more players race to the level cap, you wouldn’t really want them to anyway. It’s almost inevitable that player characters can return to areas where previously challenging enemies now fall like wheat, and the question starts: why don’t some of the max level characters take some time off of showing off their outfits in the central zone and deal with the problems that are now easy to them, so the people slightly below them can deal with easy problems, and so on down the line? Sure, the answer is, “because it’s a game,” but it’s also supposed to be using as many tricks as possible to preserve immersion. Auto-scaling things to the right level is not much more of a solution, as it can lead to feeling like leveling is mostly meaningless. Some possible, modular concepts to mitigate the problem off the top of my head:

• Periodically spawn higher level NPCs in low level zones that are somehow set up as the bosses of the area but not required in the main quest line for the low level story. Encourage high level PCs to return to deal with them in a way that doesn’t also encourage them to wipe out quest targets for the lower level characters in the zone.
• Frequently spawn much lower level NPCs in high level zones as the toadies for the appropriately-leveled threats. Players will mow through them and potentially enjoy getting to feel awesome.
• Avoid putting in drastic attack scaling between high and low level combatants: armies of low level characters vs. high level threats makes a little more sense if they can actually hit the target, even if for only a tiny fraction of a percent of its hit points. If PCs take on low level swaths of foes, they might get chewed up a little (and might be able to similarly chew up higher level targets).
• Set up the major threat of the world with some kind of story reason for clustering power in a central location and waning as it spreads away. Maybe it’s societal, or maybe there’s an actual power source of some kind that improves effectiveness based on proximity. Essentially, there should be some story based reason why the weakest, rather than the strongest, of an enemy group are able to penetrate furthest towards the good guy seats of power.
• Spawn non-boss NPCs at low level. Give them exp and let them level when they kill players on roughly the same scale as players gain exp (and maybe make them not target PCs for whom they’d get no exp unless attacked, just like PCs will rarely attack gray NPCs). Figure out how to get levels and location to persist through server restarts. When they die, have them rez like players at the nearest stronghold of their enemy group (or in the next nearest of higher level if they die in their stronghold) and then wander out to staff it. See what happens. (This could obviously go horribly awry.)
• Use instancing/phasing and gating to prevent players from returning to low level areas and preserve the fiction that time is passing. Everything in the world effectively levels up slightly more slowly than the PC so the gains in power feel more gradual. If players somehow return to low level zones, preserve the illusion that this is some kind of flashback, possibly even temporarily reducing their level to match (i.e., let them help their low level friends but not wander into low level zones as modern gods).

Some of those have been tried to some extent in previous or upcoming MMOs, but most of the time, AAA games tend to punt on this particular problem because it’s a game and games have levels and players, as a whole, are willing to ignore the inconsistencies. But I hold that, at some level, suspension of disbelief is being strained and it makes the world feel like a theme park, even if most players don’t consciously worry about it. With a few tricks to incorporate this weird inheritance from wargames, though, I believe immersion in games could be greatly increased, and everyone enjoys a little more immersion in their escapism.

Pathfinder, Kingmaker: House Rules

The second adventure path I’ve started running is Kingmaker. As a more sandbox-type setting, I wanted to make the rules less forgiving than my Rise of the Runelords house rules. However, many of the same fixes and imports from Trailblazer are still apparent.

Not listed are the Chase rules or the Weariness and Foraging rules but I’m using those as well.

Character Creation

• All PCs are built with your choice of 15 point buy (elite array/standard fantasy) or 4d6 standard dice method (reroll only if total ability bonuses come out negative).
• All PCs get half (rounded up) HP for each die at each level, with a +6 HP bonus at first level.
• Only core classes are available (Advanced PG classes may be selectively available once it comes out).

Character Advancement and Replacement

• All prestige classes must be earned through roleplaying/training in game, and then only setting-specific classes (Pathfinder, Hellknight, etc.) or limited core classes will be available.
• All PCs get half (rounded up) HP for each die at each level, with a +6 HP bonus at first level.
• We will be tracking experience per normal rules, and using the medium advancement speed for Pathfinder.
• Characters do not need training to level (except in Prestige Classes), but do require time to rest and reflect, typically with no Weariness tokens (see Weariness). Essentially, leveling happens between games when the characters are in town. Action Points refresh when this happens (see Action Points, under Trailblazer Rules).
• Item Crafting feats other than Scribe Scroll and Brew Potion are not available in this campaign. Class abilities that grant the ability to imbue items (like the wizard’s bonded item) still function normally. See magic items, below.
• All experience is evenly shared among all present PCs, and absent and replacement characters gain the party total exp when entering the game.
• New characters will receive level-appropriate gear, but will purchase magic items from a random assortment of available options.

Magic Items

• No item crafting feats are available (except Scribe Scroll, Brew Potion, and class-granted abilities).
• All magic items are assumed to be either:
  • Remnants of Thassilon or other ancient cultures
  • Newly created upon rare and potent forges or altars in the greatest cities
  • The unique and limited product of a culture or being of rare potency
  • Imbued by the essence of a dead hero
• This is not to say that magic items are incredibly rare, simply that the ability to custom-tailor one’s arsenal is out of the reach of most individuals.
• Items both found and available for purchase will be predetermined by the modules or random. However, the occasional trader may be willing to special order an item of a particular type for payment up front if he knows where to get it.
• Player characters can invest hero points into an item to have it level with them (see Hero Points, under Trailblazer Rules).
• Wands can be recharged much like Staves, even when reduced to 0 charges, to a maximum of 50 charges:
  • The same spell as contained within the wand can be cast to recover 1 charge.
  • Only the wand’s Caster Level in charges can be renewed per day.
  • The recharging caster does not have to meet the caster level of the wand to recharge it.
• When item creation is allowed, the Spellcraft check for creating the item is replaced by a Caster Level check, much as with Concentration (as, otherwise, there is effectively 0 chance of failure).

Trailblazer Rules

Iterative Attacks

• When a PC gets his first iterative attack (at BaB +6), he gets the ability to take a full attack and a -2 penalty to all attacks for the round to gain another attack at full BaB.
• This attack functions similarly to Flurry of Blows, Two Weapon Fighting, and Rapid Shot, and stacks with these abilities.
• When the character would normally get subsequent iterative attacks (at BaB +11 and +16), he instead reduces the penalty for taking iterative attacks by 1 (e.g., a character with BaB +11 can take an extra attack at only a -1 penalty to all attacks).

Action Points

• Each character refreshes to 6 Action Points on leveling (or keeps current APs if higher than 6).
• Events in game may award AP that is added to a party pool. APs in the party pool can be spent by any PC, and do not change when the characters level.
• APs can be spent to:
  • Improve any d20 roll (attack roll, skill check, saving throw, caster level check, etc.). Roll an action die (typically, d6) and add the result to your d20 check. You may only use an action point to improve the result of a roll before the DM informs you of the outcome of the roll. You may only use one AP per roll to improve any given d20 check.
  • Re-roll a failed d20 roll. In this case, you spend the action point after the DM informs you of the outcome of the roll. Spend an action point to roll again. The second result stands. (You may spend another action point to improve this second roll.) Note that the average improvement when taking the better of two d20 rolls is about +3; in most cases, you are better off using your action point to improve your first roll.
  • Negate a critical threat scored on you by an opponent.
  • Confirm a critical threat without having to re-roll your attack.
  • Use a limited resource ability (“per rest/per day”) an additional time (even if you have exhausted your normal supply).
  • Take an additional attack or move action on your turn. An extra attack is at the same bonus or penalty as your other attacks that round. (Once per turn only.)
  • Emergency stabilize – If you have 0 or fewer hit points and are dying, you may spend an action point to automatically stabilize; you do not have to make a Fort save to stabilize.
  • Make a “second chance” saving throw or SR check on a subsequent round. This use is only permitted if the target failed his first saving throw/ SR check and is subject to an ongoing (not instantaneous) effect.
  • Finally, a PC must spend an AP to bring his soul back from the dead.
• AP dice are exploding (i.e., on a roll of 6, roll a second d6 and add it).
• An AP can be invested in any magic item that gives a +1-+5 bonus (armor, weapons, or any item that modifies Natural AC, Deflection, or Resistance). The item’s bonus increases to the characters level divided by 3 (i.e., +2 at 6th, +3 at 9th, etc.). For each item so invested, the character spends an AP on investment and reduces his AP refresh by one.

Aid Another

• When characters are working together on a task, each rolls the same skill (or a related set of skills).
• The character that rolled highest is the leader.
• Each additional character that beat DC 10 adds +2 to the leader’s roll.

Diplomacy

You can propose a trade, agreement, or conflict resolution to another creature with your words; a successful check can then persuade them that accepting it is a good idea. Either side of the deal may involve physical goods, money, services, promises, or abstract concepts like “satisfaction.” The difficulty of the Diplomacy check is based on three factors: who the target is, the relationship between the target and the character making the check, and the risk vs. reward factor of the deal proposed.

The Target: Your Diplomacy check is opposed by the highest Sense Motive or Diplomacy check of all creatures in a group you are trying to influence. All such creatures use the Aid Another rules for skill checks. (For this purpose, a number of characters is only a “group” if they are committed to all following the same course of action. Either one NPC is in charge, or they agree to act by consensus. If each member is going to make up their mind on their own, they do not get the benefit of Aid Another, and you may roll separate checks against each.)

The Relationship: The DC modifier depends not only on the personal relationship between you and the target (if any), but also on the magnitude of their feelings for you.

Relationship	Example	DC
Intimate	A faithful lover or spouse.	-10
Friend	A long-time friend or family member	-7
Ally	A member of the same army, team, or church. (Helpful)	-5
Acquaintance (positive)	A business associate with whom you do regular (satisfactory) business. (Friendly)	-2
Just met	A town guard (Indifferent)	+0
Acquaintance (negative)	Someone you have met regularly with negative consequences. (Unfriendly)	+2
Enemy	A member of an opposing army, team, or church; a bandit. (Hostile)	+5
Personal Foe	An antagonist who knows and opposes you personally	+7
Nemesis	Someone who has sworn to you, personally, harm	+10

Risk/Reward Analysis: The amount of personal benefit must always be weighed against the potential risks for any deal proposed. It is important to remember to consider this adjustment from the point of view of the NPC; what is highly valuable to one may not be equally valued by another. When dealing with multiple people at once, always consider the benefits to the person who is in clear command, if any hierarchy exists within the group.

Risk/Reward	Example	DC
Fantastic	Great reward, negligible risk; a best case scenario.	-10
Favorable	Deal favors the target. The reward is good and the risk is tolerable.	-5
Even	No reward, no risk; or an even swap.	+0
Unfavorable	Deal does not favor the target. Either the reward is not great enough or the risk is intolerable.	+5
Horrible	There is no way the deal can favor the target; a worst-case scenario.	+10

Success or Failure of Diplomacy: If the Persuasion check beats the DC, the subject accepts the proposal, with no changes or with only minor (mostly idiosyncratic) changes. If the deal favored the target, his attitude improves by one category.

If the check fails, the subject does not accept the deal but may, at the DM’s option, present a counter-offer that would push the deal up on the risk-vs.-reward list. For example, a counter-offer might make an Even deal Favorable for the subject. The character who initiated the Diplomacy check can then simply accept the counter-offer, if they choose; no further check will be required.

If the check fails by more than 10, his attitude worsens by one category.

Complex negotiations may involve multiple checks, especially when determining the details of a treaty for example.

Combat Reactions

• Every character gets 1 Combat Reaction plus an additional one when he would normally get iterative attacks (at +6, +11, and +16 BaB). Combat Reflexes adds positive Dex mod to BaB to determine when one gets new Reactions (e.g., +2 Dex gets new reactions at +4, +9, +14).
• The reactions refresh at the beginning of the character’s turn, and can be used as immediate reactions when the monsters or the other PCs act. They can be used for:
  • Attack of Opportunity: Same as before, just uses up a Reaction.
  • Aid Attack: Add +2 to the melee attack of another PC against a target threatened.
  • Aid Defense: Subtract 2 from the attack of a target threatened when it makes a melee attack against another PC.
  • Dodge: When an attack is declared against you, but before the result is announced, add half your BaB to your AC for that attack.
  • Parry: When an attack is declared against you, but before the result is announced, add half your BaB plus your Shield AC as DR X/- for that attack.

Attacks of Opportunity

• Moving around in someone’s threat range doesn’t provoke an AoO, only trying to leave it without a retreat or 5-foot step.
• Other actions like spellcasting or drinking a potion still provoke normally.
• Reach weapons still allow an AoO on moving adjacent (as the target leaves the threatened space), but creatures with natural reach that covers all space up to the reach will not provoke AoOs from approaching the monster.

Downtime Money

• Craft, Profession, and Perform all use the same system for earning money:
  • This system can be attempted once per week spent working for money.
  • Declare a DC (representing the quality of work the character is attempting)
  • Roll a test of the skill used vs. the declared DC. If the roll is successful, multiply the result times half the DC and earn that much money in silver pieces. If the roll is a failure, earn no money for this week.
• Lifestyle costs are in effect unless superseded by in-game cost of living systems.

Dying

• Characters are Disabled between 0 HP and their Level in negative HP (e.g., a 3rd level character is Disabled between 0 and -3 HP).
• Characters are Dead at a negative number equal to 0 minus Constitution minus level (e.g., a 3rd level character with Con 12 is dead at -15 HP).
• Healing and stabilization is per the normal rules.

Initiative and Combat Order

Combat order is a shared experience:

• All enemies act on the same initiative roll (generally an average of enemy initiative scores), and can coordinate their actions if appropriate.
• During surprise rounds and the first round of combat, PCs roll initiative normally, and act in their normal order until the enemies act in the first non-surprise round.
• After the enemies have acted in the first round of combat, initiative becomes a tradeoff between enemies and PCs: the PCs go, and then the enemies go (and allies might go on a third tick if appropriate).
• PCs are encouraged to coordinate their actions on their initiative mark, though this coordination may be cut short if it becomes excessively complex for what could be conveyed in a combat round.
• Once the PCs have coordinated their actions, actions are resolved clockwise around the table unless some actions need to take place before others (e.g., “I have to move over there so the cleric can heal me.”).
• PCs may split their move and standard actions, to perform maneuvers such as two PCs moving to flank an enemy before either takes an attack

Instant Gratification vs. Phenominal Power

I’ve been playing a lot of Mass Effect 2. Previously, I was playing a lot of Dragon Age. Bioware has crawled in and owned most of my free time for the last few months. It’s safe to say my thoughts on design have been influenced by what they’ve been soaking in.

Today, I’m brought back again to an aspect of the current level conundrum. Specifically, in how both games handle a fairly simple skill system differently as far as advancement:

• In Dragon Age, each rank of an ability costs the same as the previous. It costs the same to go from level 2 to level 3 of a skill as it did to go from level 1 to level 2.
• In Mass Effect 2 (unlike its predecessor), each rank of an ability costs more than the previous level. Going from level 2 to level 3 of a skill costs more than going from level 1 to level 2.

These two examples neatly sum up the dominant advancement methods in pretty much all RPGs. Some use both systems: the first during character generation for simplicity, the last during actual play (which is the core issue of the current level conundrum linked above). Others use one or the other exclusively.

They result in different player behavior when making characters in many cases. In my experience, there is little players enjoy more than rolling huge fistfuls of dice (or, in a non-dice-pool system, adding huge numbers to the roll). Or, in the case of computer games with increasing power unlocks, there is little that players like more than getting the awesome power at the end of a skill tree.

This behavior means that, in an equal-cost system, there is a substantial tendency for player skills to exist in only three states, no matter how many ranks each skill has:

• Zero ranks, for skills the player hasn’t bothered with yet
• One rank, for skills the player can’t use without at least one rank
• As close to maximum ranks as the player can afford

Unless there is some other force at play (such as powers in the mid-ranks being better than at the top ranks, or some form of prerequisite or other limit), few PCs will naturally gravitate to an even spread of skills. It’s just more fun to bring huge chances of success or awesome powers to bear. The tendency is to max out as many skills as possible early, then max out the rest one by one during advancement.

The ME2/current level style of leveling scheme exists to counter this tendency. Games such as the Storyteller system will also indicate that a degree of simulationism is involved (to weight the difficulty of mastering a skill to that of the real world), but the primary impetus in play winds up being to offer a degree of instant gratification to counter the quest for phenomenal power.

Most games that use a stepped system of this kind award advancement points in small batches. In ME2, for example, each character gets 1-2 points per level, and skills cost 1-4 points for the respective ranks. Once a skill is rank 2, raising it will require spending at least one level with no advancement first. Perhaps not coincidentally, many skills unlock access to a new skill once the second rank is purchased.

A player is forced to choose to buy something lesser now, or wait for the bigger payoff. He or she also must consider whether a better chance at success or an upgraded power is worth multiple times as much as what’s gained from advancing a lower skill.

Ultimately, this is the reason to go with a current level system for experience: encouraging the conflict between gratification and power to create better-rounded characters. A flat-cost system will result in many players having few skills at median levels, unless other rules are in play to establish limits or ratios. Either result can be acceptable, as long as the system designer/GM knows and desires that outcome.

But systems that use flat cost for character creation and current level for advancement still punish the less system-minded players in any event .

Pathfinder, Rise of the Runelords: House Rules

These are the house rules I’m using in my Rise of the Runelords campaign under the Pathfinder system.

Classes

We are using a modified set of classing rules:

• Only core Pathfinder classes are available. Feats and spells from other books might be available for inclusion/research based on GM/player discussion.
• All characters will use the multiclassing rules normally.
• No prestige classes are available except those designed to fix a broken multiclass combo (e.g., Arcane Trickster for Caster/Rogue, Mystic Theurge for Caster/Caster, etc.). Check before character generation to make sure the prestige class you want is available.

Character Parity

• All characters use the same Pathfinder point buy (36 point), and receive maximum hit points per level.
• All missing players will have their characters NPCed.
• All characters receive experience at the same rate, no matter how many games are missed.

Initiative and Combat Order

(Based on a post from Ars Ludi)

Combat order is a shared experience:

• All enemies act on the same initiative roll (generally an average of enemy initiative scores), and can coordinate their actions if appropriate.
• During surprise rounds and the first round of combat, PCs roll initiative normally, and act in their normal order until the enemies act in the first non-surprise round.
• After the enemies have acted in the first round of combat, initiative becomes a tradeoff between enemies and PCs: the PCs go, and then the enemies go (and allies might go on a third tick if appropriate).
• PCs are encouraged to coordinate their actions on their initiative mark, though this coordination may be cut short if it becomes excessively complex for what could be conveyed in a combat round.
• Once the PCs have coordinated their actions, actions are resolved clockwise around the table unless some actions need to take place before others (e.g., “I have to move over there so the cleric can heal me.”).
• PCs may split their move and standard actions, to perform maneuvers such as two PCs moving to flank an enemy before either takes an attack.

Aid Another for Skills

(From Trailblazer)

Each player working as a team rolls the skill check. The highest roll is the leader and each additional roll that exceeded DC 10 adds +2 to the leader’s roll.

Death and Dying

(Variant of 4th Edition)

• When a character is dropped to 0 or negative HP, he or she is unconscious and dying. Negative HP is not tracked; all dying characters are assumed to be at 0 HP.
• A dying character is automatically killed by a Coup de Grace, or any attack that deals more than a quarter of his or her Hit Points. Area of effect attacks automatically hit dying characters in most circumstances.
• Unless stabilized by NPCs or enemies after the fight (or an ally during the fight), an abandoned dying character dies at the end of the encounter.
• If able to be tended by party members, a dying character automatically stabilizes at the end of an encounter.
• All healing restores a stabilized or dying character from 0 HP.

Combat Reactions

(From Trailblazer)

Every character gets 1 Combat Reaction plus an additional one when he or she would normally get iterative attacks (at +6, +11, and +16 BaB). Combat Reflexes adds positive Dex mod to BaB to determine when one gets new Reactions (e.g., +2 Dex gets new reactions at +4, +9, +14).

The reactions refresh at the beginning of the character’s turn, and can be used as immediate reactions when the monsters or the other PCs act. They can be used for:

• Attack of Opportunity: Same as before, just uses up a Reaction.
• Aid Attack: Add +2 to the melee attack of another PC against a target threatened.
• Aid Defense: Subtract 2 from the attack of a target threatened when it makes a melee attack against another PC.
• Dodge: When an attack is declared against you, but before the result is announced, add half your BaB to your AC for that attack.
• Parry: When an attack is declared against you, but before the result is announced, add half your BaB plus your Shield AC as DR X/- for that attack.

Attacks of Opportunity

(From Trailblazer)

Moving around in someone’s threat range doesn’t provoke an AoO, only trying to leave it without a retreat or 5-foot step. Other actions like spellcasting or drinking a potion still provoke normally. Reach weapons still allow an AoO on moving adjacent ( as the target leaves the threatened space), but creatures with natural reach that covers all space up to the reach will not provoke AoOs from approaching the monster.

Ability Damage and Level Drain

(Previously house ruled for 3.5, replaced with Pathfinder rules)

See the Pathfinder Negative Level rules.

Turning Undead

(Previously house ruled for 3.5, replaced with Pathfinder rules)

See the Pathfinder Channel Energy rules.

Diplomacy

(From Giant in the Playground and Trailblazer)

You can propose a trade, agreement, or conflict resolution to another creature with your words; a successful check can then persuade them that accepting it is a good idea. Either side of the deal may involve physical goods, money, services, promises, or abstract concepts like “satisfaction.” The difficulty of the Diplomacy check is based on three factors: who the target is, the relationship between the target and the character making the check, and the risk vs. reward factor of the deal proposed.

The Target: Your Diplomacy check is opposed by the highest Sense Motive or Diplomacy check of all creatures in a group you are trying to influence. All such creatures use the Aid Another rules for skill checks. (For this purpose, a number of characters is only a “group” if they are committed to all following the same course of action. Either one NPC is in charge, or they agree to act by consensus. If each member is going to make up their mind on their own, they do not get the benefit of Aid Another, and you may roll separate checks against each.)

The Relationship: The DC modifier depends not only on the personal relationship between you and the target (if any), but also on the magnitude of their feelings for you.

Relationship	Example	DC
Intimate	A faithful lover or spouse.	-10
Friend	A long-time friend or family member	-7
Ally	A member of the same army, team, or church. (Helpful)	-5
Acquaintance (positive)	A business associate with whom you do regular (satisfactory) business. (Friendly)	-2
Just met	A town guard (Indifferent)	+0
Acquaintance (negative)	Someone you have met regularly with negative consequences. (Unfriendly)	+2
Enemy	A member of an opposing army, team, or church; a bandit. (Hostile)	+5
Personal Foe	An antagonist who knows and opposes you personally	+7
Nemesis	Someone who has sworn to you, personally, harm	+10

Risk/Reward Analysis: The amount of personal benefit must always be weighed against the potential risks for any deal proposed. It is important to remember to consider this adjustment from the point of view of the NPC; what is highly valuable to one may not be equally valued by another. When dealing with multiple people at once, always consider the benefits to the person who is in clear command, if any hierarchy exists within the group.

Risk/Reward	Example	DC
Fantastic	Great reward, negligible risk; a best case scenario.	-10
Favorable	Deal favors the target. The reward is good and the risk is tolerable.	-5
Even	No reward, no risk; or an even swap.	+0
Unfavorable	Deal does not favor the target. Either the reward is not great enough or the risk is intolerable.	+5
Horrible	There is no way the deal can favor the target; a worst-case scenario.	+10

Success or Failure of Diplomacy: If the Persuasion check beats the DC, the subject accepts the proposal, with no changes or with only minor (mostly idiosyncratic) changes. If the deal favored the target, his attitude improves by one category.

If the check fails, the subject does not accept the deal but may, at the DM’s option, present a counter-offer that would push the deal up on the risk-vs.-reward list. For example, a counter-offer might make an Even deal Favorable for the subject. The character who initiated the Diplomacy check can then simply accept the counter-offer, if they choose; no further check will be required.

If the check fails by more than 10, his attitude worsens by one category.

Complex negotiations may involve multiple checks, especially when determining the details of a treaty for example.

Identifying an Item

(Previously house ruled for 3.5, replaced with Pathfinder rules)

See the Pathfinder Spellcraft description.

Hoyle’s D20

This system is used to replace all d20 rolls in the game.

Each player starts with an individual deck of playing cards with the face cards removed. It has four sets of Ace-10 and two Jokers, for a total of 42 cards. At the beginning of each session, the players shuffle their decks and set aside 5 cards without looking at them. This is the “bank” and the size can be adjusted based on how much leeway you want the players to have to undo bad rolls.

Whenever a D20 roll is called for during the game, the player turns over the top card on the deck and uses it as the result. Ace counts as one and all other cards count their full value. Black cards represent 11-20 (i.e., add 10 to the face value of black cards). Jokers have a special rule noted below.

If the player fails a roll, he or she may flip over the top card of the bank and use that card instead. The player may choose to continue flipping cards from the bank until getting a successful result or running out of bank cards.

If a Joker is drawn, the player immediately sets it face up to the side, moves the top card of the deck onto the top of the bank without looking at it, and then flips the next card. Saved Jokers can be used to add +2 to any other roll (even damage rolls) after rolling, and are discarded once played for this effect.

Once the player plays the last card in the deck, all cards in the discard pile are reshuffled. The bank retains its size, and does not get any new cards added to it after the shuffle: after play begins, only flipping a Joker adds cards to the bank.

Action Points

(From Trailblazer)

Banked cards are treaded as Action Points. In addition to flipping over another card when you fail a roll, you could burn an AP card to:

• Improve any d20 roll (attack roll, skill check, saving throw, caster level check, etc.). Roll an action die (typically, exploding d6) and add the result to your d20 check. You may only use an action point to improve the result of a roll before the DM informs you of the outcome of the roll. You may only use one AP per roll to improve any given d20 check.
• Negate a critical threat scored on you by an opponent.
• Confirm a critical threat without having to re-roll your attack.
• Use a limited resource ability (“per day”) an additional time (even if you have exhausted your normal supply).
• Take an additional attack or move action on your turn. An extra attack is at the same bonus or penalty as your other attacks that round. (Once per turn only.)
• Make a “second chance” saving throw or SR check on a subsequent round. This use is only permitted if the target failed his first saving throw/ SR check and is subject to an ongoing (not instantaneous) effect.
• Heal half your maximum HP after a 10 minute rest.

You can go into AP “debt” (getting less than 5 cards at the start of the session) if:

• You invest an AP in a magic item to have it level with you (automatically increasing its enhancement bonus at 6th, 9th, 11th, and 15th levels).
• You are raised from the dead (debt lasts until leveling up).

Elite/Boss monsters can use their APs for all of these benefits, plus taking an extra action during your initiative order (but not to interrupt your turns). These monsters can also spend extra APs if the party is awarded a bonus AP. Elite monsters typically get 1 AP to start, and Boss monsters get 1 per PC.