Level Advancement Over A Lifetime

[seasong]

Greybar:
Hey, you started it.

 

[whydirt]

a possible solution

1. beef up the current NPC classes so that they're in the same ballpark power-wise as PC classes.

2. make a template, call it "NPC", "non-adventurer", "sedantary" or something similar. this template has hit dice and BAB one step lower than the normal class. so the warrior would now just be a fighter with the NPC template and get 3/4 BAB progression and a d8 HD, non-adventuring wizards would get 1/4 BAB and a d3 HD, etc... This would also give you a non-adventuring priest that many people create with a custom class anyway. The main bug to iron out would be commoners, which don't have a good companion class. I'd personally just keep them the same.

 

[Inez Hull]

Amen! I've been thinking about having a really poor BAB progression for non-fighting classes, and reducing hit points considerably.

Really, there's no reason for a Sage who has spent 30 years in a library to be any more accurate with any kind of weapon at all (except, perhaps, barbed words and biting sarcasm). And if he wants to improve his BAB, he can spend a level as a warrior

Although I've no real plans to use it in my games and was just running with an idea, I think my 'clunky' approach in the earlier thread may be useful to address this.

Generic life skils are acrued with age and are completely independant to any combat related stats. Old NPC's will have a lot more skills but will not necessarily have any combat skills or experience beyond that of another commoner half their age.

A sage could simply be the same as any other NPC with a 0-level PC class and skill points to spend based on age. However if Intelligence bonus is allowed to be added at each NPC level and the skill choices are opened up to the NPC based on their profession they could probably end up with a decent selection of skills.

Using MavrickWeirdo's 1Xp/Day method a 57 y.o. sage would have 6 levels. If the Sage had a +3 Int bonus they would have 45 skill points to spend on various knowledges as class skills (this is assuming x4 skills on 1st level of NPC). The character could still be a 0-level PC and have no skill at all in swinging a sword or dodging fireballs.

I hope this is clear written down as it is in my head!

 

[mmadsen]

CON + (smaller number of hp) is pretty much the basis for Ken Hood's Grim-n-Gritty rules.

Well, there's a lot more to it than that, especially armor-as-DR, called shots, etc. My point was that a 2nd-level Whatever has twice as many Hit Points as a 1st-level Whatever, even if the Whatever class isn't combat-oriented. If we start with a decent base number of Hit Points, class-levels don't have to add Hit Dice (or Hit Points by some other mechanism).

And yeah, rogue could have been a lot cooler.

My complaint isn't that the Rogue isn't cool enough or powerful enough, just that the class could represent so much more with just a bit of flexibility. If we give the Expert (basically a Rogue with no Special Abilities) Bonus Feats like a Fighter, but with each list tailored to a different character concept, we can have a Scout, a Minstrel, a Cat Burglar, a Spy, and so on.

 

[LightPhoenix]

There's a large hole in logic when you assume longer lived races advance slower - PCs.

Say you decide they earn proprotionately less experience. In this case, this should apply to PCs as well - the elves get a huge penalty in that they don't gain experience from encounters as fast as Humans. Unless of course the effects for aging apply to normal folk but not to adventurers, which is just silly.

Or, the other logical conclusion is that Elves and longer lived races just do not face the same trials and tribulations that a shorter lived species would. Which again doesn't make sense - why should lifespan have anything to do with how rough the conditions are around you?

 

[mmadsen]

There's a large hole in logic when you assume longer lived races advance slower - PCs. Say you decide they earn proprotionately less experience. In this case, this should apply to PCs as well - the elves get a huge penalty in that they don't gain experience from encounters as fast as Humans.

I thought the natural conclusion was that long-lived elves simply don't spend as much time adventuring, and that they take many fewer risks than short-lived humans. If you live a comfortable life only punctuated by new risks every few decades, you don't push your boundaries at the same rate as those dare-devil humans.

PCs would then be playing out those exciting moments that only a few elves experience (and only on rare occasions).

 

[seasong]

Inez Hull & mmadsen:
Thank you both very much for the comments on overhauling the class system (if a bit off the thread ). I had written a new set of core classes for Europ (to fit the setting better), and now I've had to scrap it and go completely from scratch, based on some inspiring ideas you've given me.

You utter bastards.

Anyway, I'm almost done with it, and I will post it when I am (hopefully sometime tomorrow or the day after). Meanwhile a brief teaser:

Adventurer (expert with feats)
Laborer (commoner, NPC)
Specialist (expert with mad leet skillz & no combat ability at all)
Warrior (fighter base class)

Included will be my spell feat rules, which allow you to transform any class into a spell caster, and some combat-skill rules to replace most of the weapon feats*.

Note - the classes above are balanced for Europ and for each other; I'll try to include additional notes on beefing them up a bit for standard campaigns.

* A feat is an exceptional, incredible, massively trained ability. So why do you have to expend a feat to learn how to use a short sword?

LightPhoenix:
I agree. However, the rules I suggested don't apply to adventure in general - just long-term scenarios (yearly scenarios) where the long-lived race could be said to take fewer risks and approach things in a slower, more patient fashion.

On the whole, though, I prefer my elves to average higher levels.

 

[mmadsen]

Adventurer (expert with feats)
Laborer (commoner, NPC)
Specialist (expert with mad leet skillz & no combat ability at all)
Warrior (fighter base class)

So what's the difference between an Adventurer-Expert and a Specialist-Expert? And why "Warrior" vs. "Fighter"?

 

[LightPhoenix]

I thought the natural conclusion was that long-lived elves simply don't spend as much time adventuring, and that they take many fewer risks than short-lived humans. If you live a comfortable life only punctuated by new risks every few decades, you don't push your boundaries at the same rate as those dare-devil humans.

PCs would then be playing out those exciting moments that only a few elves experience (and only on rare occasions).

So again, my second point. Why does living longer mean that you live an easier life? What you're essentially saying is that Elves get less experience for living under normal challenges than Humans do. By this logic, Elves living on the border of a tribe of kobolds that raid constantly gain less experience than a group of Humans on the same border. Obviously, both challenges are the same.

What you're describing has nothing to do with age, and everything to do with cultural and environmental conditions.

 

[mmadsen]

Why does living longer mean that you live an easier life?

If you live a long life, taking few risks (because you've got "all the time in the world"), you'll presumably spread out a typical human's life-time of experience over hundreds of years.

What you're essentially saying is that Elves get less experience for living under normal challenges than Humans do.

No, what I'm saying is that elves, because of their great longevity and slow maturation, don't cram as much life experience into any one decade.

Compare three decades at the same job, performing the same task at the same desk, married to the same woman, to serving overseas in the military, making one group of friends, going to college, meeting girls, working odd jobs, going back to grad school, meeting your wife, having kids, helping start a start-up, trying to bring it to IPO, watching that start-up fail, going back into industry, etc.

If novel experiences and challenges yield enriching experience points, then long-lived races, operating on a slower schedule, might experience much more in their lifetimes, but much less in a typical decade than shorter-lived races who go from childhood to adulthood in a single decade.

What you're describing has nothing to do with age, and everything to do with cultural and environmental conditions.

And the culture and environment of a long-lived elf is quite different from the culture and environment of a short-lived human -- partly from the culture they're born into, and partly from the decisions they'd naturally make (or not get around to making).