Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Accomplishments: A New Way of Awarding Experience Points

At A Paladin In Citadel, a read about Arduin's Experience Point System. The major complaint of such a complex method of awarding experience points is that it's just too much to keep track of.

Here's a new idea. Rather than awarding character's based on the gold they've collected, why not award it based on what the character has accomplished. A beginning character would have no accomplishments. Once a character completes a certain number of accomplishments, the character's level increase.

Here are some example accomplishments I thought up (most of which are class based):


GENERAL EXPERIENCE AWARDS

Taking part in a dangerous expedition that returns without casualties
Being the sole survivor of a disastrous expedition
Recovering a magical artifact
Dying and being brought back to life
Being gaining a title and lands
Joining a specific organization related to your class
Being promoted or rising in the hierarchy of that organization
Become head of that organization
Establishing an organization related to your class


CLERIC EXPERIENCE AWARDS

Recovering a relic of your chosen religion
Leading a pilgrimage to the holy land
Taking part in a crusade
Leading a holy crusade
Converting a follower
Converting a village
Converting a town
Converting a city
Converting a kingdom


FIGHTER EXPERIENCE AWARDS

Taking part in an organize battlefield regiment
Commanding an army of 10 or more men to victory
Commanding an army of 100 or more men to victory
Commanding an army of 1,000 or more men to victory
Commanding an army of 10,000 or more men to victory
Winning a duel or joust against a ordinary man
Winning a duel or joust against a man of arms
Winning a duel or joust against a master of arms
Winning a tournament of arms
Defeating a monster of legend


MAGE EXPERIENCE AWARDS

Creating a spell of 1st or 2nd level
Creating a spell of 3rd or 4th level
Creating a spell of 5th o 6th level
Brewing a potion
Creating a magic artifact


THIEF EXPERIENCE AWARDS

Thieving a single item worth at least 10 gold coins
Thieving a single item worth at least 100 gold coins
Thieving a single item worth at least 1,000 gold coins
Taking part in a heist
Leading a team of 3 or more thieves in a successful heist
Leading a team of 5 or more thieves in a successful heist
Leading a team of 10 or more thieves in a successful heist


Here's how I see this working. Character's go out into the work and below it to collect gold to fun their various operations that earn them fame and accomplishments.

Now, This isn't something I intend on using, but it was a fun exercise that I though someone might appreciate.

4 comments:

  1. Great idea! Officially yoinked.
    Should promote more longterm rping.

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  2. I like it. I was actually thinking of something along these lines for my own homebrew system, but this is more eloquent.

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  3. I like anything that diversifies XP rewards and encourages more than just robbing & killing. These ideas are good, and I also like the exploration-based rewards from the Torch, Pole & Rope blog, which encourage aggressive hexcrawling.

    If the night's session is just going to be a quick & dirty dungeon crawl and you want to keep things simple, by all means just use kills & coins to tally XPs. But any campaign should have a framework of additional accomplishment-driven XP rewards.

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  4. This is great since it awards xp for a variety of different adventure options beyond loot and slay.

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