(TFT) High level of experience. -- Rick's campaign.

[Rick Smith <rick_ww@lightspeed.ca>]

Hi Edmund,
  I've not used the 1 exp per damage + DX bonus for a long time.  I do not
like how it slows down combat.  What I do is total the exp for the fight and
average it at end of combat.  I will sometimes take a bit away from a player
who did poorly, or give a bonus to someone who kicks butt, but most fights
people end up with the average.

  That said, the PC's likely do not get the majority of their exp in combat.
I have "time spent in play" exp, double every decade (so if it is 10 exp / hour
from 30 to 39 attributes, it is 20 exp / hour from 40 to 49.  I also give a
fairly substantial bonus (say 100 exp) when the PC's accomplish a 
major goal.  I like to give people lots of chances to use their talents, so
if someone makes a 6vsIQ using Alertness, they get 30 exp.

  For a while, I have said that PC's need 100 exp to go from 30 to 34
attributes, and 125 exp to go from 35 to 40.  It doubles after that.  I've
played so much TFT, that I've gotten a bit bored with 33 attribute 
characters, this gets people in to the high 30's and 40's quicker.  This
rule effectively makes the expensive experience levels 5 lower.  

  One thing that I've done to reduce exp is risk rolls.  You do not now
always get an attribute for one.  You now get 1 attribute or 500 exp
which ever is less.  So after a while, people no longer get as much 
exp from them.

  In a couple campaigns people could earn Karma Points.  (These were
gifts from demi-gods and the like.  They could not be made by mortals.)
 These are like a wish in that you can force a re-roll of a bad dice roll.  
(Except  where as you can buy as many wishes as you can find, theoretically,
you are allowed not more Karma than your attribute decade.  So if 
you are 40 attributes, you are never allowed to have used more than
4 Karma in your life.)  However, no characters never got enough 
Karma to reach that limit.  I think the character who reached 60 
attributes had managed to earn 2 Karma points in their whole life and
still had one of them when the character retired.  (He had used one and
was saving one in case of an enemy getting a bad triple damage, if I
recall correctly.))

  I liked Karma points, but I do not use them in my current campaign.

  Anyway the guys who have reached the high 50's have played their 
characters for YEARS.

  I suspect that our styles of GMing are quite different.  PC death is 
quite rare in my campaign.  PC's tend to play defensively and as soon
as they have enough political power, tend to have companies of troops
to do most of the fighting for them.

  However, even in my campaign where high attribute figures are not
unknown, no one has come close to the 35 IQ where you can safely
make traditional wishes.

  Warm regards, Rick.



On 2015-09-01, at 1:51 AM, Edmund Nelson wrote:
> Dear Rick
> 
> Getting to 50 attribute points is a lot of work! According to the rulebook
> you need 18500 EP to get to the 50th,  60 is MUCH harder you need 84500 to
> get to the 60th point. I'm impressed by the impressive level your players
> have been able to survive to see to that point. How do your PC's survive to
> kill so many enemies without getting defeated by rolling a 16-18 then the
> enemy with a spear rolls a 3 and hits with a 4 that gets +1 and sextupled
> to 30 damage. How can the GM vary the rate which character advancement
> goes? As far as I know the rules say you get 1 EP for each point of damage
> you deal and 1 EP for each point of DEX the enemy had. Out of combat EP
> will obviously vary but OOC EP becoming so large that it swamps in combat
> EP seems dubious.
> 
> I agree that getting to 30 IQ isn't ideal, but I was looking for the most
> reasonable "best case scenario" possible and it still wasn't realistic.
> 
> I've not run into a campaign with any character getting past the 42nd
> atribute point. Even that guy died in 1 shot to a greater demon who went on
> a hot streak. (2 criticals in  row!) Once you get past 40 or so Magical
> items become much more practical methods of advancement than levelups
> 
> On Tue, Sep 1, 2015 at 1:14 AM, Rick Smith <rick_ww@lightspeed.ca> wrote:
> 
>> Hi Edmund,
>>  I my campaigns, I've several times had characters get up to 50
>> attributes.
>> A couple times a character or two reached 60 attributes.  Also, in base
>> TFT,
>> an IQ 30 is not a good value for trying for wishes unless you have a +2
>> charm, and even then, I would rather have a couple more points.
>> 
>>  However, even the wizards spread out their attributes to have a decent
>> DX,
>> and ST (or fatigue superscripts) to power the spells.  I think that
>> highest any
>> PC in my campaigns was around 25 IQ.  (At 25 IQ they have about a 1/46,000
>> chance of getting a wish, about a 1/216 chance of only dying and a 99.5%
>> chance of being burnt to ashes.
>> 
>> Different GM's will have different rates that PC's go up.  But I've not
>> run into
>> any campaigns where 30+ IQ characters were common.
>> 
>>  Warm regards, Rick.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On 2015-09-01, at 1:13 AM, Edmund Nelson wrote:
>> 
>>> In order to get to 30 IQ a player who starts with 8/8/8+8 would need to
>> get
>>> 14 levels at mimimum. the first 4 levels cost 500, the next 4 cost 1000,
>>> then the next 5 cost 5000(!) and the last 1 costs 2000, for a total of
>> 8500
>>> experience required.
>>> 
>>> In order to get that much exp killing Starting characters only one would
>>> need to kill 355 starting characters to get the requisite EP. Killing 4
>> hex
>>> dragons requires 194 4 hex dragons to die
>>> 
>>> in other words How the heck are you killing that many enemies before the
>>> entire world goes against you. It's incredibly impractical to get more
>> than
>>> 40 total levels at all. and even 40 total levels is incredibly
>> impractical.
>>> That's why I think giants/reptile men are so much more practical for a
>>> party than elves, Giants and reptile men can't gain levels.  However
>>> reptile men  get to their 40th point before elves would so think about
>> that
>>> for a second the race that's supposed to Grow SLOWER actually has a
>> FASTER
>>> growth to the soft level cap due to higher base stats.
>>> 
>>> On Tue, Sep 1, 2015 at 12:42 AM, Rick Smith <rick_ww@lightspeed.ca>
>> wrote:
>> 
>> 
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