Last week we opened a discussion on the concept of character growth as a kind of evolution in tabletop gaming. We started by taking a look at the codified level system that is present in so many of the games that we play. While the level system provides an equivalent field of advancement across any number of character types in order to maintain some sort of game balance, it is definitely not the only game in town.
One of the other “big names” in the realm of character advancement is point based character advancement. You accrue whatever the game’s equivalent of experience points are as you play and then you spend them to advance your character in a direction of your choosing. This could as broad as “physical attributes” to as focused as a single skill or ability depending on the game and how it is set up. But the general idea is the same – there is no “even advancement” because you gain power in skill in one area while foregoing training in another area.
Edge of the Empire, Age of Rebellion, and Force and Destiny from Fantasy Flight Games utilize a broader point based character advancement. You earn experience through play which you can then use to purchase skill ranks and talents to advance your character. There isn’t much you can use your experience for right away, but as you grow in power and start to diversify you will find things like new specializations, powerful signature abilities, and even Force powers that you can spend your hard won experience on.
The Storyteller system that World of Darkness uses is a little bit more involved than that when it comes to character advancement. Each stat, skill, and power that you own can be improved as your character moves through the Chronicle. However, the experience payout in these games is slow – painfully so sometimes where it can feel like you’re attempting to chisel a statue out of stone with a spoon in regards to seeing your character’s final vision.
Many superhero RPGs use point based character advancement as a means of allowing players to realize in play the superhero that they see in their mind. As you can guess these tend to be some of the most complex systems out there. Greg Stolze’s Wild Talents is an incredibly math heavy system that puts a high level of customizability in the players’ hands as players can tweak their individual abilities, skills, and powers as they see fit. Hero System, which powers the superhero RPG Champions also uses a similar approach.
And then there’s GURPS.
Like the level system and Dungeons and Dragons, we couldn’t talk about point based character advancement without talking about GURPS. For those of you who may not have grown up with it, GURPS stands for Generic Universal Roleplaying System and was published by Steve Jackson Games. Now in it’s 4th Edition, it is still joked about as being the game of choice for engineers and math majors. While some games have flat scores for increasing skills, GURPS bases how expensive a skill is on its relative difficulty. The harder the skill is to use, the more expensive it is to increase. Powers and abilities are modified by percentages instead of just points on the total cost like they are in Wild Talents.
As with the level system, there are upsides and there are downsides to a point based character advancement system. It gives the players a high degree of customizability that may not be as readily evident in a level based system, but that level of customizability can sometimes give players, especially newer ones, too many options. A GM can reasonably expect a group of heroes built on the same number of points to be able to take on the level of challenges, but here the customizability can break things down again as those familiar with the systems can create wildly different characters that aren’t capable of taking on similar challenges. Even in games with lower levels of complexity and character diversity, this can be apparent. Its strengths and its weakness tend to mimic those of the characters that are created in this kind of system. A character can choose to excel at one kind of task, but it is at the expense of other things that they then cannot do nearly as well. Every decision of growth is an active choice the player has to make.
Rate of growth between systems of this kind can be very disparate as well. Some games have very low thresholds for advancement and hand out experience like it is going out of style. Other games have much higher costs for advancing your character and you’re lucky to get a handful of experience out of each session.
There are other games out there that use unique marriages between the level system and point advancement system, such as Numenera which has a nominal level system that requires you to advance your character in a variety of different ways before you advance to the next tier of play. There are also games out there that use completely different methods of character advancement such as FATE Core’s use of milestones to determine character advancement. But between the level system and the point advancement system we’ve covered a lot of ground on the ways that role playing games handle the concept of “evolution.”
So what about you, Gamer Nation? What games have you played that have your favorite representation of character advancement? What is your least favorite? Sound off below and let us know.
Ben Erickson
Of course as a huge fan of FFG and Star Wars I like the advancement where you have to save up. The system lends itself that unless there is a HUGE discrepancies in XP that every player can still be effective.
I have played most others, on a big Savage Worlds kick right now (drinking the koolaid) and find the tier system pretty fun.
I find that level advancement and what I call ‘hyper stated’ rules are great for the rules lawyer but usually disparate for everyone else. Including a non-lawyery GM. Of course like wine, everyone had different tastes … in Vino Veritas