>SWORD EXPmakes you better at swords and unlocks unique abilities and more specialized subtrees>ATHLETE EXPmakes you better at athleticism(like reacting first, moving through terrain, hitting hard, etc.) and unlocks unique abilities and more specialized subtrees>ARCANE MAGIC EXPetc>THIEVERY EXPetc>SURVIVALISM EXPetcwhy not do this?
Because I deal with enough spreadsheet bullshit at work to do it in "my" time.That said, more or less every skill-based system I can recall playing right now had a mechanism to do something close to this. Pendragon (the one I know best), for instance, has a box to tick if you score a critical success in that skill (and sometimes at GM's discretion; I knew one who would occasionally hand one out on particularly amusing critical failures, on the grounds that now you knew what NOT to do!) and you can later make a test to see if you get a free increase in that skill.
>>98766937Isn't that but less retarded the exact way Mythras/Runequest level up skills?
>>98766334Already done body, its how BRP (call of cthulhu and runequest) works. Its a concept older than videogames
>>98767212I liked how it was done in pendragon as well.
>>98766334You mean skill levels? That's already a thing.
>>98766334Narratively - you end up with way too many timeskips (or even sessions) spent on nothing but training montages.Mechanically - multiple exp tracks means more bookkeeping, and many players hate bookkeeping.
>>98766334It's been done, as >>98767201 >>98767212 >>98767227 say, and it works.
I ain't managing all that shit in a pen and paper game and nether are you. That's why. Save shit like that for CRPG
>>98766334You don't need XP for anything. You just have the players level up every other session. I refuse to believe that any campaign runs longer than a single year. I've heard stories of campaigns lasting for like 8 years but how would they not level up beyond level 20 by then?
>>98766334>why not do this?If you want to do it for your game, go ahead.
>>98768019Levelling up every session is insane.
>>98767536Dumbass&Drone OP revealed as a complete retard who can't do basic research yet again!
>>98766334Some systems have mechanics like this. One I've played assigned bonus points for critical successes in the corresponding skills.The problem if this was the main method for character advancement, is that the number of rolls per skill and per session can't be predicted, requiring the GM to do extra balancing or risk turning the PCs into autists. Also rewarding players for making as many skill checks as possible would lead to stupid gameplay and you would need additional mechanics for advancement during down time.Not to mention the level of crunch it would need to account for skill checks with different levels of abstraction.
So did OP just find out about Runescape and Elder Scrolls or something?
>>98767965It kinda sucks in CRPGs too. Betrayal at Krondor might have had pretty good writing, but I'll always remember it primarily as the game where the only way to make sure endgame trapped chests won't partywipe you is to spend hours lockpicking and closing the same early game chest over and over again to grind the lockpick skill.Not to mention combat in first 2-3 games from the TES series is even more infamous.
it should work like you get the exp equally from the regular things like milestones or enemies, not through training any specific thing, but you choose how to distribute it
>>98767490>Mechanically - multiple exp tracks means more bookkeeping, and many players hate bookkeepingI know this is wading into a minefield but that's easier to solve with a classless system. More successful halberd fighting? You get better at halberd and other polearms.Lots of spell successes? You get better at spellcasting.
>>98766334That's kind of like dcss. You don't get any special skills though. Armour skill makes the base AC bigger and reduces penalties to EV and spellcasting, weapon trees make it stronger and faster to swing, school training make it possible to cast bigger spells, etc. It'd be a pain to run it 1:1 on a table though.
>>98766334literally js MCMMO
>>98771067nophono knows who that is
>>98766334Tracking actual XP for each and every skill is an absolute pain in the assBut you could do it like for example in Call of Cthulhu or Dragonbane: just mark every skill for which a PC has succeeded/failed/critically succeeded (up to you which of these count) during a given session or scenario, and then at the end of it they have a chance to slightly the level of each marked skill. It retains the organic "you increase the skills you use" idea, but requires much less tracking
>>98766334How about>earn money adventuring>find skill trainer back in town>pay them to teach you the skillOptionally>time spent adventuring grants character points that can only be spent on skills you got a lot of use from
>>98766334Or you could do something as simple as>>98767212fuck beat me to it/thread
>>98766334I have three issues with this.1.) It is a lot to keep track of. Not much to expound on here. As a DM, I really just don't want to have to tally up XP rewards by category at the end of each session and have to keep track of all that.2.) It would likely distort play patterns in a way that would emphasize grinding for a specific XP type rather than approaching the scenario laid out in the most efficient way. Now instead of planning to overcome the obstacle, PCs are planning to maximize the extraction of their favorite XP type.3.) I believe it would cause party conflict. The player playing an archetypal fighter wants to take combat-oriented approaches that gets her the XP necessary to become a sword master. The player playing an archetypal rogue wants to take stealth-oriented approaches that gets her the XP necessary to become a master of shadows. In a generic XP system, they can both put the XP they get to their goal. In this sort of system, there is a very clear winner and loser, heightening the stakes of any intraparty conflict over approach to a scenario.
>>98772073As an addendum to point 2, there is an argument to be made that skills and specialties, in and of themselves, already distort play patterns towards players insisting on methods that might not make sense, but that they have the skills to back up. To a degree, this is healthy cause it represents a player trying to maximize the value of the skills they are good at.This, I think, would push it into the territory of being unhealthy for a game, since it would encourage some very tortured and convoluted decision-making to try to justify XP payouts in situations that don't really call for it.That said, there are system designs that could mitigate this like session or obstacle caps for XP types and things like that, though some solutions for this might end up creating other perverse incentives.
>>98771498who tf is going to teach you how to run and jump netter than you can do it by yourself
>>98772820There are athletic trainers. The reason why we had such massive improvements in marathon scores isn't because humans got faster so much as we figured out better ways to run. Yes, really-and sometimes by accident.The way you intuitively run works well, but you usually have no reason to improve it because it works well enough that there's no need to study your own running. Like, you COULD study throwing darts, but most people have no need to. Similarly, you can be trained to climb, or, yes, jump and run more effectively- up to a mechanical and effort-based limit.
>>98766334Isn't that how Cyberpunk works?
>>98766334Isn't that how CoC works?
>>98766334Monster of the Week has it so that whenever you fail a check, you get EXP.
