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Mojomoe
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Joined: 10 Apr 2010
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Location: Seattle, WA
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 Posted: Fri Jan 16, 2015 1:52 pm Post subject: Player character DE-advancing? |
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Heya, all!
A thought occurred to me. With D6 being, for some, a long-running game (19 years for me as GM, with the same characters), has anyone ever given any thought to character skill REGRESSION?
Assuming a character is being fed a steady diet of CPs, you eventually have the problem of massive skill ballooning that has been mentioned many times. What about a use-it-or-lose-it system for long-running or high level characters? Skills could gradually creep downward if not improved or heavily utilized in a long time.
I mean, sure, you USED to be a great mechanic, but with all that starfighter piloting over the years, you've focused your talents in other areas.
Thoughts? |
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tetsuoh
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Joined: 21 Jul 2010
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| Posted: Fri Jan 16, 2015 2:57 pm Post subject: |
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"I've FORGOTTEN more than you'll ever learn, kid."
For ever month that goes by per d before the pip in a skill a character doesn't use - said skill goes down by a pip in our games. But not to any less than dbl the characters associated stat, unless I as gm have a reason for it.
That said we usually don't do breaks between adventures much anymore either but when that used to happen I let my players pick 1 skill per number before the D in each attribute that they utilized during the break.
*shrugs*
we had a span where our squib almost completely lost his pickpocket skill during a 2 year hiatus, but he was trying to stop his thieving ways anyway. |
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garhkal
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| Posted: Fri Jan 16, 2015 5:52 pm Post subject: |
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Just like there should be regressions in skills due to age that is not covered. Heck in the books, it only seems disease (like what happened with Mon mothma's poisoning) seem to cause a loss of skill.
I could see a 1 yr starting point, then every 3 months there after with no use of the skill, causing a drop of a pip.
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griff
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| Posted: Fri Jan 16, 2015 9:20 pm Post subject: |
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I do remember older characters with * after some skills, Mon Mothma in the movie trilogy source book, noting that this skill declining due to age and the skill not being used. But there have been no official rules for this. In the Dark Empire source book Boba Fett had descreased skills due the being in the sarlacc. I would leave decrease Strength skills for age starting a age 65, or species equivalent in life cycle. And decrease any Dexterity skill after one full year of that skill not being used. -1D in both cases.
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Whill
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Joined: 14 Apr 2008
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Location: Columbus, Ohio, USA, Earth, The Solar System, The Milky Way Galaxy
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| Posted: Fri Jan 16, 2015 10:52 pm Post subject: Re: Player character DE-advancing? |
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Aging and skill atrophy, again. OK, I'll get my two credits worth over with quick.
Mon Mothma is an NPC, and NPCs do not need rules to govern how their skills change over time (due to age, disease or atrophy). GMs handwave NPC stats into existence for any specific point in time the NPC appears in the adventure, and if the same NPC appears at different times the skills may change. We don't need rules for that. And NPCs are not PCs, so Mon Mothma or any NPC is not a valid precedent for PC rules.
Unlike NPCs, PCs should all have the same rules governing them for game balance, whatever those particular rules may be. I've never had any campaign go more than 4 years (game time and real time), so skills decreasing in value has never been needed in my game. But I get that some of you other GMs have very long time campaigns so feel aging effects and atrophy are appropriate.
However, regardless of what aging and atrophy house rules you implement, for very long term campaigns I also suggest slow advancement along the way due to the game becoming unhinged when PCs get too powerful.
That is all. Carry on.
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Last edited by Whill on Sat Jan 17, 2015 11:57 am; edited 2 times in total |
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Barrataria
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Joined: 28 Dec 2005
Posts: 295
Location: Republic of California
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| Posted: Sat Jan 17, 2015 10:50 am Post subject: Re: Player character DE-advancing? |
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| Mojomoe wrote: | | Assuming a character is being fed a steady diet of CPs, you eventually have the problem of massive skill ballooning that has been mentioned many times. What about a use-it-or-lose-it system for long-running or high level characters? |
Isn't the problem here the rate of CP handouts and the challenges players have to face? I thought a basic aspect of SWd6 was the eternal choice between spending CP to save one's hide vs. trying to save them for upgrades?
Also, (1) I think the problem is magnified by allowing characters to improve abilities, as opposed to skills and (2) cheap specializations really let PCs pile up too much skill too fast. I ditch both of those things for d6 games (and SW for that matter when I get a chance to run it).
I agree with garkhal that aging is worth thinking about; it also raises the issue of the "kid" template that has (IIRC) 18D of abilities which seems dumb. Like Whill said, good for game balance, and nicely papers over the problem of figuring out the age of a million kinds of aliens, but not so hot for campaign continuity.
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Whill
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| Posted: Sat Jan 17, 2015 3:39 pm Post subject: Re: Player character DE-advancing? |
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| Barrataria wrote: | | I agree with garkhal that aging is worth thinking about; it also raises the issue of the "kid" template that has (IIRC) 18D of abilities which seems dumb. Like Whill said, good for game balance, and nicely papers over the problem of figuring out the age of a million kinds of aliens, but not so hot for campaign continuity. |
And there's the Kid thing too. I'll repeat here that the PCs only have to be balanced to each other at the time of the campaign when they all come together. An 18D adult PC in the same campaign may not have been an 18D kid back before the campaign begins, but that doesn't matter to the campaign now. The 18D senior citizen PC may not have had 18D when he was in his prime like the 18D adult PC does now, but again, there is no need for the heroes to have be retroactively game balanced to each other over the course of their entire lives at each respective age. They just have to all be 18D now, regardless of their age.
If a GM can accept in his SWU the existence of an 18D attribute Kid (usually at least tween), then there is really no problem with the Kid template itself. The only potential issue with the Kid template comes down the road in very long term campaign taking place over the course of many years. But if I ever had a game that lasted that long, I probably still wouldn't bother with any attribute changes. A Kid is going to at least have the human average Strength, and there are plenty of adult characters in the galaxy (some even PCs) that only have 2D or 2D+1 in Strength. And since the Kid is an adventurer, he is going to grow in skill from experience so it will be like real kids growing in ability as they get older. And on the other end, in real life some individual senior citizens seem to defy effects from aging and remain potent into old age, and PCs are automatically exceptional characters in the game. IMO, there still really isn't a great need for aging rules in the cinematic reality of SW.
And if an 18D Kid seems dumb to you, then just don't allow that template in your game. Your issue wouldn't really be a lack of aging rules as the template itself (the existence of an 18D attribute Kid). I can appreciate that because I didn't allow Kid PCs for many years. (By the same token, I also used to not allow Ewok PC because I used to refuse to accept the existence of an 18D Ewoks.)
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garhkal
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| Posted: Sat Jan 17, 2015 4:51 pm Post subject: |
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| griff wrote: | | I do remember older characters with * after some skills, Mon Mothma in the movie trilogy source book, noting that this skill declining due to age and the skill not being used. But there have been no official rules for this. In the Dark Empire source book Boba Fett had descreased skills due the being in the sarlacc. I would leave decrease Strength skills for age starting a age 65, or species equivalent in life cycle. And decrease any Dexterity skill after one full year of that skill not being used. -1D in both cases. |
Then we would need to have 'age progression chart's much like ADND had for each of their races, going from young to adult, to mature, to old, to venerable..
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Barrataria
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| Posted: Sun Jan 18, 2015 12:25 am Post subject: Re: Player character DE-advancing? |
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| Whill wrote: | | And if an 18D Kid seems dumb to you, then just don't allow that template in your game. Your issue wouldn't really be a lack of aging rules as the template itself (the existence of an 18D attribute Kid). I can appreciate that because I didn't allow Kid PCs for many years. (By the same token, I also used to not allow Ewok PC because I used to refuse to accept the existence of an 18D Ewoks.) |
Oh, if someone had a good idea for it I wouldn't mind, but I'd knock a D or 2 of ability dice off with the understanding they'd be added back late. I've used it for NPCs and done that.
Also we may have a different understanding of that template, that kid in the picture doesn't look 13 to me. Unless he's mentally challenged ("I'm 14 and I say "yay let's go get em and carry a dead frog and fizzyglug") in which case the stats are also too high.
Anyway, I didn't mean to drag you into a big thing, and I don't really care that much about "accuracy" but the kid template is one thing I would adjust, and I'd probably take a second look at some of the senior citizen templates if those ever mattered. But I wouldn't bother (and haven't) with any kind of standard maturation/atrophy rules. I never used the ones in AD&D either. Or Traveller, but I don't recall characters getting old enough for it to come into play.
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jmanski
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| Posted: Sun Jan 18, 2015 12:05 pm Post subject: |
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You mean I should stop carrying around my dead frog? 
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Whill
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| Posted: Sun Jan 18, 2015 3:07 pm Post subject: Re: Player character DE-advancing? |
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| Barrataria wrote: | | Also we may have a different understanding of that template, that kid in the picture doesn't look 13 to me. Unless he's mentally challenged ("I'm 14 and I say "yay let's go get em and carry a dead frog and fizzyglug") in which case the stats are also too high. |
Or the template's age range starts too young for 18D/7D and any kind of realism. I don't think I have too different an understanding of the template. The template says age 8-16, and I agree that the textual description of the character more accurately describes a boy from age 8-10. I personally wouldn't allow any human PC under the age of 13 for any template, which means the textual description of the Kid would have to be updated to follow suite. I should have specified when I said there was no problem with the Kid template itself I was specifically referring to the attribute dice not the fluff capsule.
But it's no big thing.
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garhkal
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| Posted: Sun Jan 18, 2015 4:35 pm Post subject: |
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Back to the regressing of skills from atrophy.
If they started working back on those skills, how quickly would/should they regain their old status? SHOULD they even regain their old status?
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Naaman
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| Posted: Fri Feb 06, 2015 6:28 pm Post subject: |
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I have personnally had some of my own highly developed skills atrophy. I went about 10 years without doing any artwork, a skill which I spent the first 25 years of my life developing.
But since I did not "forget" how to draw, I was able to reestablish my skill (and in some ways, Im even better now, coming at it with "fresh eyes," perhaps) in a matter of a few weeks.
The same happened with my shooting. Afteer I got out of the military, I went two years without shooting. Three days of training at work and my skill was back up to what I'm used to.
Because I knew how to look at the target and assess my mistakes, I knew what needed to be done to correct the deficiencies.
In my experience, it doesnt take long to bring back a skill... the "recovery time" is negligible by comparison to the time spent dormant (a couple weeks vs 11 years, and three days vs two years, etc...) |
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Ankhanu
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| Posted: Fri Feb 06, 2015 11:25 pm Post subject: |
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| garhkal wrote: | Just like there should be regressions in skills due to age that is not covered. Heck in the books, it only seems disease (like what happened with Mon mothma's poisoning) seem to cause a loss of skill.
I could see a 1 yr starting point, then every 3 months there after with no use of the skill, causing a drop of a pip. |
If I recall correctly, Mon Mothma's stat block in the Heir to the Empire Sourcebook included a caveat that some of her skills (perhaps attributes) were lower due to age and lack of use... I think they were limited to Dex and Str. IIRC this is before her poisoning.
There isn't an official rule on aging, but some of the suggestions above are pretty decent. A month is an awful short time to start losing a skill, though... a year might make more sense, as Garhkal suggests.
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garhkal
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| Posted: Sat Feb 07, 2015 6:55 pm Post subject: |
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| Naaman wrote: | I have personnally had some of my own highly developed skills atrophy. I went about 10 years without doing any artwork, a skill which I spent the first 25 years of my life developing.
But since I did not "forget" how to draw, I was able to reestablish my skill (and in some ways, Im even better now, coming at it with "fresh eyes," perhaps) in a matter of a few weeks.
The same happened with my shooting. Afteer I got out of the military, I went two years without shooting. Three days of training at work and my skill was back up to what I'm used to.
Because I knew how to look at the target and assess my mistakes, I knew what needed to be done to correct the deficiencies.
In my experience, it doesnt take long to bring back a skill... the "recovery time" is negligible by comparison to the time spent dormant (a couple weeks vs 11 years, and three days vs two years, etc...) |
That "Regaining atrophied skills" back quicker than when you initially gained them is a good point. But in an RPG how would that work? Less cost/time to re-raise them once you start back using them?
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