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Fallon Kell
Commodore
Joined: 07 Mar 2011
Posts: 1846
Location: Tacoma, WA
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 Posted: Thu May 26, 2011 3:02 pm Post subject: |
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Thank you all!
I feel like I know what I'm doing now!
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garhkal
Sovereign Protector
Joined: 17 Jul 2005
Posts: 14215
Location: Reynoldsburg, Columbus, Ohio.
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| Posted: Thu May 26, 2011 6:05 pm Post subject: |
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| Raven Redstar wrote: | | In my games that I've recently run, I give at least enough to counteract any CP expenditures during the course of the adventure, and then at a minimum 4-5 for some degree of safe skill progression. |
So.. are all those CP spent in mission, needed?
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Bren
Vice Admiral
Joined: 19 Aug 2010
Posts: 3868
Location: Maryland, USA
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| Posted: Thu May 26, 2011 6:28 pm Post subject: |
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| Fallon Kell wrote: | | Thank you all! |
Your welcome. 
| Guardian_A wrote: | | ...Also, I often give one CP for every week of "Down Time" for the characters... |
Interesting. I don't give CPs just for down time. Why do you find that useful?
| garhkal wrote: | | So.. are all those CP spent in mission, needed? |
I assumed he meant CP expenditures for temporary boosts to actions, not permanent skill increases. Which is similar to what I do:
| Quote: | | Bren wrote: | | With rare exceptions, I try to award enough points so that the PC ends up with more CPs after the adventure than they had before the adventure. That tends to self correct for long, active adventures since they tend to burn through the CPs. |
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Guardian_A
Commodore
Joined: 24 May 2011
Posts: 1654
Location: South Dakota, USA
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| Posted: Thu May 26, 2011 6:40 pm Post subject: |
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| Bren wrote: | | Guardian_A wrote: | | ...Also, I often give one CP for every week of "Down Time" for the characters... |
Interesting. I don't give CPs just for down time. Why do you find that useful?
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It actually started because a couple of my players said that their characters were doing "Research" during travel time. At the time, they made a convincing enough of an arguement that we made it a house rule. To their credit, they did keep track of the CPs they earned that way and usually spent them on Knowledge related skills. |
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Raven Redstar
Rear Admiral
Joined: 10 Mar 2009
Posts: 2648
Location: Salem, OR
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| Posted: Fri May 27, 2011 4:05 am Post subject: |
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| garhkal wrote: | | Raven Redstar wrote: | | In my games that I've recently run, I give at least enough to counteract any CP expenditures during the course of the adventure, and then at a minimum 4-5 for some degree of safe skill progression. |
So.. are all those CP spent in mission, needed? |
To survive? Yes. Almost all, if not all of them are used on dodge, parry and soak rolls to avoid imminent death or incapacitation in a situation that an inability to move would result in death.
My players use the force for defense, never for attack. |
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Fallon Kell
Commodore
Joined: 07 Mar 2011
Posts: 1846
Location: Tacoma, WA
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| Posted: Fri May 27, 2011 10:13 pm Post subject: |
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| Raven Redstar wrote: |
My players use the force for defense, never for attack. |
That's funny... When I was a player, almost any CPs I used on rolls were for bargaining or gambling or some other financially profitable enterprise!
| Guardian_A wrote: | | Bren wrote: | | Guardian_A wrote: | | ...Also, I often give one CP for every week of "Down Time" for the characters... |
Interesting. I don't give CPs just for down time. Why do you find that useful?
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It actually started because a couple of my players said that their characters were doing "Research" during travel time. At the time, they made a convincing enough of an arguement that we made it a house rule. To their credit, they did keep track of the CPs they earned that way and usually spent them on Knowledge related skills. |
That's really interesting! Thanks for sharing!
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garhkal
Sovereign Protector
Joined: 17 Jul 2005
Posts: 14215
Location: Reynoldsburg, Columbus, Ohio.
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| Posted: Fri May 27, 2011 10:15 pm Post subject: |
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| Bren wrote: | | I assumed he meant CP expenditures for temporary boosts to actions, not permanent skill increases. Which is similar to what I do |
Thats exactly what i was on about. I know some who just cause (and so they can look cool) spend 8+cp a session if they have it. And others who only spend 1 or 2, if it will save their @$$. So do you reward them differently? EG is the CP award, set at the lower/higher amt? Or do you give them both the same?
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Guardian_A
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Joined: 24 May 2011
Posts: 1654
Location: South Dakota, USA
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| Posted: Fri May 27, 2011 11:26 pm Post subject: |
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| garhkal wrote: | | Bren wrote: | | I assumed he meant CP expenditures for temporary boosts to actions, not permanent skill increases. Which is similar to what I do |
Thats exactly what i was on about. I know some who just cause (and so they can look cool) spend 8+cp a session if they have it. And others who only spend 1 or 2, if it will save their @$$. So do you reward them differently? EG is the CP award, set at the lower/higher amt? Or do you give them both the same? |
My group tends to look at the long term devlopment of their characters, as a result, they dont tend to spend CPs unless they are really in a pinch. Our group (3-4 players) rarely spends more than 2-3 CPs per session. |
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Raven Redstar
Rear Admiral
Joined: 10 Mar 2009
Posts: 2648
Location: Salem, OR
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| Posted: Sat May 28, 2011 12:14 am Post subject: |
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| garhkal wrote: | | Bren wrote: | | I assumed he meant CP expenditures for temporary boosts to actions, not permanent skill increases. Which is similar to what I do |
Thats exactly what i was on about. I know some who just cause (and so they can look cool) spend 8+cp a session if they have it. And others who only spend 1 or 2, if it will save their @$$. So do you reward them differently? EG is the CP award, set at the lower/higher amt? Or do you give them both the same? |
My players usually only keep 5 or 6 CP on hand, and usually don't spend more than 4 trying to save themselves.
Although now, I run for a much smaller group, which consists of only myself as GM and my girlfriend as a player. We lost our group when we moved out of state.
If I had a player who threw CPs at every problem they came across, I would definitely cut them off at maybe 3 returned. I don't like to see blatant abuse of the rules, and I crash hard on people who try to pull one over on me. |
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ZzaphodD
Rear Admiral
Joined: 28 Nov 2009
Posts: 2426
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| Posted: Sat May 28, 2011 1:44 am Post subject: |
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As our games are set on the 'hardcore' difficulty we dont allow CPs to be used to save your butt..(other than raising skills the normal way on the spot). As a result players neither spend or save CPs for such use. The last session we found out that a player had saved all his CPs since the creation of his character though, now sitting on 41 CPs... 
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Anakin
Lieutenant Commander
Joined: 27 Feb 2011
Posts: 129
Location: Sweden
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| Posted: Sat May 28, 2011 5:56 am Post subject: |
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After an adventure of the mentioned magnitude, I'd give my player somewhere between 12 and 15 CPs. I tend to give my players a bit more CPs than others, but it's because they normally need to spend 2-5 CPs during adventures in order to survive...
And I also give them some direct increases if they use one skill very often in an adventure.
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Bren
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Joined: 19 Aug 2010
Posts: 3868
Location: Maryland, USA
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| Posted: Sat May 28, 2011 11:37 am Post subject: |
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| garhkal wrote: | | Bren wrote: | | I assumed he meant CP expenditures for temporary boosts to actions, not permanent skill increases. Which is similar to what I do |
Thats exactly what i was on about. I know some who just cause (and so they can look cool) spend 8+cp a session if they have it. And others who only spend 1 or 2, if it will save their @$$. So do you reward them differently? EG is the CP award, set at the lower/higher amt? Or do you give them both the same? |
We don't regularly have large extremes in CP usage. Usually people spend CPs for several reasons (in no particular order):
1) to avoid or resist damage e.g. dodge, parry, vehicle evasion, STR vs. damage just to stay alive or avoid being hurt;
2) to increase a skill in what seems an important or critical situation this could be knowledge, command, persuade, repair, really almost anything that seems to really help the characters or advance what they see as the plot;
3) to recover from a low skill roll when the player feels like character failure harms the players image of the PC or the characters reputation e.g. the security expert rolls low (but without a complication) and without a CP fails to open the fairly simple lock on a door or the party doctor fails a regular first aid roll; what makes 3) different from 2) is that either the roll is not important to the plot or some other character could make an alternate roll to succeed; this is even more likely to occur if there is an audience (players or characters) to impress;
4) to succeed at something in a dramatic, cinematic, or heroic fashion when the skill roll alone is insufficient and the roll is not necessarily critical or important to the plot; this is different from 3) in that in 3) the player is only trying to succeed at a normal roll whereas here the player is trying for an above normal dramatic or cool effect.
I don't really have a strong preference about how the players choose to use their CPs, though I'd be most likely to add CPs to the award to make up for use in 1, 2, and 4 and less likely for 3. But not much less likely.
garhkal, it sounds like you don't like players spending CPs to have their characters look cool. Why is that? |
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garhkal
Sovereign Protector
Joined: 17 Jul 2005
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Location: Reynoldsburg, Columbus, Ohio.
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| Posted: Sat May 28, 2011 3:12 pm Post subject: |
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Its not that i dont like them spending it to just look cool, but i feel i should not have to 'give them' it back for doing so.
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Guardian_A
Commodore
Joined: 24 May 2011
Posts: 1654
Location: South Dakota, USA
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| Posted: Sat May 28, 2011 3:32 pm Post subject: |
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| garhkal wrote: | | Its not that i dont like them spending it to just look cool, but i feel i should not have to 'give them' it back for doing so. |
Thats how I feel as well. CPs are valuable, and players should treat them as such. If you just give them back any CPs they use during play, there is nothing to keep them from building up a pool of +50 points just so they can boost every roll they make during an evening of play. By being a little greedy with the CPs the players have to choose whether they want to improve their character or their rolls durring a session. |
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Bren
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Location: Maryland, USA
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| Posted: Sat May 28, 2011 5:47 pm Post subject: |
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| Guardian_A wrote: | | garhkal wrote: | | Its not that i dont like them spending it to just look cool, but i feel i should not have to 'give them' it back for doing so. |
Thats how I feel as well. CPs are valuable, and players should treat them as such. If you just give them back any CPs they use during play, there is nothing to keep them from building up a pool of +50 points just so they can boost every roll they make during an evening of play. By being a little greedy with the CPs the players have to choose whether they want to improve their character or their rolls during a session. |
Haven't ever seen characters get anywhere near 50 points so that seems a false concern to me. I think the most I've ever seen is 19 CPs saved at a time for very experienced characters. And the way we play, typically CPs are only given at the end of a scenario or episode which might take 10-20 hours or so to play out, so characters can burn through quite a few points before they get any back. I have used up 15+ CPs on a single long scenario. On the big climax scenario, I used all my CPs and all my force points.
If it costs more character points to stay alive and do cool things than it doing so earns, players quickly stop trying to do cool things or the characters die. I like players choosing to do cool things. I like characters not dying.
I see CPs as one incentive for encouraging an enjoyable style of play. Guardian_A, you seem to as well as your list of CP awards "gives" character points for a number player and character actions that you appear to value. It looks like you are giving out 1-5 CPs per session, plus 1 CP per week of travel or down time, plus up to 3 additional points for the end of each a story. I don't know how long your sessions are, our stories are typically 10-20 hours of play or about 2-3 sessions which provides perhaps 10-20 CPs. That doesn't seem much different in number of CPs, possibly less, than what you are awarding. garhkal, based on your numbers you (and Sparks in general) are "giving" out twice as many CPs per hour as I do so you must be rewarding and incenting something. This really seems to me to be more of a distinction without a difference than a real difference in actual effect. But if you and your players are having fun, that's the real point. |
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