Free CP by Training - Need Input.

[tetsuoh]

We've ran in CP issues before... we all have...

Now I have two of them at once.

Number One : Me and my group have an idea for free cp.

Normally this handled by the GM but we've decided it best to have a set of rules for when it can be rewarded.

Our idea? Training allows free increases if you take your time.

But we have ran into issues with this - namely how long to train to award the increases, what skills can and cannot be increased, weither or not a teacher is required, etc, etc.

This can then also be used as an example of going to school, and can then be awarded the increases faster as they qualify as having a teacher, so a new question arises - is there a system in the books that allows someone to purchase "going to collage" in otherwords a guide for how much a skill increase should cost to be trained through?


Number Two : The Books CP is too much.

My groups get CP after each session, as we don't follow the normal - adventure story arc style of setting. My groups often spend day to day in game dealing with whatever is occuring and then might spend a week or more in hyperspace moving to the next item on the agenda - with events occuring in between. As such their downtime is often limited to what time they choose to take rather than is openly provided to them do to an ocurrance in the story arc.
(IE: the downtime between empire strikes back and return of the jedi in which luke trains and leia hunts down hand with cheweie and lando is roleplayed out in my games - luke is my player who takes a side set and may even leave the session early - leia and the rest roleplay out trying to track han down.)

And because of this - The CP awards are too great so I need to look at a different system of rewards, or at least different numbers. What all do you recommend?

What we need at the moment is input - we only have two GM's working this and while we have confidence we could work a solution for our needs, we also value this communities thoughts on the situation.

SO, let us know eh?
~Tet

[DougRed4]

It's an interesting dilemma. I think with any game the key is to make sure character advancement is neither too slow (where the players get frustrated, and see no change) or too fast (where they become too powerful too quickly, making it tough for the GM to challenge them).

My recommendation would be to figure out how many CP you think is reasonable for a given period of time (perhaps a month), and then work back from there. It might be a bit less for somebody in school (at college, or away at an academy, as stormtroopers do), and perhaps more for someone who is really active (like Chewie and Leia in your example, who are busy adventuring).
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[garhkal]

I have never seen anything about the 'going to college'. Heck by the book, learning any of the advanced skills doesn't even incur any debts, which to me they should as (A) skills imo are you GOING through college courses..

As to how many cp/time and what max level. Since by the main book, 4d is the normal "Professional" level for npcs, and going to college is what 'makes a professional', i would use 4d as the max you can get to via a normal college course. Since 2d is the standard attribute value, it takes 15cp to go to 4d. 15xp split over the course of college, say 3 years gives 5cp a year. Make it 10 so they can advance 2 skills, since you usually have a major AND a minor skill. At most 15cp for an intensive college, one in which you have rather little free time.


Since you ARE going through a college like course, like here on earth you can take it on your own, but having an instructor would imo make it easier. So say an Easy (8) know roll each 'college credit year' is needed to assimilate the knowledge you are getting. Fail, and you need remediation. Pass and you get the CP.
The roll bumps up to say 11 if you are studying on your own.
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[Naaman]

Thats a good way to handle it, I think. Although, a given profession often requires several skills, and the "learning" that occurs in college is more of what (IMO) would be represented by the Scholar skill (or the relevant knowledge skill). But the same idea could easily be applied totrade school, apprenticeships, or military training.

I've toyed around with allowing characters to get advanced skills (such as sniper, field surgery, explosive ordinance disposal, etc).

[shootingwomprats]

I am sorry I find this whole idea quite silly. I have tried to keep my mouth shut but I just cannot. Star Wars is meant to be a scene driven, episodic movie/tv show.

Yes characters progress behind the scenes by spending their Characters Points between adventures to advance. There is no, "I went to college," "sniper school," "basic training," "mind probed by aliens so now I know all about the universe."

Depending on how your GM runs his games depends on the amount of time that has passed. If you can logically suggest to your GM that a huge amount of time has passed and that the character spent it training the GM could award a blanket sum of Character Points and perhaps a certain group of skills, etc to spend them on.

The idea of a mechanic that encompasses every bit of time in-between adventures leaves me stunned.

Now with that being said, I certainly could understand allowing the suggestion I did above but only in very limited circumstances. For example a long period of time has passed between adventures

Example: Between ESB and RotJ is one year has passed. I would allow the all the active characters to spend 25-35 Character Points to represent what they did over the last year.

Stuff like that.
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[Naaman]

Good thing you're not GMing thee OP's campaign, I guess.

How can one reasonably account for a character with the (A) Medicine skill other than schooling/training? You dont exactly learn how to cybernetic surgery under fire while being force choked by an evil sith lord and plotting a hyperspace route while trying to escape a band of pirates who are after you because you beat them to a rare artifact which is about to blow up since it was moved from its resting place unless you can hack into its mainframe and decode the disaermament sequence before you jump to hyperspace because if the artifact ever enters hyperspace while armed, it turns the whole galaxy inside out....

[shootingwomprats]

[garhkal]

[shootingwomprats]

[Whill]

OK, maybe I'm confused but there seems to be a few different things being discussed here. Players spending CPs their PCs had earned in-play on things they would have spent time training for "offscreen", and PCs being awarded free CPs that they did not earn in play when spending time training (offscreen). I think RAW addresses these things fairly well (but like anything a healthy dose of GM common sense should apply as well.)

First of all, the rules for character advancement only apply to PCs, not NPCs. Luke and Leia are bad examples because they are NPC, not PCs. The vast majority of NPCs in the galaxy are lesser caliber characters than PC-level characters (and most of those much less). And some NPCs of a higher caliber than PCs (and some much higher). None of these PCs ever had to go through the character advancement rules to get to where they are at any given time. NPC stats poof into existence however the GM sees fit when first introducing the character into the game, and NPCs with repeat appearances in a campaign advance (or atrophy) as the GM sees fit. It is up to the GM to apply whatever appropriate training time he sees fit to NPC advancement, but the NPC does not have to strictly earn "CPs" through his "adventures" to apply to skill dice. Most NPCs do not have adventures per se. I think most GMs are capable of determining an appropriate amount of skill increase and time spent for NPC skill advancement with any hard ruled system for that.

PCs are a very special class of characters. Think of it this way. Playing roleplaying games are like players plugging into the matrix. The matrix is this fictional game universe. The basic setting and game mechanics are part of the operating system of the matrix. The GM controls additional programming for the matrix, and all NPCs. The players control their "avatars" within the matrix (the PCs). While NPCs appear "onscreen" to the PCs, they generally operate under the same rules. While the NPCs are offscreen, the matrix programmer (GM) can just manually augment the NPCs as he sees fit before the next time they encounter the PCs. To maintain the illusion of the matrix being real, the changes should be sensible within the context of the world of the matrix, but there isn't an actual need for all the programming rules for character advancement in between adventures that apply to the avatars (PCs controlled by real players) to strictly apply to the NPCs (fictional characters who programs within the matrix).

In the RAW, PCs advance through earning and spending CPs gained through onscreen adventuring, and adventuring the very basis of the game (the interactive creation of stories). If training time is needed (for skills not being raised through experience of being used the in the previous adventure), the time spent training can and usually is done offscreen outside of adventuring (and the GM can determine the availability of an NPC teacher and hand waive that if needed during this offscreen time).

As far as the GM awarding "free CPs" towards the arithmetic of PCs raising skills just from spending time for training alone (without needing to have earned the CPs in adventuring), I think that undermines the training time requirement of raising skills earned CPs (some increases from training time come from earned skills while others don't). If you are asking for a house rule to propose to the GM in which something else is traded for the lack of having to spend earned CPs (like training time is tripled or whatever) that would seem more fair, but I still feel that in general that flies in the face of the most inherent aspect of PC advancement over the course of players playing multiple adventures - Increasing skills through spending earned CPs.

CPs awarded to PCs for adventuring only may not be a particularly realistic way of character advancement, but adventuring is fundamental the game and PCs are the stars of the game (the only "real" people in the matrix, so to speak). I'm not saying the concept of unearned CPs is never appropriate, but it doesn't need a system and should just remain in the domain of the GM discretion.

One of my campaigns was planned to have three players playing two PCs each, then a player was added right before the first adventure playing only one PC, then we later added a second PC for that player, and then over the course of the campaign two of the original PCs died. The remaining PCs were becoming more advanced, but since we had the imbalance of two players playing two PCs each and two players playing only one each, I thought we should transition to one PC for each player and I started writing adventures to resolve the character arcs of two of the original PCs to the point of writing them out of main story of the PCs' adventuring group, with the goal being their players being satisfied with the story and willingly allowing their PCs to become NPCs. Towards that goal I designed an adventure based around one of the PCs intended to be written out being captured by the Empire, and the mission for the rest of the PCs was to rescue him. They did in the final chapter of the adventure and the rescued PC was incapacitated and only even conscious near the end of the adventure. The rescued PC didn't do anything "on screen" in the adventure except for impart some information, but I still awarded the PC 1 CP anyway technically for what the PC would have done offscreen. If that had been roleplayed out it would have been more CPs but it wasn't played out so the player didn't do anything to earn an adventures worth of CPs per RAW. The player of the rescued PC liked playing his other PC more anyway (the one not being written out), the player enjoyed the adventure, and didn't feel slighted by his other rescued PC only gaining a single CP for the character's offscreen experiences built into the active plot of the adventure. And the events of the story still advanced the PCs character arc, so he later became an NPC and left the group with the agreement of the player.

There probably were a couple other times where an impromptu side mission adventure was started because I only had one or two players for a night and we didn't end up completing the adventure in that game session, but also never later completed the side mission before the whole group got back together. I may have just contrived how the previous side adventure had ended and given the PCs 1 CP each for the uncompleted portion, and then moved on so we could get back into the main story of the group. But in these examples there wasn't any character advancement directly until after the next adventure played, and we are only talking about 1 CP. It is really just throwing the players a bone for real world concerns, and if used rarely and sensibly, do not unbalance the premise of the game system

I know for sure there have been times when a player had to leave early, and if his PC was taken over by another player, they could still earn CPs normally. If I as GM had to take over the PC, the PC still earned base CPs for the time when the PC was still an active part of the adventure, but didn't fully qualify for bonus CPs through my own good roleplaying or whatever. I often try to write the PC out of the story at the first opportunity (a side mission, or the droid calls the party and says someone tried to break into the ship, so the PC of the absent player goes back to guard the ship, etc.). When the PC is absent from the adventure, the PC is not normally earning any CPs, even if they go back to the ship or base and train for a skill.
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[Whill]

In my next big campaign, one of my ideas for a PC is a graduate student who has to join a tramp freighter crew working in the sector his university is in to pay for school. He'll be expected to attend class and professor appointments, and complete his field work and paper assignments as required by the program, so the RAW "training time" and "teacher" requirements will be satisfied. And as a PC, the CPs required to advance his Scholar skill and specialization must still be earned through adventuring. An NPC student wouldn't need to adventure in the game sense to advance his skills, but a PC does. And that's ok because adventuring is what PCs are made to do. He'll still earn plenty of other CPs to advance his other skills.

As far as Advanced skills, acquiring new ones after the campaign begins is going to be very rare because most PCs are not going to be attending medical or engineering school (or whatever advanced training) during the campaign. So most of the time PCs are going to start play with them (acquiring them is going to be part of the PC's background), or they won't ever get them at all. While it is true that RAW gives no financial cost to gain advanced skills and it is not an absolute rule that a teacher is always required, a sensible GM could rule that a teacher is required, and the rule for teachers already states that they may demand payment for their services. So a GM should be able to determine an appropriate financial cost, training time and teacher requirements for the rare cases that a PC would gain a new Advanced skill after the campaign begins.

As far as the CP awards being to great in RAW, there have many discussions here about how we as GMs each handle that. In my game, what the RPG calls "episodes", I call "chapters". The base PC award is 1 CP per chapter played of the adventure, so that directly quantifies a factor of adventure length into CPs. Then for bonus CPs, I award them for all the same things the book says but my absolute limit is no more than 1 per chapter. So an adventure with 6 chapters would award 6 CPs to each PC, and then each PC may possibly get up to 6 bonus CPs on top of the base. In practice the bonus CPs earned are an average of half again as much, so in the example of a 6 chapter adventure, a PC may typically earn 3 bonus CPs for a total of 9 for that adventure. I try to keep CPs as only positive reinforcement and thus not applying CP penalties, preferring to address things that would warrant that through real world GM-player communication instead.

I would suggest to any GM seeking my imput to adopt the chapter organization of adventures and giving 1 CP per chapter to each PC that played in the adventure as a base. Then the GM can increase or decrease the bonus CPs to control the overall rate of PCs earning CPs as desired by just increasing or decreasing the standard for qualifying for bonus CPs. You could also make a hard limit of the bonus CPs being only half again as much as the base CPs. As long as you are fair and unbiased in application, there should be no issues.
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[garhkal]

One other thing you would need to answer, is how long DOES it take to learn an advanced skill. 1 yr? 4? longer?
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[Whill]

GM discretion. Real world medical school and engineering degree programs can be used as a starting point. The rules don't need to spell out every detail of how the universe works, especially things do not take place in combat rounds and happen offscreen.
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[Barrataria]

I don't hate the training idea, but since CPs have uses OTHER than to buy skills, I think it's a bad idea to throw them around willy-nilly much less give them out for going to barber college.

The training idea in itself is OK if you think it adds to your game. But I'd measure the results of that schooling directly with pips and skill dice, not with CPs.

Finally, as to the CP bloat problem, give out fewer CPs? Or remind players during games that they can be used on dice rolls, then make SURE to have more situations where they feel compelled to choose to use CP to get out of the jams.
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[garhkal]

Plus at school training should be capped at a lowish die limit.. say 5d max.
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