Use based skill advancement - thoughts?

[pakman]

The Situation;

Over the years in playing a variety of systems, one of the coolest mechanics I had seen was from some of the various Chaosium systems (call of cthulu, runequest, BRP, etc.).

Basically, if you successfully use a skill during an adventure, put a mark by it.
At the end of the adventure, if you can roll less than the skill with percentile dice, it goes up one point.

(the skills were measured 1-100, so the higher the skill, harder it would be go to up).

E.g. - Han uses his forgery skill to successfully fake some cargo documents.
The player puts a mark next to forgery.
End of session: his current forgery is only 32.
Han's player rolls percentile dice, if he rolls less than 32, his forgery automatically goes up, no training time or cost required.

Other skills can be learned by spending time, finding trainers etc.
So, if the players want to learn something else, they can - but it takes time and money, and can only work on so many etc. (details in game).


So this happened....
My players think this is cool. I (the gm) think this is cool.
My players have said "hey, can you add something like this to D6 for our next game...."

What I came up with.

When a player successfully uses a skill, I have them write down the difficulty they passed. (if the difficulty was a 12, I have them write down a 12).
End of session, they roll the current skill value, and if they get LOWER than the value, it goes up ONE PIP.

This has the effect of them being UNLIKELY to raise if they only did an easy or very easy task.... (hard to roll under a 5 etc.).

Example;
E.g. - Han uses his forgery skill to successfully fake some cargo documents. The difficulty was 12.
The player writes a 12 next to his forgery skill.
(if he does another one later, and it is HIGHER, he can write the higher value).

End of session: his current forgery 3d+2
Han's player rolls 3d+2 and IF less than 12, his forgery automatically goes up 1 pip, no training time or cost required.

I am considering reducing the character points awarded by adventures in half (or removing them entirely), so as players don't get crazy fast leveling.
They can still spend points on the skills that DID Not go up this way, and all other things.

PRO to this: it feels cool. it is mostly simple.

CONS to this: it introduces luck into improving characters.
Some players might not roll well, and could feel left out.
Also, it might be too powerful - how often do we do the checks?


Followup: I was thinking attributes might get a free roll - every 10 skills that go up ....but have no idea what the mechanics would be....not sure.

My Ask for commentary;

So, any suggestions on either;

A) Don't bother, bad idea.
B) Cool idea, this is perfect.
C) Cool idea, adjust it like (your idea here).
D) Cool idea, but do this instead (your idea here).
E) Who is this guy, his ideas are crazy, call security! What is his operating number!

Thank you for any suggestions.
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Working on massive House Rules document - pretty much a new book. Will post soon....

[CRMcNeill]

I don’t know if I’d allow free advancement on a single dice roll, but I could certainly see a success on that roll waiving training time and/or earning a discount on CP cost.
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"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.

The CRMcNeill Stat/Rule Index

[pakman]

[CRMcNeill]

[Naaman]

I say just try it and see if you guys like it. If not, modify it and/or chuck it.

It sounds like a reasonable enough thing to add some fun to the game.

I might add that it the check for a skill increase is unsuccessful, one variation you could try would be expending 1 CP at a time to roll an additional die on the skill-up check but subtract the value of the extra die from the rolled total rather than adding it. This way, it can still be either a bonus or a lucky discount that isn't 100% reliable, but still adds an element of excitement to advancement.
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SpecForce Combat Elements
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[garhkal]