Experience Points and You

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Gingerbread Guy
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Experience Points and You

Post by Gingerbread Guy » Fri September 23 05 ; 1 54 pm

Hey gang,

Welcome to Experience Points and You, an informative look at spending XP. *cue campy music*

Okay, seriously now..

XP is handed out by the point, not by the hundreds like it is in D&D. Rather than collect it to "level up", you spend your XP on individual skills, attributes, and other aspects of your characters sheet. This makes your character a completely custom job.

Earning XP
Every time you do something that I feel deserves a point of XP, I'll record it on your character sheet. Almost all XP awards are just a single point, though rarely you might do something so cool that you'll deserve two or even three points.

What is worth XP? Meeting key NPCs, participating in combat, advancing the plot, coming up with clever ideas, and generally roleplaying your character in a meaningful way are all great ways to gain XP.

When to spend XP
At the end of every major topic I will tally up the XP awards for everyone, and make note of it on your character sheet. I will remind you in the OOC forum when XP has been posted at the end of a topic. It will be your job to look at your XP and decide where it goes. You MUST PM me a list of where you want your XP to go BEFORE you post in the next topic.

Spending XP doesn't take much more effort than writing a post, so it shouldn't be too much to ask of you guys to spend it right away at the end of a topic. I'm not going to be a total hard-!@#$ about this, but I'm really not asking that much.

There may also be times when your characters recieve downtime in the middle of a topic, in which your characters can do whatever they like. I will let you know when you have downtime, saying "You have about 3 days of downtime". You can spend your XP during downtime too, if you like, but you are not obligated to.

Improving yourself takes time and effort. You will need to justify all your expendatures by explaining why you feel your character has developed themselves in the given area. For example, you would be unjustified trying to raise Firearms from one dot to two if your character hasn't even touched a gun. If you participated in combat with a gun, or you spent some downtime at a firing range, then that would be good justification.

For the same reasons, you can't buy multiple dots of the same kind all at once. You can't just go from Firearms 1 to Firearms 3 because you shot a werewolf. It takes time and multiple experiences to raise multiple dots.

What everything costs
Everything on your sheet has a cost that varies with how advanced a dot you're trying to buy may be. Learning Science 1 is a lot easier than learning Science 5.

If you don't have any dots in the skill, background, discipline or what have you, then you need to "open" it. See the entries for "Open a skill" and such in the list below.

If you DO already have dots, and you just want to add more, the price you pay is based on how many dots you already have. For example, raising a skill costs "Current level x2XP". If you have Dodge 2, it costs you 4XP (2x2) to get Dodge 3. If you later want to increase it to 4, it would cost 6XP (3x2) and so on.

Here is the list:

Open a Skill: 3XP
Open a Secondary Skill: 2XP
Open a Background: 3XP
Attributes: Current level x5XP
Skills: Current level x2XP
Secondary Skills: Current Level x1XP
Backgrounds: Current level x3XP

Buying a Discipline is slightly more complicated. Disciplines come in three varieties: In-Clan, Common andClan-Specific.

Your In-Clan disciplines vary, depending on what Clan you're in. Each clan has three In-Clan disciplines. These disciplines are easy for you to learn, and you can do so without a teacher without penalty. Opening a new Discipline is always 10XP. Buying up an In-Clan discipline costs current level x5XP.

Common Disciplines are: Animalism, Auspex, Celerity, Dominate, Fortitude, Obfuscate, Potence, and Presence. You can learn a common discipline on your own, without a tutor, but it is somewhat difficult. Opening a Discipline is always 10XP. Buying up a common discipline that isn't also an In-Clan for you costs current level x7XP. If you have a tutor to help you (see below) it costs current level x6XP.

Clan-Specific disciplines are Dementation, Obtenebration, Quietus, Protean, Serpentis and Vicissitude. Unless these are In-Clan disciplines for you, you cannot learn them on your own. You MUST have a tutor to learn these disciplines, and you must Opening a discipline always costs 10XP. Advancing a Clan-Specific that isn't also an In-Clan discipline costs current level x7XP.

It can take weeks, even months to properly learn a discipline, depending on the difficulty of the material.

Sometimes vampires help each other by teaching disciplines. Only rarely, if ever does this happen out of the goodness of one's lifeless heart, however. Favours are usually exchanged for such a priviledge.

A valid tutor must possess at least one dot more than the discipline level s/he wants to teach. S/he must also possess at least one dot of the Teaching secondary skill.

The tutor must make an Intelligence + Teaching roll, difficulty 9. If successfull, the pupil is able to learn the discipline. Each success beyond the first reduces the total cost of the discipline by 1XP, to a minimum of 1XP per dot of the discipline in question.

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