The Scion rules suggest that each character gain 4-5 XP per game. As many of you may have noticed, this works all right at very early Hero levels, but becomes completely crippling past that point. Nobody wants to celebrate arriving at Legend 7 only to realize that they can't get any awesome new powers for six to eight game sessions.
So, instead, we use a sliding XP scale; the higher you get in Legend, the more XP you gain. This doesn't increase as quickly as the cost scale for powers does, but it does enough to allow players to purchase new powers or abilities semi-regularly rather than once in a blue moon. Five XP is fine at Legend 2, but once you go past that point, you'll need to award more or risk your PCs ending up the crippled, pitifully inept examples of Scionhood that you can see in the Demigod and God sample characters in the books.
I think I've posted a table for this before, but this one's more updated:
| Legend Rating | XP Gained per game session |
| 2-3 | 5-6 |
| 4-5 | 7-8 |
| 6-7 | 9-12 |
| 8-9 | 13-15 |
It's just a basic guideline, but you can see that giving out only 5 points of XP ends pretty quickly for us. Our current Hero game, which ranges from Legend 3 to 4, is getting around 6 to 8 XP per game; our current God game, which is solidly Legend 10, gets about 16 to 20 XP per game (half spent by the players and half by their Fatebonds). Costs scale multiplicatively in Scion, so XP should scale more than by a flat one or two, but finding the exact perfect spot will depend on your game, how long your stories are and how quickly you want characters to advance. Our goal is usually for Heroes and low-level Demigods to be able to buy one nifty new power every session or two and for high-level Demigods and low-level Gods to be ably to buy their increasingly awesome powers every two to four sessions; it strikes a good balance for us between getting awesome fun powers and enjoying the anticipation and satisfaction of having to work toward them a little bit as they become more impressive. Our games run once per week; if you run games only once per month, you'll probably want to give out more XP so that players don't go eons without getting any new toys, whereas if you run every day, you'll want to significantly decrease the amount unless you want your characters maxed in every stat halfway through your story.
We also adjust XP for band makeup factors; if some PCs are lower Legend than others, they typically get a little more XP than the others in order to enable them to catch up instead of being eternal second-stringers (this isn't as necessary at early Legend levels, but becomes more helpful at late Demigod and early God). We also award bonus XP now and then, usually for players who show up on time when others didn't, birthdays and celebrations and other things of that nature. And, of course, if players don't show up to a game for whatever reason, they don't get any XP for that particular session.
Other than that, all I can suggest is that you do a little theoretical math on how many powers you want Scions to develop over the course of a story and how quickly that should happen (based on your story and session lengths). Oh, and to abolish the rule from the book that grants XP for stunting, because it's a pretty terrible idea from a balance perspective and disenfranchises players who aren't naturally very good at stunting in a very concrete way, and we don't like either of those things.
do you think the company that is redoing scion will tweak the xp system?
ReplyDeleteI'm pretty sure they're going to tweak every system - it sounds like, from their posts, that they're going to do a pretty thorough reimagining of the mechanics. I have no idea what that would look like, though, so we can all only guess.
DeleteThat seems like an overwhelming amount of XP! How do you avoid characters having pretty similar stats?
DeleteThe answer your looking for is fatebonds.
DeleteI like how you guys have the XP flow, it makes sense to me. What about rewards for characters for the players doing stuff outside of game, like make a sound track of what they think their player's music would be like in a movie, take the time to go ahead and draw characters and events that happened or could happen in the game(like running jokes)or journals?
DeleteI had difficulties with the XP system when I joined in my latest game. I was coming in late into the game cause I never met the GM and others until later down the road from when I first started to play. Unfortunately, I had to start off with a gap of XP missing the characters had, of like 60 points from the lowest and 80 from the highest. So I started asking the GM how to increase the XP and let me do some stuff to make the gap less. Its been almost 2 years, I'm still less than 30 points from being caught up with the others. But if I didn't get the extra stuff, then there be problems.
Also, when you play Hero, I know the XP cap is meant to be 150(I know that can be a lie, had a Hero game last until almost 300 XP before I quit out of fustration.), but what about Demigod and God. I've had one GM tell me that you are suppose to only get 150 XP in Demi and other GM's said other numbers. What is your guideline on progression normally?
I gave out XP to players who wrote in-character pieces of fiction - elaborate back stories, perspective pieces and the like.
DeleteIt did mean that the one guy who didn't write these things got less XP but he didn't seem bothered though but it could have been a problem.
If I did that anne would have hundreds of XP more then everyone else and itd be unfair. But I do think moderate rewards are great for people adding stuff in that goes above and beyond.
DeleteKyle: Thats a lot of stuff. I think adding xp for that stuff can be ok, but has to be hardcore watched and guided for abuse(even accidental abuse).
I think its reasonable for a new player to start at lower xp then the rest of the party as long as that xp penalty is not debilitating.
When you start talking about XP "caps" you're basically talking nonsense. I dont think Hero is ever meant to be capped at any amount of xp. 300 xp hero game does seem a bit on the extreme side(what do you spend xp on at that point?), but I could see its use in rare cases. Gaining legend is about doing amazing things, not necessarily having appropriate stats.
I have no xp progression guideline. I give a very mild basis that if you have 3 maxed purviews you're probably about ready to go up a legend, but thats only something I use as a tool.
I do think 150 at demi seems incredibly low, I dont know enough about the situation or what he was going for in his story at 150 xp, but I think my players through demi got around 800 or so.
I try to keep it where its not abused. I had a Journal, but I felt so disheartened after a couple of game sessions it was not worth the one extra xp I got per entry and these were in character, what he was thinking about and his opinions, something he did not share often in the group, but I tried to do it diligently until the game kinda got one sided in some respects. And these were paragraphs, not one liners and stuff like that.
DeleteWe also have 4 artists and a couple writers, with me included in the mix. People have things in the game like music and making relics, but the most prevalent is in game art that you have seen some of on Tumblr. There are the bookmarks and head shots, one of the artists does chibis right now, the last artist has done mostly shots on herself but not really given XP. So the GM said those things were taken and so to get more XP I am now 'trying'(I can not emphasize how much I mean to with the word trying) to do 9 pictures that double up on characters that have a narrative with body language... I do not draw people often... I draw landscapes. But I am hoping to get XP there.
The reason I brought in the cap is not like at this point you have to be Demigod, I was just wondering when you try to move things along to the next level. Though you answered it.
Yeah, 300 was excessive and everyone were almost screaming at the GM to move things along. If I remember correctly, I had all 3 dots of health, all epics in Strength, Dex, Stam, Int and some dots in Per and Cha, then the 5th dot paid for, attribute increases, possibly water filled up, pantheon specific for Irish up to three and I was working on getting War. With enough XP to buy the 8th dot and over when we almost changed over and I just said screw it, its driving me nuts.
But all in all, to the players there was no purpose for how long it went other then the gm being slow and drawing things out way too long in our opinions.
Our gm for that game.... Is excessive at best and a control freak at worse. We followed the book quests, with not many side quests, like maybe 3 but other then that the players wanted to blow through the story as quick as possible and I only got 100+ XP from the entire book story almost and the GM says we are close to going up to God hood when he has not allowed me to get past legend 6 and we have another player that started Demi at 5 and now at 6. while everyone else did legend 7 to try and mid max their characters. The 2 players that didn't go that route have some good toys to show from it.
I had most of attributes of stuff I wanted at 5 and since the gm said bonus points are the same as XP for finding out the cost of a boon or epic, I decided on relics. It really, really came in handy having an relic that allowed me to use the War Boon to do Aggravated Damage, a nemean spider pet and upgrades on other relics to make me ready for what came at us. But right now it seems to have backfired cause we had players use the template to make legend 7 and 8 characters with no XP and having to wait on the 7th dot myself. Oh well, trying to rectify it with a demi-god/god level fatebound lover and maybe try and get more fatebound mortals.
Tom is right, Anonymous - Fatebonds. Not only do they buy some skills off in favor of others, they are directly related to what a character does, so unless everyone is always doing exactly the same things (which... I don't think could ever actually happen), nobody's going to get the same stats as a result. They also render things that have been bought off more expensive to rebuy later, which affects the XP ratio depending on what a player decides to do.
DeleteWe've never had a problem with PCs being out of things to buy. There's so much variety present in the game, and so little chance that the players want to have all the same stats as their friends anyway, that I can't really imagine that happening.
For the most part, my storyteller always makes sure we have the exact same total XP to the best of his ability. I've come to see this as a relief more than anything else, because it means our players can do things like miss games because of real life emergencies and not feel punished.
ReplyDeleteHaving been spoiled by this system, I don't think I could go back to playing under a storyteller did not equalize XP.
(PS. Sorry for the delay on those boons! Work got hectic)
No worries, life is like that!
DeleteWhen it comes to XP advancement I personally struggle with two main factors as an ST:
ReplyDelete1) My players are happy to play long-term, but look dizzy when they contemplate not achieving godhood for three years real-time. Thus I have to accelerate the Hero to God timeline slightly to accommodate perhaps a 1-2 year long game.
2) We only have 4 hours each week to play
My players recently hit Legend 4 (we've been playing since June) and they're sitting around 130-150XP (total) each. For the most part I've been following an old post here on JSR similar to this one which outlined a good pace to move at - but I never modified it to account for our shorter sessions. This works out okay math-wise in the end, I hope, because my players do want to grow faster than the JSR characters, ultimately. While I am perfectly happy with a slower pace, this is how my players want to enjoy this game we play each week, so there it is.
I also recently launched a new system in my game that we're calling 'XP Discounts'. Each week I randomly select an item from my spreadsheet - say, Physical Attributes, or a Purview bundle containing 6 purviews - to be purchased at a reduced cost for the rest of the week. I can provide more detail if anyone is interested, but I won't plug it on JSR (unless they are interested). The goal of this system is twofold: to keep our pace ahead of XP inflation later on (as desired), and to provide a little something extra to look forward to each week. It's early on still, so this system could turn out being an awful idea, but I'm hopeful for its potential.
Ultimately though as a Storyteller and given my group's circumstances - I've had to spend a lot of time thinking about what the "right" amount of XP is to be giving out, or how "fast" they should be getting more powerful. I've concluded that it really just depends on the kind of pace your group wants to travel at, and the sort of gameplay they want to get out of Scion. For us, since it's our first pass at the game, we want to see as much as possible, all the way to the top, while at the same time striking a balance and not trivializing growth along the way.
I give out what may seem to be excessive amounts of XP, but my players seem to enjoy it and are advancing at what seems to be a decent pace. They tend to get their MAJOR interests purchased up to their current max right around the time they're moving up to the next dot of Legend.
ReplyDeleteWe've been playing for about 15 months and they've gone from Legend 3 to Legend 9, playing once a week. They're all at about ~700 XP (not all the same amount). I give out a (mostly) fixed amount of XP that increases each Story. So in Story 1, it was 6, but now in Story 9, it's 20 XP. There are bonuses for End of Story and things like the 1-year game anniversary and Session 50 (why not?).
I also hand out Mundane XP, which can be used ONLY to purchase Willpower, Mundane Attributes, Abilities and Virtues. I found that it felt like a "waste" to buy these things if they were drawn from the same pool as Boons, Knacks and Epics. Generally, MXP is awarded at 50% the rate of regular XP. So they've got about ~200 MXP each as well. They ARE starting to complain they're running out of things to use MXP on, so I believe I will be slowly fading it back out. Then again, the HIGH level attributes cost a LOT. Once they stop coasting on the God Upgrade, they might want it back.
So far, it's working well.
Your players are happy they get too much xp? ....not really surprised....doesnt make it a good idea necessarily though
DeleteI find that running out of things to buy tends to happen early and then fades away as you get higher in legend. The Demigod upgrade is the biggest culprit in my mind, since it seems to come so quickly and makes it very easy to maximize several of your stats.
DeleteFor example, Demigod will probably cap most attributes you want at 5, and probably some attributes you didn't want. Not to mention you get enough points to bring five of your epics from 2 to 4 dots.
Of course the God upgrade brings similar benefits, but you have a lot more distance to cover from Demigod to God compared to starting stats to Hero.
How much XP is "too much" XP?
DeleteI was thinking of a system like Vitriol in Promethean, maybe linked with Fate.
DeleteFor the lay-person, it is Experience points that could only enhance Virtues, Boons and Epic Stats. It can be combined with regular XP, but not the other way around. It's not uncommon in some systems to have 2 types of XP.
In Promethean, Vitriol points are awarded when characters achieves milestones in their Pilgrimage. These are usually moral challenges where the character learns something about being «human».
This extra XP it could be awarded for going along with Fate in some circumstances, or a bit like Promethean, for important character developement scenes.
I like handing out 1 or 2 extra XP to each player that they have to give another player and saying why they picked him/her.
ReplyDeleteI also keep for myself the same 1 or 2, for the player(s) that made things interesting for me, my story, or the general fun of the session.
This is a little reward for good roleplaying but it's not the main source of XP, so it's more of an encouragement. It also gives the other player's inputs («Those stunts to seduce X goddess were epic!» «I liked how your character handled that tragedy» «In that scene, you made you're character grow or more profound»)
I have too excellent players and one of good level and this has been encouraging him to up the stakes in his roleplaying.