Saturday, October 20, 2012

Virtuous Thoughts

Question: In your system, when a character advances in Legend at odd levels, they gain a virtue. Does this new virtue recalculate and add to their total Willpower? Or is Willpower something purchased seperately with XP?

All of the above!

If a character gains a new Virtue and that puts the total of his two highest Virtues higher than his current Willpower, he automatically gains one - that is, if Johnny has seven Willpower, three Piety and four Endurance, getting his fourth dot of Piety will bump his Willpower up to eight. And this is tied to the two highest Virtues Johnny has regardless of which Virtues those are, so if Johnny never increases his Piety again but later gets five dots of Vengeance, his Willpower will go up to nine.

However, it's always possible to buy Willpower with XP if a player wants to, at a price of two times the dot being purchased. This is especially useful for situations in which a character loses or spends a dot of permanent Willpower; in that scenario, Johnny's Virtues totaling eight won't prevent his Willpower from dropping to seven, so he has the opportunity to buy dots separately as well if he so chooses.

We prefer keeping both options around; that way players who invest in their Virtues are rewarded for it with more Willpower, but those who don't want to or who have lost Willpower to the whims of Fate are still able to shore up their mental strength directly instead.

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