Post by Andre on Jan 12, 2009 13:57:36 GMT -5
Like most DM's I award bonus xp for good role playing ... however in addition to that I award role playing points.
My previous gamers from "live" gaming sessions (malkav565 aka Rob
) will be quite familiar with this.. in the good old days I used to point right at a player at the gaming table and announce loudly " Five role playing points ! " ... Sadly the FG system will force me to be a bit more subtle than this.. in other words I'm going to be so busy running the game it would be difficult for me to announce right on the spot whether or not a player got RP points.. I will however review the chat logs after each game session, mark the points in the dialogue where I award RP points to each player, and e-mail said log to each player as well as posting a summary of the RP point thing (along with xp of course) here on the forum. Typically I award anywhere from 1 to 5 RP points per incident of exceptionally good role playing during a gaming session. I also award lots of RP points for forum posts where you write from the point of view of your character. I particularly like situations where PC's interact with each other "in character" (whether on FG or via posts on the forum) and that will almost always result in an RP point award as well.
RP points can be used for the following immediately at any given point in the campaign:
- A permanent increase to Skills .. every 20 role playing points spent gives a +1 rank to any Skill of the player’s choice (common sense rules for acquiring new Skills still apply – unless there’s a wizard or sorcerer in the party who can teach you grabbing knowledge-arcana without anyone training you won’t make sense for example... but picking up ranks in Spot for example is fine, this can be rationalized as the PC learning to keep a closer eye on his/her surroundings as a result of constantly being in dangerous situations during the campaign). You can bump Skills at the end of a game session (and before leveling up) but you need to shoot me a message of some sort on FG announcing that you're doing so.
- To buy feats .. 300 RP points nets you a feat... you'd be surprised how quickly those RP points add up if you're a good RP'er ...
- to buy a permanent increase in 1 ability score by 1 point , cost is 500 RP points.
- (update, new info) ... I found out the hard way that telling people " Powergaming is ok, I'll just make the opposition more powerful" doesn't work... the result is a super powerful enemy that can kill the less powerful PC's off with one blow or alternately a situation where whoever wins the initiative roll wins and who doesn't dies in the case of PC's vs monster, also not a good situation ... if a PC becomes too powerful due to RP points being spent I will first profusely apologize to the player of the PC for letting things get to that point - no crystal ball on my end to see the future and I'm not familiar enough with the zillion feats out there enough to be able to tell in advance what kind of game impact it would have until "after the fact".. I will then request that the player re-spend their RP points elsewhere so the PC isn't overpowered... I've increased the amount of RP needed to buy feats and skill increases and given a new option for RP points in terms of the master class (see below) so I'm somewhat confident we won't run into the same problems we did before but I'm putting it out there just in case so that people know...
- update, new info ... the "school of hard knocks" from when I had this campaign up and running before has taught me the following too..regarding feats that let you purchase an extra spell slot... I have to limit spellcasters to being able to take one extra spell slot per spell level (so you could have an extra first level, 2nd level, 3rd level et cet spell slot - having 15 extra 3rd level spell slots however won't work as I found out the hard way - again my fault as a DM not the player in question's fault) ... also spell feats that add to the amount of damage a spell causes "maximize" and so forth are fine... but if there's a feat that counters the fact that such maximized, heightened et cet spells take up a higher spell slot - I have to disallow such feats.. if you want to maximize a spell or otherwise make it more powerful you can but you'd need to take the fact that it uses up a higher than normal spell slot as a trade off even if there's a funky feat out there in the rulebooks that says otherwise.
solardawn (Serinda's player) brought up a good point .. you can spend RP points on your familiars or animal companions ... and my apologies for not mentioning this earlier, to be honest the idea hadn't occurred to me until solardawn brought it up!
UPDATE.. please see the "Master" character class page 21, War of the Lance pdf (if you don't have it let me know). I really, REALLY like this character class for the RP'ing opportunity it affords... consequently , 1000 (one thousand) RP points nets you a " free" level in the master class and ONLY the master class (choose whatever concentration you like, sage, craftsman , whatever) as if you'd taken it at first level - so basically you get maximum hit points for that hit die added to your hp total and your skill points for it are multiplied times 4 (this can be particularly useful with the sage as it means 8 plus intelligence modifier x 4 in skill points), you add attack bonuses and bonuses to saving throws as you normally would to your attack bonus/save totals, if purchasing this level in master puts you at 3rd, 6th, 9th et cet class level you get a bonus feat as you normally would if you'd earned the class level with XP, et cetera .... spending another 1000 RP points gets you another level in master in the same area of expertise you chose earlier (so for example if you chose "sage" specialty for your first level you'd have to choose that again for your second level), roll for hit points as per normal for 2nd level , same applies to 3rd level if you spend another 1000 RP points, 4th level if you spend another 1000 rp points et cet.... see also the knacks for craftsman far as creating items that give you bonuses on attack and damage rolls or reducing armor check penalties or adding to skill roll checks- potentially quite useful and more than likely I'd let you make these items " on the go" as you're travelling rather than forcing you to stay put and work on them.
My previous gamers from "live" gaming sessions (malkav565 aka Rob
) will be quite familiar with this.. in the good old days I used to point right at a player at the gaming table and announce loudly " Five role playing points ! " ... Sadly the FG system will force me to be a bit more subtle than this.. in other words I'm going to be so busy running the game it would be difficult for me to announce right on the spot whether or not a player got RP points.. I will however review the chat logs after each game session, mark the points in the dialogue where I award RP points to each player, and e-mail said log to each player as well as posting a summary of the RP point thing (along with xp of course) here on the forum. Typically I award anywhere from 1 to 5 RP points per incident of exceptionally good role playing during a gaming session. I also award lots of RP points for forum posts where you write from the point of view of your character. I particularly like situations where PC's interact with each other "in character" (whether on FG or via posts on the forum) and that will almost always result in an RP point award as well. RP points can be used for the following immediately at any given point in the campaign:
- A permanent increase to Skills .. every 20 role playing points spent gives a +1 rank to any Skill of the player’s choice (common sense rules for acquiring new Skills still apply – unless there’s a wizard or sorcerer in the party who can teach you grabbing knowledge-arcana without anyone training you won’t make sense for example... but picking up ranks in Spot for example is fine, this can be rationalized as the PC learning to keep a closer eye on his/her surroundings as a result of constantly being in dangerous situations during the campaign). You can bump Skills at the end of a game session (and before leveling up) but you need to shoot me a message of some sort on FG announcing that you're doing so.
- To buy feats .. 300 RP points nets you a feat... you'd be surprised how quickly those RP points add up if you're a good RP'er
... - to buy a permanent increase in 1 ability score by 1 point , cost is 500 RP points.
- (update, new info) ... I found out the hard way that telling people " Powergaming is ok, I'll just make the opposition more powerful" doesn't work... the result is a super powerful enemy that can kill the less powerful PC's off with one blow or alternately a situation where whoever wins the initiative roll wins and who doesn't dies in the case of PC's vs monster, also not a good situation ... if a PC becomes too powerful due to RP points being spent I will first profusely apologize to the player of the PC for letting things get to that point - no crystal ball on my end to see the future
and I'm not familiar enough with the zillion feats out there enough to be able to tell in advance what kind of game impact it would have until "after the fact".. I will then request that the player re-spend their RP points elsewhere so the PC isn't overpowered... I've increased the amount of RP needed to buy feats and skill increases and given a new option for RP points in terms of the master class (see below) so I'm somewhat confident we won't run into the same problems we did before but I'm putting it out there just in case so that people know... - update, new info ... the "school of hard knocks" from when I had this campaign up and running before has taught me the following too..regarding feats that let you purchase an extra spell slot... I have to limit spellcasters to being able to take one extra spell slot per spell level (so you could have an extra first level, 2nd level, 3rd level et cet spell slot - having 15 extra 3rd level spell slots however won't work as I found out the hard way - again my fault as a DM not the player in question's fault) ... also spell feats that add to the amount of damage a spell causes "maximize" and so forth are fine... but if there's a feat that counters the fact that such maximized, heightened et cet spells take up a higher spell slot - I have to disallow such feats.. if you want to maximize a spell or otherwise make it more powerful you can but you'd need to take the fact that it uses up a higher than normal spell slot as a trade off even if there's a funky feat out there in the rulebooks that says otherwise.
solardawn (Serinda's player) brought up a good point .. you can spend RP points on your familiars or animal companions ... and my apologies for not mentioning this earlier, to be honest the idea hadn't occurred to me until solardawn brought it up!
UPDATE.. please see the "Master" character class page 21, War of the Lance pdf (if you don't have it let me know). I really, REALLY like this character class for the RP'ing opportunity it affords... consequently , 1000 (one thousand) RP points nets you a " free" level in the master class and ONLY the master class (choose whatever concentration you like, sage, craftsman , whatever) as if you'd taken it at first level - so basically you get maximum hit points for that hit die added to your hp total and your skill points for it are multiplied times 4 (this can be particularly useful with the sage as it means 8 plus intelligence modifier x 4 in skill points), you add attack bonuses and bonuses to saving throws as you normally would to your attack bonus/save totals, if purchasing this level in master puts you at 3rd, 6th, 9th et cet class level you get a bonus feat as you normally would if you'd earned the class level with XP, et cetera .... spending another 1000 RP points gets you another level in master in the same area of expertise you chose earlier (so for example if you chose "sage" specialty for your first level you'd have to choose that again for your second level), roll for hit points as per normal for 2nd level , same applies to 3rd level if you spend another 1000 RP points, 4th level if you spend another 1000 rp points et cet.... see also the knacks for craftsman far as creating items that give you bonuses on attack and damage rolls or reducing armor check penalties or adding to skill roll checks- potentially quite useful and more than likely I'd let you make these items " on the go" as you're travelling rather than forcing you to stay put and work on them.
) .. please see the first post on this thread I've made some important additions and changes to the way role playing points work.