DeathBySurfeit/PowerTrainingTimes

Power Training Times

Created for my own excessively epic game, ‘power training times’ might prove handy for any group uninterested in long periods of nondescript downtime, whilst nevertheless wishing to keep the mechanics there from a balance and continuity standpoint. They work, somewhat simply, as follows:

Whilst going about their normal daily business, Celestial Exalts are treated as though they spent the day training instead.

It’s assumed that in their weapons practice at dawn, conversations on the road, quietly penned works and recreational games of Gateway, Celestial Exalts are unlocking the secrets of their previous incarnations at the rate a mortal would devoting their entire day to the purpose of learning it the first time around.

If the player devotes a full day (or more) to training and stunts a cool training montage, such as running after a typhoon and dodging between the raindrops within, touring the seedier districts of Nexus and sampling every intoxicating beverage they have to offer, seeking out a pack of Wyld twisted wolves and living amongst them or standing beneath a waterfall and counting every drop as it falls, the Storyteller should award it a stunt bonus.

A +1 stunted montage counts as a week of training per day spent.

A +2 stunted montage counts as a fortnight of training per day spent.

A +3 stunted montage counts as a month of training per day spent.

Excess days (such as when only five days of training are necessary, leaving two) are wasted. If the montage is unworthy of a stunt bonus ('I train with my mace'), the day counts as one day's training, as normal. As an alternative, each point of stunt bonus increases the actual time spent by one increment on the table below:

X Days / X Weeks / X Fortnights / X Months / 2X Months / 4X Months

Feedback

My own meta-houserule kind of expands upon this; it's more complex but also allows more flexibility, I think. There are seven units of time: day, week, fortnight, month, two months, four months, and eight months. A +1 stunt increases the effective time by one unit, a +2 by two units, and a +3 by three units. This means you can use a fortnight and a +3 montage for four months of training. While it may seem more economical to just make four montages and get the training in four days, I think the difficulty of one +3 stunt is much less than four +3 stunts. Thoughts? -- Will

This system (perhaps? Maybe this is intentional) breaks down slightly when you start considering how easy +1 stunts are. If you can make a +1 montage every day (maybe sometimes a +2), then you can easily make 1 week = 7 weeks. However, if you just make one +2 montage for that week, you only get a month... Yet most people can probably manage around 4-6 +1 stunts in a row before getting cheesy... the current written solution by DeathBySurfeit is simply to extend montages as written above, which means a +3 gives you tons and tons of training in a really short time... it is however very different to play under, and my current set of players seem to have difficulty comprehending how it works. ^_^
-- Darloth

Genius. I've been using a tweaked version myself to go with BonusPointExperience (wherein time isn't necessary, only a sufficient stunt for the type of increase in question), but stunting days together makes as much sense as stunting attacks together. And that's a lot of sense. I've adjusted the main rule and added your own as an abridged alternative...DeathBySurfeit