FrivYeti/ExperienceGrowth

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Experience-Based Progression

This is an optional system designed to replace the NPC growth tables with one that creates lower-experience total NPCs. It may also be applied to PCs, at the discretion of the Storyteller. Storytellers who choose to do so should make absolutely, completely sure that their players understand that this is taking place.

For session XP, the system provides an accelerated startup, followed by a drastic slowdown as the characters grow in power. For downtime experience, it does the same. Adventuring helps characters reach plateaus faster, but does not grant them the same astounding advantages that it does traditionally.

Experience Categories

The system recognizes five experience categories that a character might belong to. Each category is based around a specific amount of experience that the character might have acquired, and determines how much experience is gained per session of active play, per story actively completed, and per year of downtime.

Note that this system further penalizes mortals by having their caps appear much sooner. This is because mortals need to spend much more time practicing and honing their existing skills to keep them. Note also that characters who do particularly little may gain less than the recommended amount each year, especially non-heroic mortals, who rarely improve their traits at all.

||Experience Category||Exalt Experience||Mortal Experience||Gain Per Session||Gain Per Story||Gain Per Year||
||Novice             ||0-240 XP        ||0-120 XP         ||       8 XP     ||   4 XP       ||    12       ||
||Experienced        ||241-480 XP      ||121-240 XP       ||       4 XP     ||   2 XP       ||     6       ||
||Veteran            ||481-900 XP      ||241-450 XP       ||       2 XP     ||   1 XP       ||     3       ||
||Master             ||901-1500 XP     ||451-750 XP       ||       1 XP     ||   1 XP       ||     2       ||
||Elder              ||Over 1500 XP    ||Over 750 XP      ||       1 XP     ||   0 XP       ||     1       ||

Under this system, an Exalt who gains experience only through downtime will reach Experienced after 20 years, Veteran after 60 years, Master after 200 years, and Elder after 660 years. Gain for characters who gain experience entirely through sessions will generally be based on frequency of story bonuses.

Experience Atrophy

Players or characters may, under this system, find that they have spent time training in a skill that they no longer have a use for. The system thus allows for Experience Atrophy, whereby a character's capabilities are reduced through lack of training.

Characters may atrophy any Attribute or Ability that they do not Favour, any Virtue that does not serve for their Great Curse, and any Charm that does not serve as a prerequisite for other Charms the character possesses. This takes as much time as training the Trait would - during this time, the character may not use the Trait in any way. At the end of this time, the character reduces the Attribute or Ability by one dot (to a minimum of Attribute and Virtue 1 or Ability 0) or removes the Charm. She then removes half the cost of the Trait from her Total Experience list (round down), and gains the other half (rounding up) to spend on other things. Characters may not Atrophy Willpower or Essence. Storytellers may choose not to allow the atrophy of any trait purchased during character creation. If the Storyteller is requiring experience be spent on Backgrounds, these may also be Atrophied at the Storyteller's discretion (for example, it is easier to lose Backing through neglect than one's daiklave).