Experience and Ongoing Play

[drkrash]

I know UE is fairly new, but BASH has been around a while. I was curious about peoples' experience with long-term play with the default rules (no advancement) vs. experience points.

As amply proven by any number of examples, any of Marvel or DC's big names in their present incarnations still ends up only about 30 points in BASH - often less (which is so cool, BTW).

But my players definitely like the carrot of character advancement, while I would be content with no advancement or at best very, very slow advancement.

So for those of you with actual BASH campaigns, how did you decide to handle advancement, if at all, and how has it worked out with your players? What point level did you set your games at to start?

Thanks.
C

[BASHMAN]

I'm using advancement in my current campaign. I set the game at 25pts to start. As characters advance, I increase the point total of the game (so players aren't punished for spending their XP).

Another Carrot that works well, I think is Fame. The Heroes' actions earn them Acclaim and Infamy, which they get as excited about as they do XP.

Prior to this (before UE was done) I ran a campaign set in Marvel's Manhattan that was all pre-gens. Each week, I had a different group of players (with about 4 regulars per session and a few people whose regular game was canceled, etc).
Each session, someone would pick one of the pregens (and didn't have to be the same one two sessions in a row) and then I'd run the issue with the characters we had. There was no XP, no Fame rules used, and I think it worked out great.

[deepone]

I'm using advancement in my current campaign. I set the game at 25pts to start. As characters advance, I increase the point total of the game (so players aren't punished for spending their XP).

I was actually considering that for a campaign I hope to run at some point. I have to say, though, that I really like the mechanic presented allowing an experience point to be spent for 5 hero points. I realize that giving the players more points does much the same thing, but my experience (no pun intended) is that players won't bank hero points. They'll buy stuff with the extra build points, instead. BUT, if they really need it, they'll spend the XP to save themselves.

That said, I'd love to hear more about how this is working for you. I'm not planning to run this any time soon, so it might influence what I end up doing.

[The_Strangler]

I've been giving it a lot of thought as well. I like the XP mechanic presented at the back of UE as well. Another thought I was kicking around was a level based system where XP is awarded based on a percentage(maybe 50%) of the skill check level plus any defeated minion/villain scale points. So if a character succeeds a level 20, two level 30, and another level 40 skill checks and beats a scale 25 villain and his two scale 10 minions in an issue he would earn:

(20+30+30+40)/2+(25+10+10)=105XP

It's really much simpler than it looks here. Then, the level scale would be a simple multiplier of character point scale. Something like:

Level 1 = CPx4
Level 2 = CPx10
Level 3 = CPx18
etc

So a brand new scale 25 hero would move to level 1 accomplishing all of this while a 30+ would not. The only thing that I havent really given a lot of thought to would be, "what do I award at these levels?" A point-buy system sounds good to me but I'm not sure how many points would be given each level. But they could be spent something like:

1xp-pt = 1 Hero Die or 5 Hero Points
2xp-pt = 1 Skill Slot
3xp-pt = 1 Power Point(PP)

I agree with Bashman that ability scores shouldn't be upgradeable without a good reason approved by the gamemaster. Another few thoughts.

- New purchased powers based on a power stunt that has been attempted ## or more times could be cheaper to purchase.

- IMO, new powers should be purchased at the lowest base level(including all enhancements and limitations) and then improved upon from there to give it more of a feeling of improvement based on usage.

- Another IMO. If you go with my thought directly above then shouldn't it be more expensive to move to Power5 then to Power2? So maybe make additional levels cost the amount of the new power level. ie, going from Flight1 to Flight2 costs 2 PP. going from Flight4 to Flight5 would cast 5 PP(ultimately that would sum to 15xp-pts.)

I think down on paper something like this would work and still be pretty simple. Anything more complicated wouldn't be BASH-like. I'm still looking for a solution for my game though so I'd also love to hear other's ideas on the subject.

[AslanC]

I used the suggested XP/Advancement rules from the rule book (except I gave 1 xp a session instead of waiting for a story arc to be done) and they worked pretty good out of the box.