I have been pondering this for awhile now, and IMHO, the answer is yes. If you set the rank bar higher than what it is now (which is lower than a complete career) would it encourage players to explore more non career based advances? More importantly, would it slow down twink style characters and allow more freedom to create more organic characters?

Bear in mind here, I am still thinking that you can still only train a skill once per rank, in fact, the 10 advances / class as per written would still be fine. All I am looking t considering is a change of the rank thesholds.

Any thoughts?

I recommend starting with LOWER numbers of points. This will force players to burn up many x.p. just increasing abilities and purchasing their basic talents.

I'd start humans at 19 and dwarf/elf at 10.

In order to get the effect you're hoping for, I think you'd need to also change how much XP it costs to swap careers. As it stands right now, it's almost always better for a human PC to change careers than to buy anything cross-career. Buying something outside their career costs +1 to +3 XP. Changing careers (for a human) costs +0 to +3 XP (and usually no more than +1).

I'm also mildly skeptical that slowing down the skill advances further will slow the twinks down or make them broaden out their characters. Making them spend more time and advances in a career will just make it that much more appealing to raise their best stat to a 6, which required a major sacrifice in the RAW (because you then couldn't get anything else that the career offered).

I give out 1 XP per 4 hours of playing, we usually get in 2.5 a night so in effect I'm reducing XP per session.

@RB

I am not proposing that the 10 slot advance for a career should change, merely that the rank threshold be higher. You still only get your 10 "in career" advances, that will not change. It's more that you will not hit rank 2 -and all the advantages of going to a higher rank such as more gold dice- until you have more XP.

@ Emirikol

Well, that would certainly make people more like "peasants", but would that not just under power rank 4-5 characters?

@Valvorik

Our sessions tend to be 6-7 hours, and our ref still only gives us 1 XP

You could go with rank = number of careers. Our group does it and it works great, and it's easier to keep track of rank when you only have to look at how many career ability cards you have.

Also, our group has discussed mandatory out of career advances to complete the career. The logic would be that no matter what your job is, most or all people still pick up knowledge/skills in other areas. You could still switch careers early, but you'd miss out on the dedication bonus etc. I also feel that it encourages picking up skills that fit the adventure or what the players have been doing as the out of career advances are not tied to your career. Like; "hey, we've done a lot of traveling I feel like increasing ride" or "I've spent a lot of time in taverns, listening to rumors, I'll get folk lore". So in some groups it could promote organic character growth. Obviously, "forced" out of career advances won't fit every group out there. But it does make career progression (and rank increase in my groups case) a lot slower, which could be a really good thing for a long term campaign.

With the two above things combined it would be at least 15 XP to get through a career completely and get a new rank. Everyone might also get more well rounded characters.

@K7e9

That works well if you have a group (like mine and probably yours) that always completes their careers pretty much no matter what. I want to keep my career cards, none of them really "suck" so much that they are not worth having. In fact, only people wanting the "magical careers" make any sense on cutting out early on another career, and they suffer enough to not start there

As for the rest, you are pretty much reading my mind as to what I am thinking. 15 advances to hit your next rank would be much better IMHO, and yeah, it makes rank increase a far better thing. Even if you want to go from career to career and not take "OOC skills", it places a non career based limit on what you can do.

Thinking about it a tad more, what if you tied "bonus dice" to rank as well?

You can have tons of bonus dice, as long as they come from separate sources, but you can only get one bonus dice based on the same source? This would prevent twinky fortune dice career changes, or dice based on careers as well.

In the end, you should get more rounded characters, and campaigns don't seem "ended" at around 40 advances. My fave campaigns lasted for a minimum year, and that was when I was in my teens and could play 20 hours a week and it not matter!!

All of this is going to come up when I run Thousand Thrones. Valvorik says his went to 88 advances. I force my my games to run very fast, but I figure it will still take at least 50-60 advances. That would normally be Rank 6-7. Here are some thoughts on variant rank systems already suggested:

• OPTION 1: Standard: each 10 ranks == great for short campaigns and quick gratification
• OPTION 2: Number of completed careers (approximately 15th rank) == pushes players towards not jumping to mystic just for the free fortune dice
• OPTION 3: Each 15 advances
• OPTION 4: Must complete 1st career to get to Rank 2 then each 15 advances.
• OPTION 5: Variable longer advances (10xp to 2nd rank and each 15xp thereafter):

Personally, I'm thinking option 4 would be ideal.

jh

I like option 3 or 4, but as that was my initial position on starting the thread......

I think I would go with "Rank = 1+ (# of Completed careers)". It's nice and elegant and simple... simpler than the official rules, and it does a nice job of preventing abusive career-swapping and fortune-dice min/maxing.

I'm all for simple.

I use the number of completed careers +1 (basically, your rank is the number of PC sheets you have if you have completed all careers), every time you get a new career sheet, you go up one rank.

Each session is worth one EP. Whatever he length. We play 4 hours, typically. I number the sessions, ie. Next session is session 55. That means at the end of next session, all PCS will have 55 EPs on their sheets. Simple.