One problem I've had with increasing strength/craft through trophy exchange is that once you get to a certain level, every battle with a 7+ enemy (very common when playing with The Dragon expansion) you automatically get an extra point with battles getting exponentially easier.

One way I thought to get around this would be to only allow trophy exchange for 2x your current strength/craft (excl. items/followers etc.). This should even out the levelling a little and make it easier for characters with low starting levels a chance to get on the levelling up ladder earlier.

Thoughts?

An interesting idea. Surprised no-one came up with it before.

I don't think it will make that much of a difference to the endgame in standard format as with Crown of Command ending you should be heading for the middle with about 9 str / craft

Would certainly make it a quicker game by allowing lower level players a chance to upskill faster. You would be better off with one of those characters as they generally have better SA to compensate.

Troll for example would really have to get a shuffle on and go all out as fast as possible as his advantage would erode pretty quickly.

I think its a interesting rule.

It's pretty close to what my group uses…

To increase strength or craft; trophies that are at least the same as new value is needed. To increase craft 3 to craft 4, need craft trophies of 4 or more. Points not used are discarded. It’s possible to increase several steps at once if there is points enough.
This speeds up leveling at the start of the game, but slows down to ones with higher stats.

Also we play that a "6" in combat is transformed to 2 new dices (possible to get a low result 1+1=2 or a high 6+6=roll 4 dices etc). Thus a fight is never solved beforehand. The weakest fighter can still win, and the mightiest can loose.

Draii's approach is the one we use in games with experienced players willing to face a longer game. I am speaking of trophy points onlhy here. Yes, it can make (some) games longer, which is something we don't care about.

It does speed up the initial rise of Craft and Strength (maybe too much), but the excessively high levels are harder to gain later on. The downside to this approach is that ultimately there's (slightly) less risk of death in the earlier part of the game. Some might prefer that though I don't.

When my talisman group plays we use the rule, one more point of trophy points then you currently have. I think doubling it would be a little too extreme and would make for a VERY long game. another solution would be instead on one more trophy point then current value, you could do 2 or 3 more, this would extend your game slightly without making it a huge strech to get to 12 points.

there are 3 steps aound this theme. all steps do not include followers and objects.

1. you gain a trophy only if the enemy is equal or higher in str/cra

2. you need 10 points of trophies to raise a point in str/cra

3. the maximum value of str/cra is 10 on the first value and 8 on the second value.

hope you like an epic game

Interesting ideas here in this thread. I like the "current Strength or Craft plus one" approach someone mentioned. =)