Character Leveling in Campaign (experimental rules)

[Kefka]

So I came up with these over the last week for part of the campaign I am setting up. Please take a look and tell me what you guys think.
I am not happy with the Mage advancement sheet, it certainly needs tweaking. Anyways, here it is!

Character Advancements:

As you progress through the campaign your character will gain experience and better himself. A quick rundown of how a character gains and spends experience:
+1 EXP: kill an enemy character (running down does not count)
+1 EXP: Win a Challenge (this stacks with killing a charter)
+1 EXP: Survive the Battle
+1 EXP: Roll Double 6's when try to cast and survive the miscast (mages only)

There will be other ways to gain experience through the campaign as you preform heroic deeds or achieve impossible tasks.

A character can "advance" himself once he has gained 5 EXP. His EXP is spent and he may roll on one of the following tables. As well, if the character wishes, he may use an extra 1 EXP to change the dice roll up or down one point.

Please note that there are 3 different Advancement Charts. One for regular characters, one for Mages, and one for Special Characters. No stat can improve above 10. If any stat increase is rolled that is already at 10, re-roll

Character Advancement Chart:
2 - The Character Gains the "Fear" special rule. If they already cause Fear, they now cause "Terror" instead. If they Already cause Terror, re-roll
3 - The Character gains +1 to their Attack Stat
4 - The Character, and any unit he joins, gains "Immune to Psychology" special rule. If they already have this, re-roll
5 - The Character gains +1 Strength
6 - The Character gains +1 Initiative
7 - The Character Gains +1 Weapon Skill
8 - The Character gain +! Leadership
9 - The Character Gains +1 Toughness
10 - The Character gains Magic Resistance (1). If they already have a magic resistance, then add (1) to the total
11 - The Character gains +1 Wound
12 - The Character Gains Regeneration (6+). If they already have Regeneration add +1 to the total

Wizard Advancement Chart
2 - +1 Attack
3 - The Character can choose 1 extra spell from their Lore. If they have Loremaster, re-roll
4 - +1 Weapon Skill
5 - The character gains Magic Resistance (1). If they already have magic resistance, then add (1) to the total.
6 - +1 Toughness
7 - +1 Leadership
8 - +1 Wound
9 - The Character gains +1 Wizard Level, to a maximum of 4. If they are level 4, re-roll
10 - +1 Initiative
11 - The Character gains the "Ethereal" special rule. If they already have Ethereal, re-roll.
12 - +1 Strength

Special Character Advancement Chart
1 - +1 attack
2 - +1 Strength
3 - +1 Weapon Skill
4 - +1 Leadership
5 - +1 Toughness
6 - +1 Initiative

[Drainial]

I don't think special characters ought to be able to advance, they are already more or less at the top of their game and veterens of dozens if not hundreds of campaigns (there may be some exeptions but non spring to mind).

[Red...]

It's a nice idea, but I think you should cap some of the attributes. An elf with too much toughness, for example, would be a bit silly.

Perhaps a rule such as "no attribute can gain more than +2 as a result of experience" would make sense. A character who already had +2 to a particular attribute but rolled that number again could either a) gain no bonus or b) be allowed to roll again.

I agree with Drainial regarding special characters. To be honest, I'm not even too convinced that normal characters should be able to level up in this way at all because:

- Some characters are already at the peak of their careers (a level 4 wizard is, for example, supposed to be at the peak of magicky power...there's no real way that they could improve further).
- We can see from the differences between different levels of characters what changes when different races progress. So, for example, a Dark Elf gains WS, I, A, W and Ld between an elite Dark Elf and a Master, and then WS, I, A, W and Ld between a Master and a Dreadlord. Nowhere does the potential exist for extra toughness (or strength, although this does exist between a normal dark elf and an elite dark elf). In contrast, a Dwarf gains WS, I, A, W and T between an elite Dwarf and a Thane, and then WS, I, A, W and Ld between a Thane and a Dwarf Lord. Nowhere does the potential exist for extra strength (although this does exist between a normal dwarf and an elite dwarf). In order to have a balanced levelling up system you would need to somehow cater to these unique traits - a Dark Elf character with more than T3, for example, is very very unusual (Malekith and Malus (when possessed) are the only two exceptions).

[Drainial]

Red makes a good point, how many people are in this campaign? Would it be possible for each army to have their own table?

[Kefka]

There are potentially between 8-12 people in the campaign.
I have discussed the same points with some of the campaign players, and the same idea came up, different charts for different players. I have thought about it, but my issue is, there will be so many extra rules for the campaign that having each player make their own charts will bog them down with extra work, and make it difficult for me to organize and run the whole thing (having 9 different army charts on hand...)
I agree with the cap though, and maybe ill just put caps out there for specific armies. (like elves can only get +1 T, Ogres or lizardmen can only get +1 I, etc.)

Thanks for the input.

[Sulla]

Toughness and strength increases are pretty huge boons. Most characters already have increased S and T over their rank and file, and those two increases are potentially huge. Think of a vampire or chaos lord with t6.

Surely, magic items, abilities or soft stat increases would be more appropriate?

Hard to kill; when reduced to 0 wounds, the character makes a ld test, and if passed, returns to the table with one wound*. (* does not work if the unit he was in was run down)

Cunning hunter; the model and one unit of not more than 200pts may choose to enter the tabletop by the ambush rules instead of deploying normally.

That sort of thing would be better veteran abilities IMO, than simple stat boosts.

Plus, your table is skewed. The rarest results, 2 and 12, give some of the poorest boosts whereas the other more commonly desired results, like toughness, extra magic levels are closer to more commonly rolled results +/-1 from another EXP point.

[Drainial]

Scouting, frenzy, extended leadership range, counting as bsb ect, these kinds of rules might be more apropriate. Come to that to balance it out if they are killed there could be a table of disadvantages for the next battle.

[Kefka]

This is just my character leveling for the campaign. S and T are on less common dice rolls making them harder to get. Also, I will enforce the no more the +2 to a stat. I don't think S and T would be a problem, because there is a point were your S doesn't really matter anymore other then REALLY tough models, and everything can always be wounded on a 6.

As for other special rules, coming up with more magic items to dole out through the campaign that will have similar rules.

Also, there will be a death and injury chart, I just haven't finished it yet.

Finally, stat upgrades will not be common. I will be surprised if a character gets advancements more then once every 2 or 3 games, and the campaign will probably only run 10-12 games (if players show up to every week). so that's a max of 5 stat increases, if they are lucky and do everything right. And not all of those stat upgrades will land on useful stats (ie, "great, my high elf lord is I8 now... huzzah!")
Not to mention other characters (and units, when I get around to it) will be getting advancements.

This is my first campaign, so I wanted to try and keep it easy... If this ends up being terribly broken I will re-work it for my next campaign.

[Dyvim tvar]

I think this is a good idea, but to keep it from getting out of hand, I would put the following restrictions:

1) Each benefit can only be obtained once (so no +2 strength, for example)

2) A character can only advance a total of 3 times

3) A special character can only advance once (or maybe not at all as was previously suggested)

[L1qw1d]

its good- i like it better than the random chart in Badlands!