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House rules for Character Points and in game use
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Whill
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PostPosted: Sat Apr 02, 2022 8:20 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Dredwulf60 wrote:
I personally dislike it when players constantly spend CPs toward periphery skills that seem irrelevant, just because they are low but might be useful someday down the line. Like when they have been in several death-defying blaster fights, that they only squeaked through by burning CPs (luck).

Then when it eventually comes time to spend a couple CPs on improvement, not a care is given to improving the skill that they just needed. Instead it goes to whatever happens to be lowest (and thus cheapest to improve) regardless if they have used it in several games. Moreover they avoid using the low skill because it *IS* low and not as useful.

I can't say I've never had a player who did this, but in my experience they have been few and far between. Most players I've had understand that to raise important higher skills, they may have to save up from two adventures to do it.

Quote:
I tried to enforce the "If you want to improve the skill without a teacher, you have to use the skill in the last session." But I found this to be awkward and ham-fisted.

That's not quite the rule for the no-experience option. It's actually "If you want to improve the skill without any training time, you have to use the skill successfully in an adventure." You can train without a teacher. All a teacher does is halve the default training time.

And I haven't found the requirement to advance skill without training to be awkward and ham-fisted because the player and I are usually on the same page as far as the PC's character arc in the campaign, so I work opportunities for players to use skills they want to improve into adventures when I write them. I'm pretty successful at making it seem organic.

Quote:
Is there an aspect of double-dipping on CPs? Well, sure there is. But I would rather have characters that are growing based on what they are doing than hoarding their CPs, blowing them to save their skins and then have little left to show for it; they are right back to where they started from and achieve no real advancement. They might literally have been through the fight of their lives and have ended learning nothing. (skill wise)

The alternative is to husband CPs and risk spending them on skills a bit at a time, while keeping a strategic reserve of luck (CPs) which in my experience is how the RAW typically works in practice. Then it's a metagame of resource management, under which I usually caution my players "You should always keep a few CPs on hand...don't spend them all...you might need to save your bacon."

In my game, I address this in a different way. I also caution my players to have a few CPs on hand in case they really need them in play, but I never have players who hoard all their CPs to boost rolls instead of advancing skills. I have 1e skill points as the base rewards for experience and 2e character points as the bonus rewards for good roleplaying, etc. Skill points can only be used to advance skills, while CPs can boost rolls or be used as skill points.

Quote:
It makes sense to me that if you are using a low level skill and you are needing the CPs to make it work, the character is putting in EFFORT. Naturally they should be getting better at it... As a modification to the house rule, I would think about a possibility of having the CPs just vanish with no benefit as well.

Perhaps something like, if you use the CPs to assist in the roll and succeed then you mark down progress towards skill advancement. But if you use CPs to assist and the roll still fails, then no points are accrued toward advancement.

I'm not sure though, because it's a matter of reality that we tend to learn more from our failures than our successes.

That's a good point. I think I'll keep the RAW methods of skill improvement (with no double-dipping), but tweak the experience option (no training time) to include failed skill attempts that involved CPs burned to boost the roll, in addition to skills used successfully.

Another house rule I just thought of is, if a player burns CPs and the attempts still fails anyway, maybe the PC gets those CPs back at the end of the adventure because the CPs didn't actually provide any benefit. This wouldn't come into play a lot in my game because CPs can be spent to boost rolls after the normal roll, so CPs are normally not spent to boost rolls in my game unless the roll is close to what the player thinks they need, and the results usually ends up successful for this reason. But this way, CPs are never wasted.
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fogger1138
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PostPosted: Sat Apr 02, 2022 9:30 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Whill wrote:
Another house rule I just thought of is, if a player burns CPs and the attempts still fails anyway, maybe the PC gets those CPs back at the end of the adventure because the CPs didn't actually provide any benefit. This wouldn't come into play a lot in my game because CPs can be spent to boost rolls after the normal roll, so CPs are normally not spent to boost rolls in my game unless the roll is close to what the player thinks they need, and the results usually ends up successful for this reason. But this way, CPs are never wasted.


I've been watching this thread since it popped up - I might adopt this one as well.
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DougRed4
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PostPosted: Tue Apr 05, 2022 12:13 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Dredwulf60 wrote:
I'm not sure though, because it's a matter of reality that we tend to learn more from our failures than our successes.


One aspect of the rules for Delta Green that I really like is very much like this. Delta Green was originally a variant of Call of Cthulhu, and the latest version is an OGL system that has all skills rolled with percentile dice. Every skill in the game has a check mark next to it on the character sheet. Players only advance in skills when they fail a roll, which allows them to place a check next to the skill. After the adventure, survivors get to increase all the skills (by 1%) that they failed in.
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garhkal
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PostPosted: Tue Apr 05, 2022 3:52 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

fogger1138 wrote:
Whill wrote:
Another house rule I just thought of is, if a player burns CPs and the attempts still fails anyway, maybe the PC gets those CPs back at the end of the adventure because the CPs didn't actually provide any benefit. This wouldn't come into play a lot in my game because CPs can be spent to boost rolls after the normal roll, so CPs are normally not spent to boost rolls in my game unless the roll is close to what the player thinks they need, and the results usually ends up successful for this reason. But this way, CPs are never wasted.


I've been watching this thread since it popped up - I might adopt this one as well.


Getting all back, is a bit much.. I could maybe see getting Some back.. So if you spent 2cp, and the roll still failed for what ever reason, you may get one back...
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Whill
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PostPosted: Tue Apr 05, 2022 7:36 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Sure, that's another option. But even if one for one, it isn't double dipping.
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PostPosted: Wed Apr 06, 2022 1:12 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

How so? IT still modified the roll, even if it wasn't making the roll successful...
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Whill
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PostPosted: Wed Apr 06, 2022 11:20 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

garhkal wrote:
How so? IT still modified the roll, even if it wasn't making the roll successful...

Because the end result is the same if the roll had a CP or not: Failure. "Double-dipping" is used in the sense of it benefiting the character more than once, like the OP's suggestion.
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Dr. Bidlo
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PostPosted: Wed Apr 06, 2022 1:36 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Whill wrote:
garhkal wrote:
How so? IT still modified the roll, even if it wasn't making the roll successful...

Because the end result is the same if the roll had a CP or not: Failure. "Double-dipping" is used in the sense of it benefiting the character more than once, like the OP's suggestion.


Not being argumentative, but I see a flaw in the logic from my perspective. The benefit is the use of the character point to boost a skill roll, not the result of the roll. If you shoot a blaster five times and miss all five times, you still expended (or benefited from) the shots even though the result was not what you wanted. Same is true if you shot and hit but caused no damage.

I agree with garhkal on this, but ultimately this is a discussion about "double-dipping", which is not a term from the RAW, so is somewhat up to interpretation as to what it even means.
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garhkal
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PostPosted: Wed Apr 06, 2022 2:41 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Though i agree Dr B, i can understand Whill's stance.. YOU used the item (say cp or tossing a grenade), if it didn't actually damage anyone (in the grenade case), did you really BENEFIT from it??
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Dr. Bidlo
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PostPosted: Wed Apr 06, 2022 9:47 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

garhkal wrote:
Though i agree Dr B, i can understand Whill's stance.. YOU used the item (say cp or tossing a grenade), if it didn't actually damage anyone (in the grenade case), did you really BENEFIT from it??


Yes...the Character Points increased the skill roll whether or not the result was high enough to succeed.

Apart from this house rule, if you use CPs for a one -time skill boost per the RAW (and get no additional advantage) and the test still fails, would you discuss whether or not it was a single "single dip" or "benefit"?
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Whill
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PostPosted: Thu Apr 07, 2022 12:05 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Dr. Bidlo wrote:
I fully acknowledge this is a "double dip" house rule. I never denied it was. I also appreciate that many people may not like it for that reason.

Dr. Bidlo wrote:
Not being argumentative, but...

Yes, let's please not be. Two other people before me in this thread characterized your rule as "double-dipping" (which you conceded too) and now you resort to the 'Pee Wee Herman defense' by saying my rule is equally double dipping??

Dr. Bidlo wrote:
Whill wrote:
garhkal wrote:
How so? IT still modified the roll, even if it wasn't making the roll successful...

Because the end result is the same if the roll had a CP or not: Failure. "Double-dipping" is used in the sense of it benefiting the character more than once, like the OP's suggestion.

I see a flaw in the logic from my perspective. The benefit is the use of the character point to boost a skill roll, not the result of the roll. If you shoot a blaster five times and miss all five times, you still expended (or benefited from) the shots even though the result was not what you wanted. Same is true if you shot and hit but caused no damage.

I agree with garhkal on this, but ultimately this is a discussion about "double-dipping", which is not a term from the RAW, so is somewhat up to interpretation as to what it even means.

If the term is "up to interpretation," then how can you say make such a definitive and boldly conclusive statement that my logic is flawed? Let's not get caught up in semantics here.

Bidlio's suggested house rule: A player spends CPs to boost a skill roll in play, and, success or fail, the same CPs apply toward permanently improving that skill also.

Whill's suggested house rule: A player spends CPs to boost a skill roll in play, and (only) if the roll still fails, the player gets the CP back at the end of the adventure.

These two things are clearly not congruent to each other. The first one above benefits the player more because the conditions are different. The first option benefits the character even after the boosted skill helps the player succeed where they may not have without the CP. For a success, the CP helps, and helps again with a permanent increase to skill. The second option above only benefits the character if it did not actually help in the first place.

If you shoot five times and miss, then any CPs used to boost those to-hit rolls made no difference because, if you missed with the CPs being used then you also would have missed without them. If there is no difference in the outcome, then the character did not get any benefit from the CPs used.

Damage is not the same thing because the roll to hit and the roll to damage are not the same roll. The roll to hit is a skill roll. If you use a CP to boost your to hit roll and it succeeds then you benefited from the CP. The failure of the damage roll to do any damage was not related to the CP spent on the attack roll. That is just the luck of the dice on a separate roll. I would not apply my house rule to players spending CPs to boost damage rolls. Only skill rolls, which is what I thought we were talking about.

All of my statements about this have been 100% factual and logical statements. And in line with my suggestion, I actually support your rule for skill roll failures, just not for successes because it is the same CP benefiting the character twice, no matter what phasing for that concept that you find logical or acceptable. I was just sharing a related house rule suggestion. If you don't like it, don't use it.
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PostPosted: Thu Apr 07, 2022 1:50 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Dr. Bidlo wrote:

Apart from this house rule, if you use CPs for a one -time skill boost per the RAW (and get no additional advantage) and the test still fails, would you discuss whether or not it was a single "single dip" or "benefit"?


While you may not have benefited in that a failure didn't get turned into a success, you still benefited, by having a higher roll than normal.. So to Me, its still a 'single dip'..
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Dr. Bidlo
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PostPosted: Thu Apr 07, 2022 8:51 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Thank you for your comments.
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DougRed4
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PostPosted: Thu Apr 07, 2022 1:54 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

garhkal wrote:
Dr. Bidlo wrote:

Apart from this house rule, if you use CPs for a one -time skill boost per the RAW (and get no additional advantage) and the test still fails, would you discuss whether or not it was a single "single dip" or "benefit"?


While you may not have benefited in that a failure didn't get turned into a success, you still benefited, by having a higher roll than normal.. So to Me, its still a 'single dip'..


I don't see that as a benefit. To my knowledge, there's not really any benefit to only missing the TN by 3, as opposed to missing it by 7. A miss of the TN you're shooting for is still a failure, whether the roll missed the target by 1 or by 10 (though I suppose as GM I might narrate that it almost grazed the target when you miss by 1 and say that the shot completely misses the target if it was by 10). But even in that example, those are narrative things that don't actually have any effect (or benefit) in the game.
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PostPosted: Thu Apr 07, 2022 3:00 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

There's some instances where missing it by a large #, can be hurtful.. Such as say if they're hacking a computer.. TN 25.. Get 14 or under, and an alarm sounds..
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