Clearly I needed to spend a bunch of time answering these questions and so I started a human character named Bernie the Boring. Bernie spent what experience and money he started with and then I artificially advanced him through adventures till he reached Hero rank.
Bernie the Boring
Bernie started with 90 characteristic points, 170 experience and 90 silver pennies. Bernie will be a Fighter/Ranger character to start but branches out later on.
Assumptions:
- At the beginning adventures are single session. Later adventures will have two sessions.
- All adventures are successful.
- All adventures take 1 week of game time.
- Expenses during an adventure, such as rooms in inns or food, are taken out of adventure reward prior to adventure conclusion.
- Adventurer's Guild tithe and banking fees are not accounted for in this exercise though they wouldn't have changed the results significantly.
- Instructors are available for training to Rank 8.
- Character is always able to find an adventure immediately after finishing training.
- Character is part of a group that includes a Healer or Adept with healing such that he doesn't spend any post-adventure time recovering.
- Stealth & Horsemanship are improved without requiring instruction or time spent per [87.6] paragraph 2.
- R/W Common counts towards 8 skills at R4/R8 for Adventurer/Hero ranking.
Guidelines
A beginning adventurer should earn ~6000 sp a year per 81 Monetary Matters. A successful adventurer will earn ~50,000 sp/year. For this exercise, successful begins when an adventurer has reached Hero Rank. Monetary rewards will increase each year from the base of 6000 sp/year to 50,000 sp/year at Hero Rank.Upkeep [85.3] will start at Moderate level and advance with his career up to Expensive.
A Miscellaneous expense is assessed after each adventure to account for repair to gear, replacement of mundane adventuring items and other small expenses. This was an arbitrary amount that I pulled out of the air. The stabling cost is based on some historical examples.
EP expenses flagged (on accompanying page) with an asterisk indicate the 10% discount for using an instructor.
This isn't an exercise to see how quickly a character can reach Hero rank or what is the most efficient way to do so.
Where the planned number of adventures plus training didn't consume the full year I added in some extra downtime. This happened at the end of years 2 and 4.
Results
A separate page on the blog has all of the details of his advancement through the 7 years and 30 adventures. The year-by-year breakdown below is a shorter version that just hits the highlights. The graphic below shows the adventure-by-adventure tallies and has a graph showing income vs. expenses.- Total Experience Points Gained: 101,720
- Total Silver Pennies Gained: 176,090
Conclusions
For this pretty simple test case the guidelines in the DragonQuest rules for experience and monetary rewards work out pretty well. In a real campaign there would plenty of other expenses to consume the excess funds that were building up at the end. Depending on the campaign and GM characters may be able to spend money on enchanted weapons and armor or at the very least get their own gear invested with spells. Members of an adventuring group might choose to go in together to pay for an Alchemists lab or even a Shapers lab if there is such in the group.One caveat to this is that in my campaigns, as in most of I've played in, adventures are frequently 4 sessions or more. Two session adventures are uncommon and single session quite rare. I expect this wouldn't have a large impact as it is the training time that sets the overall pace of advancement. More EP per adventure would mean more training time between adventures and thus fewer adventures per year but the income level should remain about the same. Extended training periods between adventures could result in only 1 or 2 adventures in a year.
As mentioned above this is just about the least complex example you could do. A character with only weapon skills would be simpler and could be advanced very quickly. A character with Merchant or Courtesan skills would have more expenses. An Adept character might change the way this looks pretty drastically as their training times for spells are in days instead of weeks. They also have no training expenses for spells/rituals. They could end up collecting quite a bit more EP during slack periods from [86.4].
Year-by-year Breakdown
Year 1 - Adventures 1 thru 6
Steady progression in skills and income is staying more or less even with expenses. Upgrades armor to chainmail plus a large round shield. Is able to buy a palfrey at the end of year and will be working on Horsemanship next year. Bernie picks up skill in Shield, Unarmed and Javelin to be more well-rounded.- Falchion R4
- Dagger R4
- Shield R4
- Unarmed R2
- Javelin R3
- Stealth R1
- Ranger R3
Year 2 - Adventures 7 thru 10
Fewer adventures as training takes up more time though the last adventure is 2 sessions for 2x EP reward just because. Continued advancement in skills and achieves Adventurer rank by the end of the year. Picks up Speak Elven with instruction from one of the group. Income is ahead of expenses and by adventure 8 Bernie could afford to buy a healing potion if he wanted. Bernie moves into a better class of boarding house (Comfortable). Upgrades his armor to Partial Plate. The last 5 weeks of the year are spent practicing his skills [86.4] and enjoying his new status.- Falchion R5
- Dagger R4
- Shield R4
- Unarmed R4
- Javelin R4
- Stealth R1
- Horsemanship R4
- Ranger R4
- Elven R0
Year 3 - Adventures 11 thru 14
Bernie is hitting his pace now and improving his existing skills regularly. Income is pretty firmly above expenses now. He can afford to buy a healing potion every couple of adventures- Falchion R8
- Dagger R7
- Shield R4
- Unarmed R5
- Javelin R5
- Stealth R2
- Horsemanship R5
- Ranger R4
- Elven R3
Year 4 - Adventures 15 thru 18
Feeling that they need to make better use of tactics Bernie takes up Military Scientist after adventure 15. Continued improvement in most skills. Expenses are somewhat flat compared to Income and Bernie is starting to bank some serious coin and decides to move into even better lodgings (Expensive). Picking up a healing potion or two for each adventure isn't a burden. This year is the first where he has a yearly professional skill expense (Military Scientist). The last 8 weeks of the year are spent practicing his skills [86.4] and carousing.- Falchion R8
- Dagger R7
- Shield R4
- Unarmed R6
- Javelin R6
- Stealth R3
- Horsemanship R6
- Ranger R5
- Elven R4
- Military Scientist R2
Year 5 - Adventures 19 thru 22
Bernie continues to advance his skills. He has been advancing his Perception all along and it will be up to 20 by half way through the year. Income is now 3 times expenses and he is building up a nice balance in the bank.- Falchion R8
- Dagger R7
- Shield R4
- Unarmed R7
- Javelin R7
- Stealth R3
- Horsemanship R6
- Ranger R5
- Elven R7
- Military Scientist R6
Year 6 - Adventures 23 thru 26
Continued advancement in skills puts him close to Hero rank. Expenses are more than covered by income. Bernie decides that a real warhorse is what he needs and picks one up.- Falchion R8
- Dagger R8
- Shield R4
- Unarmed R8
- Javelin R8
- Stealth R3
- Horsemanship R6
- Ranger R5
- Elven R8
- Military Scientist R8
Year 7 - Adventures 27 thru 30
Bernie focuses on his Ranger skill though he spares a few EP to get his PC up to 22. Money is not an issue. Bernie gets to Hero rank with 8 weeks to go in the year and contracts to have a stable built to go along with his new skill in Beast Master.- Falchion R8
- Dagger R8
- Shield R4
- Unarmed R8
- Javelin R8
- Stealth R3
- Horsemanship R6
- Ranger R8
- Elven R8
- Military Scientist R8
- Beast Master R0
Interesting take. My experience as a GM is players get their characters PC up to 24/25 in 17 adventures. They focus on PC. They tend also to focus to get to Hero as quickly as they can with their preferred Skills. (The noticeable exception was at Mercenary level long after his companions reached Hero, having a slew of weapons and skills less than 4.)
ReplyDeleteAdepts use a variety of methods to achieve Hero quickly. Earth Mages will get there the quickest. Usually only one combat spell is chosen, and other spells, particularly General Spells, are used in creative ways.
~Jeffery~
That more or less matches how things go in my campaigns. Certainly once a player realizes how important PC is they try and bump it with every completed adventure. For us the primary goal is to get to Adventurer as that is a doubling of EP versus the 25% increase on reaching Hero. Once 8@4 is reached Hero comes when it comes. Focus is on primary weapons or skills like Healing which take serious EP to advance. Adepts from almost any college can advance quickly if they choose to do so.
DeleteNice article Phil. Not much to really add here to your analysis.
ReplyDeleteI believe the Seagate crew added a couple of other proficiency levels.
Fire Magics is also easy to hit Hero rank. My brothers Fire Adept is proficient in being able to explode small furry animals...
Mostly I just wanted to see if following the guidance in the rule for GMs let players have too much or too little money. If they can't afford to train or pay their professional obligations that's not good. It's also not good if they get too much money. From the graph you can see that income and expenses stayed pretty close initially but then expenses kind of plateaued after 3 years. I may have to look at what happens when each adventure has 4 sessions which would in theory mean more skills could be trained per adventure completed. This would mean more upkeep and training expenses.
Delete