Re: Sharing! Yay!
Spending Experience - A Primer by Malcolm Laurence's Player.
Hey all, I just finished spending my experience points. I've owned the hard copy of the Lords of Creation books since the early 1980s and I've had electronic copies (PDF) for about a decade.
I remember the XP process as pretty simple, but as I went through and updated my character sheet, I realized that there are a lot of nit-picky details that could easily be skipped. So I'm writing this as a simple-ass walk-through/flow-chart. I hope it helps you.
"Level" in LoC is determined by a STAT called Personal Force, which is determined by adding all your Ability Scores up, Dividing by 10, then Rounding Up.
If your Personal Force is 10 or under, you're 1st Level. We're all 1st Level.
At 1st Level, every 10 XP your character earns, you roll 1d6 and Add that to any one of your Ability Scores. The weird part here that you need to wrap your brain around is that XP does not directly relate to Level. XP gets you Ability Score Increases, Ability Score Increases determine your Personal Force, and Personal Force determines your Level.
Once you understand that weird thing, the rest is very simple.
Malcolm had a Personal Force of 8 (Ability Score Total of 72, Divided by 10, Rounded Up).
Being 1st Level, with 40 XP, I got to roll 4d6 for Ability Score Increases. As we all know, the Dice Roller hates me, so I rolled (1,2,4,2). I added the 1 and the 2 to Malcolms MUSCLE bringing that to 11 so that I could get a +2 Damage Modifier. I added the 4 and the last 2 to my STAMINA, making it a 21 so I would be harder to kill and increasing his Healing Rate from a 2 to a 3. Remember to recalculate any of the Ability Score Modifiers for any Ability Score that has gone up.
That's all there is to Spending XP, what's left is the cascade of events that happen because of the Ability Score Increases. It's basically like character creation all over again.
Add all your Ability Scores to get the Total, Divide by 10, Round Up to get your new Personal Force. Malcolm's Ability Score Total went from 72 to 81, so his Personal Force went from 8 to 9. Once his Personal Force reaches 11, Malcolm will be a 2nd Level Character (should happen in about a year at this rate).
Personal Force also determines how many Skills you have. If your Personal Force went up by 1, you get to select another Skill. If it went up by 2, you get to select 2 Skills.
Next, if you Increased any of your Physical Ability Scores (MUSCLE, SPEED, STAMINA), you'll need to average them again because the Average of your Physical Ability Scores, Rounded Up, is your Physical Score, which is basically your Combat Ability. Malcolm went from a 13 to a 16 Physical Score because I spent 9 points on Physical Ability Scores.
Note here too that if you have any Weapons Skills, they will increase by the same amount as your Physical Score. Malcolm has Pistol 1, so with Pistols he has a 17.
Lastly, if you Increased your STAMINA, you need to add that same amount to your Life Points because Life Points are equal to your STAMINA plus 1d10 per Level.
This is simple, and if you don't think too hard, you'll have a lot of fun.
This message was last edited by the player at 03:38, Sun 25 Mar 2012.
