Random Skill Gains First Draft

Based on comments from my group and other who I broached the question to, I’ve added a ‘semi-random’ skill up mechanic to LCA!.

The idea is to cater to the folks who enjoy a little bit of randomness in their character’s path choices as well as the ones who have a definite, “This is what I want, don’t screw with me.” path for their character.

———————-

Raising Skills -

In LCA! I offer two potential mechanics for you to offer your players. One should be chosen and enforced for all players, I don’t advise mixing them although statistically a player that uses either one should have the same rough end result in terms of power outputs, but random can trump non-random on both sides of that coin. Mix them at your own peril.

In one method the player has full control over their skill gains. Their character grows exactly as they desire them to with no surprises. This is the Buy method.
The other method, known as the Semi-Random method, allows the player to influence the skills that are raised but there’s no guarantee they’ll get their first choice but odds are very high they’ll get ‘something’. This can lead to interesting developments in a character that are unforeseen by the player and add some color and definition rather than a plotted out growth chart.

With the Semi-Random method the character, for one character point, goes through the skill list in the preferred order until they raise one skill or fail to raise any skills. This has a minimal but real risk that they may not raise any skill. The odds are something like 1 in 2,000,000 so don’t worry you’re going to waste the point.

Which method you choose should be based on your own groups’ needs and playstyle or your own need for iron fisted control.

Buy Method -

For one point the character can pick up a new skill at Rank 0 or increase a Rank 0 skill to Rank 1.
To increase an existing Rank 1 or higher skill by one Rank costs one point as long as the skill’s Rank is currently below the associated attribute.
It costs 2 character points to increase a skill’s Rank if the new Rank would cause it be higher than its associated Attribute.
Example: Dave ‘dings’ and gets another character point. His Range skill is 3 and his Grace is three. Because raising his Range skill would take it higher than the associated attribute it’s going to cost 2 points to raise. Luckily Dave planned ahead and saved his last point and has two to spend and his Range skill increases to 4.
Scott who also has two character points decides to broaden his skill set a bit and adds Occult as a Trained skill for 1 point. His Range skill is only a 1 and his Grace is a 2 so he spends the other point to raise his Range skill to a 2.

Semi-Random Method -

For one character point the character tries to raise a skill using the semi-random method. This can be an existing trained skill or an untrained skill. Note that the new skill must be from the standard list and they can only attempt to learn a single Area of Expertise skill. The player can’t get an infinite list of skill raise attempts by trying AOE after AOE.
They then make a 2d20 roll against a TN of 20 plus the skill’s current Effective Value. The TN would include the Untrained penalty of -10 if the character is trying to raise an skill from Untrained to Trained.
If they succeed on the roll that skill raises by 1 point and the player is done with raising skills. If they have another character point and wish to they can start the process over.
If they skill raise roll fails the player can select a different skill and make the same roll against that skill’s effective value. They can repeat this process until they either raise one skill or have attempted to raise all skills once. If they fail on every skill the character point is lost.
Example: Dave just leveled up and earned a character point. He wants to raise his Ranged skill up by one. His current Effective Skill is 6, he has a Grace of 2 and a Ranged Rank of 4. His TN to meet or beat is 26 to raise this skill. He rolls 2d20, unmodified, and gets a 18. Not good enough.
He looks at his list of skills and decides to try to raise Burglary by 1. It’s Effective Value is 2 giving him a TN of 22. He rolls and succeeds getting a 25 on his roll. His Burglary goes up by 1.
If the Burglary had failed then he’d simply pick another skill to try to raise. He can keep doing this until he succeeds on something or there’s nothing left he has any interest in knowing.