Forum > Shadow World
average level for a nobody ?
jdale:
RMSS/RMFRP characters are pretty competent right out of the gate. I think normal people in those systems should be mostly 1st-3rd or so. Whereas in RMU up to 5th or 6th can be reasonable. Exceptional individuals of course can be higher.
Regardless of the system, I think it's best to assume that normal people in a stable environment don't gain any meaningful amount of XP. So they reach some level getting to the point they need to be, and then absent any special drive for self-improvement don't advance to any significant degree beyond that. That's true whether you are a short-lived human or a long-lived elf.
Hurin:
One last point I would make is that medieval notions of age are a bit different than ours. Apprentices were often very young, with apprenticeships often beginning around age 12. Many medieval people were doing things we would consider fully adult well before they left their teens. Many girls were married by the time they were 16. I like to tell my RMU players that their first level characters are essentially Harry Potters on their first visit to Hogwarts.
MisterK:
--- Quote from: jdale on April 12, 2022, 09:57:20 AM ---Regardless of the system, I think it's best to assume that normal people in a stable environment don't gain any meaningful amount of XP. So they reach some level getting to the point they need to be, and then absent any special drive for self-improvement don't advance to any significant degree beyond that. That's true whether you are a short-lived human or a long-lived elf.
--- End quote ---
I'm not sure I can agree with that. As long as your brain is functional and you're not a listless couch potato, you learn all the time. Not much, but you do learn all the time. Even the blacksmith that blacksmithes from their youth to their retirement age learns something new all the time. It might be social knowledge, it might be tales from afar, it might be a hard lesson for having been swindled for lower quality iron, it might be simply the vagaries of raising children to the best of their abilities, but I can't accept that they don't learn anything.
In a level-less system, I would simply adjust skills to what I think is accurate according to their social position, environment, and professional expertise. But a level-based system, even one that provides skill allocation flexibility like RM, ties skill development to level.
thus my question.
Granted, it is technically more useful for rank and file NPCs that might see action (not necessarily combat, but action in some way) when I pick them up and throw them into the fray - you never know when the city watch of the sleepy town the PCs amble through will be caught in a dragon-breathing firestorm that *certainly would never have happened if the strangers hadn't been here*... and the military charts in almost every RM campaign module go my brain running (especially since they assign level as a function of rank, which does not make much sense to me in military structures where officers are often appointed because of their social status and not their combat experience...).
jdale:
While it's true that learning doesn't really stop, levels represent very broad development in all of your skills plus improvements to some or all of your stats not to mention improved resilience to magic, disease, and poison. So I'm really just saying that the amount of additional learning falls well short of that.
MisterK:
--- Quote from: jdale on April 12, 2022, 12:32:57 PM ---While it's true that learning doesn't really stop, levels represent very broad development in all of your skills plus improvements to some or all of your stats not to mention improved resilience to magic, disease, and poison. So I'm really just saying that the amount of additional learning falls well short of that.
--- End quote ---
Agreed somewhat (not really for the "broad development in all of your skills", since skill development is by definition focused in RM) - but then, you are stuck with skills not improving at all, which is wrong as well.
This would lead to the option to have skill development without level increase, and level increase without skill development ? I used the former in a campaign (the characters were going through a very academic period, increasing a number of lore and language skills to the exclusion of everything else - I just gave out skill ranks without levels), but this is a significant departure from standard rules - even Training Packages in RMSS/FRP require spending DPs.
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