III. Weighing Priorities
Different skills will advance faster than others, those being the ones with lower DP costs. The scale can be set two different ways: either 1 tick for everything and the total required is variable per skill, or the total required is static(say, 200) and more primary skills get more than 1 tick per use. Since I do characters on Excel, I decided to keep it as simple as possible for my players, and set tick-gaining as standard and have Excel compute the required number of ticks.
III. A. DP Costs
?Greater than?( > ) will represent a faster developing skill, and so have less required ticks for the next rank, all other factors being equal.
a/b/c(where a=c) > a/b/c(where a<c) > a/b > a
a > b(when a > b, duh.)
Example: 3/3/3 > 3/4/4 > 3/7 > 3 > 4
Looking at ?3/7 > 3? more closely, I figure either skill can gain 2 ranks over 2 levels by spending 6 DP, but only the first can get 2 ranks in one level, even if it does cost 10 DP. Standard RM rules wouldn?t even allow the later to gain 2 ranks, and an option allows it at the cost of 3/20 or 3/25, I don?t remember.
III. B. Frequency of Possible Use
This section ignores abusers of the system; they can be handled via in-game affects like being tired or negative NPC interaction. (How would you treat someone who was constantly Seducing or Sprinting everywhere?)
Some skills can be used at the drop of a hat. Others rarely have opportunities arise. While that is okay for some skills, for the fun of the game some skills should advance quicker than their DP cost would suggest. Others will need to be delayed so that levels do not happen too quickly. (ES players are familiar with how often Athletics goes up when you run everywhere.) For examples, General Perception is used constantly, where as Advertising doesn?t happen all that much. I don?t want everyone gaining 2-3 ranks in General Perception constantly, and I don?t want it to take 10 lvls for one rank of Advertising.
For simplicity?s sake, skills are described as either frequent, average, or uncommon usage.
III. C. Skill Types
Granted, part of III.B. depends on the type of game run; a game heavy in intrigue and city-based may have many more opportunities for Advertising, Falsification, and Administration than my games. And I would suggest that anytime you are developing a new mechanic you may want to track your data with more divisions than you initially think necessary. Therefore I am classifying skills as Combat, Hits, Academic, Applied, Magical, or Athletic. Athletic are those that are mostly physical; repetition alone will improve the skill. Sprinting, Distance Running, and Tumbling are good representatives. Academic skills are those purely based on reason and/or recall. Ex: any Lore. Applied are those skill which more obviously need both instruction and execution to improve. Wood Crafting, Athletic Games, Tactics fall into that group. The groups Combat, Hits, and Magical are just to pay those types of skills more close attention and possibly treat them differently.
