>Ask yourself how many games or sessions or game years you will play between the runts starting out and the glorious heroes ascending to the adulation of the masses or whatever the target is. Divide the number of HP needed to achieve adulation worthyness by number of games/sessions/years and give that many HP each game/session/year. This assumes you dont go with a saga system but just give out HP and let the players spend it as normal.
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This is pretty close to how I handle it. I decided that my game (in the
long haul) will go from 1621 to somewhere around 1655. The PCs will
start at the standard beginning level for characters and progress to
around 10w4 in their best ability. I decided to keep things simple and
assume a steady rate of progression, which comes to about two ability
points improvement per game year. With this in mind I imposed a ceiling
on ability ratings that increases by two points per game year. The
players can spend their HP however they want as long as it doesn't
exceed the ceiling.
I also use the saga system from HeroQuest - modified by saying that while raising a keyword will lift all abilities under that keyword equally, the ceiling still applies. Thus if the ceiling is 10w2 and you have a Spear Combat ability of 10w2 then raising your warrior keyword will not give you a Spear Combat of 11w2 because you are already at the limit. If you raise the keyword anyway, the benefit for Spear Combat is simply lost. The ability doesn't automatically jump up when the calendar rolls over to the next year and the ceiling increases. This rule avoids confusion because players don't need to keep track of "banked" ability points.
This system has worked just fine in our game. The players have not complained and I have a game that won't get too wild too soon. Plus its easy to administer, which is nice for a lazy guy like me. In a perfect world I would not have a hard ceiling. I would set the ceiling based on what seemed logical at the time.
~Kevin McD
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