People have had some good comments already, but I have a couple of questions. First, how experienced do you imagine that they need to be? Keep in mind that the way the game is designed, even a starting character can make a "severe impact." Just less reliably. So just how potent do you want characters to be? What should their highest abilities max out at? In descriptive terms, if not nummerical.
> That's fine, I don't mind that, but I'm not sure how to deal with it in
>the char gen process.
>I intend to steal a bit of the Advanced Experience rules, obviously, but I
>don't think
>having them just make characters by the normal rules and then adding 15
>across the
>board makes much sense. I think they might end up a bit too narrow then.
This is a confusing statement. If the starting characters aren't too narrow, then how can adding across the board make them too narrow?
Anyhow, I think that giving out levels of keywords separately from ability levels is the best way to make for broad expansion of the character. Also the player has to choose between keywords, meaning that you tend to get some variation in levels of keywords and the sub abilities (as opposed to the 15 across the board which ends up with lots of abilities at the same levels).
>Should I perhaps give them each the option of a second occupation? Give
>them some
>extra points/slots?
Extra points end up making for narrower characters as players will tend to stack them up. Usually this is avoided by having a maximum number of points spendable on one stat. Which establishes that maximum ability level that I asked about above. That said, this still tends to end up with a few high abilities, rather than broad increases.
>I've toyed with the idea of having them make characters as normal, bumping
>up the
>ranks a bit, and then giving them each 10 points for a "create as you go"
>bonus where
>they can fill things in as they realize a more experienced character should
>have things.
10 points total? That's very little. Again, just how talented do you want them to be? Remember that a master has an ability level of 1W2, and a master's master 1W3. Heroes have 1W4. Or so.
Mike
Powered by hypermail