40K, experience points systems and levelling up.

[YorkNecromancer]

I've just restarted playing 'Fallout 3' for the fourth time, and by Zeus it is a great game. A great, great game. In a related vein, I've played through 'Borderlands' twice, 'Borderlands 2' three times, 'Deus Ex: Human Revolution' four times...

I love levelling up in games.

Not just mechanical increases in strength/damage. That's fine and all, but it's whenever I unlock some new ability that lets me experience the game in an entirely different way, or makes me significantly more dangerous without being a simple '+10% damage' unlock. Something like when 'Deus Ex' gives you the antigrav base-jumping ability, or the capacity to move in perfect silence, for example; something whose direct combat usefulness is not 'IMMA WRECK ALL THE FACES!' immediately apparent.

40K has never had a good levelling up system.

This is not a suprise. It's designed for one-on-one battles, with campaigns having almost no hard rules beyond the vague 'craft a narrative' thing.

I think this is because a levelling up system would be hellishly hard to balance, if not actively impossible; at the end of the day, a levelled-up unit would be represented by little more than an increase in stats, and a concomitant increase in points on the tabletop. Not to mention everyone in 40K has one Wound. Kind of hard to level up that Guard blob squad when they were all brutally murdered by those three Death Company lunatics.

But just because something is difficult doesn't mean it should be discounted. 'Necromunda' and other discontinued Specialist Games managed it. Yes, they were tiny, but they show it can be done.

So, taking the assumption that it IS possible to craft an experience points/levelling up system, well: what would it look like? It has to avoid the obvious pitfalls of creating units that are utterly counter to fluff (so no T6, W3, 2+ Eldar Rangers, for example), while still leading to units that are notably more powerful than their non-levelled up equivelants.

It has to take into account that the games played may not be played in a narrative campaign (because those require serious time and commitment, and not everyone has time for that), but perhaps five or six games each between a group of friends.

Finally, it needs minimal, MINIMAL book-keeping. This isn't 'Necromunda'; everything has to be simple, easy-to-follow/explain to your opponent, and almost brutally streamlined.

What could the system be? How do you make a unit markedly different, yet neither broken, nor unfluffy? How do you allow a unit to unlock new tactics and strategies as they get better without a squad of Tactical Marines just turning into Sternguard Marines?

Ideas?

[Wolfshade]

But surely the tactical should end up as sternguard? After all what is a Sternguard, well just a veteran marine, and how does one become a veteran, well through battles.

From a fluff perspective it is quite hard after all we know veteran marines have been fighting over decades so probably in a normal campaign setting would recieve enough experiance to become veteran.

If playing a campaign, a simple way would be to re-use the old (4th or 5th campaign rules).

Another possible way is through a "prestige" style system, so throughout the campaign each squad gains or loses so many prestige points. (Points are gained for killing things, points are lost to replenish back to full strength, change weaponry etc.) Then once enough poitns have been accumilated various upgrades could be unlocked. Like granting of special rules or upgrades to some skills though as you say each unit/army would need to have a properly thoughout out list. So while a pathfinder increasing in T would be strange, and ork doing so wouldn't.

An easier way would be to do it on an army basis, this means that you don't need to worry about what each squad is doing, just what the net result is at the end of the game.

Of course for a streamlined path, each unit just upgrades with prestige points.

E.g. Scout -> Marine -> Veteran -> Captain -> Commander
Grot -> Boy -> Nobz -> Warboss

You could branch things out so a guardian could become one of the types of aspect warrior then progress down that line

e.g. Guardian -> Dark Reaper -> Exarch -> Maugan Ra -> Avatar

The prestige can be converted to points, so for 40pts you can upgrade from a normal marine to a veteran (+ wargear)

[Mad Cat]

4th edition and 5th I believe (although I never owned the big 5th ed rulebook) had a set of rules for making some of your units into veterans during some linked scenarios or a campaign. The bonuses were pritty mild and wouldn't unballance a game too much. I would not reccomend rules for making SM scouts into sternguard in 3 scenarios after they performed well in each of them. It will take years to get from a scout to a full marine and that wouldn't be in the scope of a campaign.

You can draw up a random chart that players are allowed to roll on for the units that did the best in a certain game they have just played. Each time a unit scores a kill point or achieves a secondary objective put a tick next to it on your roser. Assuming these units survive the game allow some of them to roll on the veteran chart and gain a small avantage. If your chart has plenty of 'null' results in it then you could roll once per 'tick'. If the chart is chock full of goodies then allow only the top scoring unit or two to roll on the chart.

These benefits can be kept until the unit is destroyed in a later scenario or has some other shame like breaking in combat or fleeing off table. If the unit takes more than 50% casualties in a game it could have a 50% change of loosing the veteran ability representing some models removed only being wounded or some replacements diluting the skill set so much the advantage is lost.


A few example bonuses could be:

1. Gain stealth, crusader, tank hunter, adamantine will, FC, move through cover etc. (watch out for some of the really powerful ones like rending)
2. reroll all to hit rolls on one turn per game.
3. reroll all saves of a 1 on one turn per game.
4. Count as scoring.
5. gain a free upgrade from the codex entry such as a mastercrafted power weapon on the sarge etc.
6. Put a disadvantage in representing wounds that hvent quite healed etc like -1 BS or -1 Ld or S&P etc.

[lattd]

Third had rules for experience and the experience upgrades where different for different types of units, so bikers could get skilled rider etc.

[Mr Mystery]

I'd like to see something tied into Warlord traits, to show further development of skills as a campaign continues.

Has a wider impact than just making an individual harder.

[-Tom-]

I'd like to see something tied into Warlord traits, to show further development of skills as a campaign continues.

Has a wider impact than just making an individual harder.

This would make sense, but I think there ought to be something for troops too. Just not too frequent a 'level up' for them... perhaps just 3 tiers; Basic - as purchased in codex, Battle-Hardened - which they'd need to survive a few battles for, and get 'XP' for doing something meaningful in those battles, rather than just popping up a level or two each time (as you might see of a ganger in Necromunda), and Elite as a top tier.

It would take the correct balancing between a roll to see if troops removed as causalities were 'dead' (whereupon you'd have to go back to codex purchased basic troops to keep the same unit in the army list), and the boundaries and XP needed to level up. I think each troop type would also need their own talent tree so they get fluffy abilities. Gaining +1A might be fine for Striking Scorpions for example, but not so fluffy for Rangers. There may well be a lot of thing in the BRB special rules section that would be relevant though.

To make it work outside of any set campaign though, you'd also have to have some way to tot up the 'Experience' value of your list too, so you could arrange to have a 5000pt game, where 5000pts is now the combined total of army cost + XP they have, while also finding balance between codex cost, and XP - i.e. is 100XP points better or worse than 100pt's worth of extra basic troops.

I fancy the idea of making skill trees for my own force, to play in a friendly campaign, but I wouldn't like to be in a position of sending it out to the masses for critique on how unbalanced it would be in <x beardy scenario>.

[Mr Mystery]

For individual units, perhaps some kind of USR boost for excelling in their standard role?

It's always been a bugbear of mine in games which have levelling up (including TTRPG and MMORPG etc) that you can level up a skill you simply haven't practiced before, like the social character who has never, ever thrown a punch, quietly levelling up their combat prowess. So for this purpose, link it to stuff the unit is expected to do (so for Devastators/Havocs, a way to gain split fire?)

[Arkhan Land]

Third had rules for experience and the experience upgrades where different for different types of units, so bikers could get skilled rider etc.

third editions rules were rather cool but a little tedious, i only gave it a try a few times. each unit got 100 points of xp for doing things like, winning assaults/surviving/claiming objectives/etc with modifiers for things like lost combats or adding in reinforcment models eventually getting to the point where at 1000 you could get a battle honor which was rolled for on a table and were mostly decent

I'd like to see something tied into Warlord traits, to show further development of skills as a campaign continues.

Has a wider impact than just making an individual harder.

I think in a campaign there should be the ability to add a warlord trait each turn to the one from last, with perhaps a little chance thrown in: when you roll a trait you already have you cannot re-roll you simply dont get the extra trait for that turn