Editing FANGS: Character Development

[[Category:FANGS]]
[[Category:Character Development]]
{{Template:FANGSHeader}}

This section discussed how your character develops and advances over time with experience. 

==Increasing Skills==

Most skills are relatively easy to learn in the beginning if you can find a teacher -- yet true mastery takes much time and effort. 

There are three ways to increase a skill: Experience, Training, and Practice & Study. 

==Experience Check==

Any time your character uses a skill multiple times in a life-threatening or a stressful competitive situation, whether or not he failed or succeeded in his skill, at GM's discretion he has a chance to have learned something that will increase his skill. 

In addition, each time your character succeeds with a Special or Critical skill roll, he may have earned a Skill Mark at GM's discretion, which makes it more likely that he can increase his skill. You may never have more then one Skill Mark in a single skill, and it is erased once it is used in a Experience Check. 

After your character returns home and has a chance to 'ponder' on his experiences, you can check to see if he has learned anything. This is called an Experience Check. 

In order to determine if he has learned anything you roll as if for a Skill Check, and '''subtract''' 1 for a Skill Mark, and if he '''fails''', you may add +1 to his skill. Note that this means that a character with a high skill has more difficult time increasing the skill. 

Example: In his latest adventure, Gru climbed a tree to avoid a bear. During that climb Gru had a Special which the GM allowed as a Skill Mark. Returning home, he takes time to ponder on his experience, and then does a Experience Check against his Climb skill of 9. He rolls an 11, which added to his skill of 9 means that he would have succeeded in a Skill Check, but in this case it means he fails his Experience Check. However, his Skill Mark allows him to subtract 1 from his roll making it 19, thus Gru succeeds in learning from his experience. His Skill Mark is erased because it has been used in a skill gain. 

If during an Experience Check the roll is a '''fumble''', you may add +2 to the characters skill (or max +1 if his skill is 20 or higher.) This is the only way someone can increase their skill to be greater than 20. As even someone with a skill of 20 or above can fumble with two 20's, it is slimly possible even for a character with a 20 skill or greater to increase his skill (one quarter of 1% chance.) 

Example: Returning home after using his Jump skill of 9 at least once during an adventure, he takes the time to ponder on his experience. Rolling a 2 (a successful Experience Check) means that Gru has learned at least a +1 to his skill from his experience. However, as this is a possible Fumble (a skill of 0-9 Fumbles on a 1 or 2), he rolls again to see if this is a Fumble. His second roll is 11, which means that with his skill of 9 he would succeeds with his Skill Check, thus Gru does not learn the additional +1 that a Fumble would have allowed. If Gru had a Skill Mark in his Jump skill, which would have subtracted 1 from his roll, he would have failed in his Skill Check (thus succeeded in his Experience Check) and earn the fumble and thus +2 to his skill. 

'''Knowledge Skills''' -- It may seem to not make sense that a knowledge based skill increases with experience. However, the best way to really describe what happens is that when your character uses a knowledge skill in a stressful situation it allows him to recall similar knowledge better in other stressful situations. Also, he may gain an insight or integration with other information that makes this knowledge skill better than just from book learning. 

==Training Skills==

While your character is at home he can pay to have another character train him in a skill. The tutor must have at least half again your character's skill that you wish to train in (thus it is difficult to train past a skill of 13 without finding someone with a higher skill than 20 to teach you!) The character must spend the number of days (with at least 4 hours a day) that he has in the skill with the tutor. At the end of your character's training, you may add +1 to his skill. Your character can train in multiple skills at the same time, but still has to spend the same number of total hours before learning the skill. 

If during the time of his training your character earned a Skill Mark in that skill '''outside''' of training (i.e., in a life-threatening or stressful competitive experience), he may use that Skill Mark to gain an additional +1 skill at the end of the training, and then must erase the Skill Mark. 

Example: Gru decides to take some Jump training since he failed so miserably with his jump during his adventures (his skill is 9). Finding a tutor was difficult, but he finally found a tutor with an 15 skill in Jump (Gru wants to learn his Jump skill up to 10, half again of 10 is 15). After training for 9 days Gru gets to add 1 to his skill making it 10. However, Gru's teacher can teach him no more (for if Gru wants to learn skill 11, half again 11 is 16-1/2, rounded up is 17.)

==Practice & Study==

Once your character's skill is at least 5, he can practice or study to increase his skill. Your character must spend two times the number of days (also at 4 hours per day) that he currently has in the skill working on the skill. At the end of your character's training you do an Experience Check. You roll his skill, and if he '''fails''' his Skill Check then he succeeds in his Experience Check and you may add +1 to his skill, or if he '''fumbles''' his Skill Check, you may add +2 to his skill (but to no higher than 16.) Your character may not practice if his skill is 15 or greater -- only worldly experience can give your character true mastery of a skill. 

Gru decides to practice his Mace skill of 11. He practices for 22 days for at least 4 hours a day, and at the end of this period must make an Experience Check (fail his Skill Check) by rolling between 1 and 8, in order to increase his skill. He rolls an 8, just barely enough to earn +1 to his skill. 

If during the time of his training your character earned a Skill Mark in that skill '''outside''' of practice and study (i.e., in a life-threatening or stressful competitive experience), you may use that Skill Mark to avoid the Experience Check, and just give your character an automatic +1 in the skill. Then erase the Skill Mark. 

==Learning a New Skill==

In order to learn a new skill, your character must find a teacher. Your character learns a new skill the same way that he trains to increase an existing skill, except that he must train with his teacher for a minimum of 4 days (for at least 4 hours per day) before rolling to learn if he can increase the skill. 

'''No Aptitude''' -- If the character rolls a natural 20 at the end of his training (not good in this instance!) he does not have the aptitude to learn this skill, and may never attempt it again! 

==Derived Skills==

At the GM's option, a new skill derivative from an existing skill can start at a fixed value after training. 

For instance, Gru decides he wants to learn the specific skill of Climbing Walls. Finding a teacher, he trains the number of hours based on his ordinary Climb skill. If he succeeds in learning this new skill, the GM chooses to assign the initial Climb Walls skill to be Gru's existing Climb skill -4. 

Once a derived skill is split from its original, it is advanced separately from the initial skill. Gru cannot increase both his Climb skill and his Climb Walls skill at the same time, they now must be trained separately. 

==Increasing a Characteristic==

It is possible to increase any Characteristic, even such characteristics as IN and SZ. The maximum you can increase a Characteristic is one-third (rounding any fractions up) of your character's original Characteristic, up to the human maximum of 20 (see the appendix on character races? for more information on limits for non-human characters.) 

To increase a Characteristic, your character must find a school that teaches that special discipline. A military academy or gym may be able to train your character to increase his ST or CO, or help 'bulk up' his SZ (of course, this would be an increase in weight, not height.) A thieves guild or circus school may be able to teach him to increase his AG. An university may be able to teach him to increase his IN. A monastery, mage's coven, or psychic's guild can train him to increase his PW. A bardic college or finishing school may be able to teach him to increase his AP. 

Increasing a Characteristic is very expensive. Your character must devote all of his efforts with a master (someone who has maxed out his own Characteristic with training.) He must train for his current Characteristic in character points in '''weeks''', at least 4 hours a day. The minimum time is the same even if training a Characteristic under 10. This training period can be interrupted by things like adventures. However, a period of inactivity, such as spell learning with no concurrent training, or bed rest after taking damage, negates all progress and the training must be started over. After this period you must roll to '''fail''' his Characteristic roll to gain +1 to his Characteristic. If he '''Fumbles''' the roll, you can add +2 to his Characteristic (but not beyond human maximum of 20, nor more than 1/3 more than the original Characteristic. 

:Example: ''Gru decides he is sick of all the people kidding him on his low IN of 7, so he enrolls in a university (he probably threatened someone to get in.) After studying hard for for 15 (IN 7 = 25 character points, IN 9 equals 10 Character points) weeks, he gets the opportunity to roll to see if his IN has increased. He rolls a 15, which added to his IN of 7 is 21, thus he doesn't increase his IN. He studies for another 15 weeks, and rolls a 3 which added to his IN of 7 is less then 20, thus his IN is now increased to 8.''

Gru decides to continue studying for 5 weeks (IN 8 = 10 character points, IN 9 = 5 character points), after which he has to roll under a 12. He rolls a fumble (2 followed by a 5) and thus now adds 2 to his IN to make it 10. He can no longer study to increase his IN because it would give him more than one third over his original IN. (7 divided by 3 rounded up is 3, thus Gru's maximum IN is 7 + 3 = 10.)

==Adding Advantages==

It is conceivable that a character might gain the benefit of one of the Advantages he did not start with during the course of his adventures. Some Advantages, such as Ambidexterity and Magic Talent are inborn. The character either has them at the start, or it takes a miracle (not impossible) to gain them later. 

Other Advantages, such as a good reputation or Wealth, can just be the rewards of an adventuring campaign. Some of these benefits are just aspects of a continuing career, but a GM might want to make a point of the character gaining such a benefit and have the player mark it on the character sheet, at no cost aside from whatever the character went through to get to that point. 

Advantages such as two-weapon work are trainable, if the player character runs into someone with the ability. No points are needed to "pay" for the Advantage, just the approval of the GM. Other abilities like Night Vision might be gained through the use of magical artifacts, or spells.


==Measuring Advancement==

(optional rule)

After a character has made several advances in skills, either through experience or training, it is often hard to assess the character’s actual experience status vis a vis other characters. If Vince has made every experience roll and has a total of +30 in advances in various skills, and Rawn has been in the same party, gone through the same adventures, but his player has not made the rolls, there is a clear difference in their abilities, but there is no real way to track-at-a-glance which has profited most from experience and training and where a GM may need to make adjustments to keep the characters relatively even.

The answer to this question is Character Points. Every time a character makes a skill advance or otherwise gets better, add the appropriate # of points to the character’s starting Character Points.

:Example: ''Gru was built with 100 character points. In the course of his first year of adventuring, he gains three increases in Mace, four in Sword, two in Climb, one in Jump, five in Sword Parry, and increases his IN from 7 to 8. This is a total of 15 Skill increases (each of which would have been a 1 point in Character Creation) and increasing the cost of his IN from -20 to -10. This is a total gain of 25 Character Points (Gru now looks like a character built with 125 Character points). Gru’s player changes his Character Creation Points from 100 to 125.''
:''Of course, the player should be making these increases in Creation Points as Gru gets the increases, to keep a running record of Gru’s steady progress and to be able to compare Gru’s abilities to his compatriots at any time. Also, with the constant addition and erasure of skill checks on a character sheet, it is hard to remember whether a character started with a particular skill total or gained some of it through experience or training.''

In short, a player should increase the character’s Creation Point total for the following events:

<table border=1 cellspacing=1 cellpadding=3>
<tr>
<td style="background:#9CC;">'''Event'''</td>
<td style="background:#9CC;">'''Increase'''</td>
<td style="background:#9CC;">'''Notes'''</td></tr>
<tr>
<td style="background:FFF;">Increase of a Skill</td>
<td style="background:FFF;">+1</td>
<td style="background:FFF;">Experience or Training. If for some special situation the gain is two points, then two (2) new Creation Points are recorded.</td></tr>
<tr>
<td style="background:#FFC;">Addition of a Spell (Power)</td>
<td style="background:#FFC;">+1</td>
<td style="background:#FFC;">Each new spell (or in other genre games like superheroes – power) is a skill and would cost a point if acquired at the start. For games where powers or spells may be worth more than a point, the appropriate # of points should be added to the Creation Points.</td></tr>
<tr>
<td style="background:FFF;">Increase of Characteristics</td>
<td style="background:FFF;">Points = to those needed to gain the characteristic raise.</td>
<td style="background:FFF;">So if a characteristic goes from 11 to 12, the Creation Points addition is 5. If from 15 to 16, the addition is 50.</td></tr>
<tr>
<td style="background:#FFC;">Advantage or Disadvantage</td>
<td style="background:#FFC;">Points = to mirror the effect of the advantage or Disadvantage.</td>
<td style="background:#FFC;">Advantages and Disadvantages gained through the play of the game should be recorded to make sure the relative abilities of the characters are fully covered.</td></tr>
</table>

'''NOTE:''' This is NOT buying characteristics and skills with experience points. Experience is, in effect, buying the points, which are just used to compare the relative competencies of the characters.

GMs who find that some player characters have fallen gravely behind their compatriots may assign automatic increases in skills or characteristics to allow the player characters to achieve parity, signified by increasing the Character Point count.

Characters who have the same Character Point count are not guaranteed to be equal. What those points can be spent on is too varied for that to be true. But they should be closer than they would be otherwise.