Career Lengths

[tglassy]

Hello!

I'm about to start DMing the starter kit adventure for my group to introduce them to W.O.I.N. I've got a setting I've been wanting to run a campaign in, and I feel that O.L.D. will be perfect for it. Originally, I was going to use 5e, and have them advance a year or so after every level, so there'd be ample downtime. But O.L.D. does that already, with the years in each career.

But that begs a question. When playing a Grand Elf, or any long lived race, you have to increase the number of years to by a certain amount for each career. But...that doesn't make much sense, in game, if you're playing the same group. If you've got a Human playing with a Grand Elf, and they reach the next grade at the same time and wish to spend their XP to do so, then the Human adds 1d6 years, while the Grand Elf adds 1d6*5.

But then they both continue the campaign as normal, with the human only, say, 4 years older, while the Grand Elf has aged 20 years.

Is that how it's supposed to be, or are the years listed on each career only applicable during character creation? I like the idea of the GM rolling a d6 when they all go to the next grade to see how many years have passed, as the campaign I'm planning is essentially a sandbox with the party 'leveling up' when the adventure ends, then fast-forwarding and giving lots of downtime before the next adventure.

There's also the whole thing where you can spend XP to advance a grade. The issue I'm seeing is where one PC decides to purchase a bunch of skills or exploits while another decides to save up and continually advance in grade. Does this wind up being an issue? I'm considering ruling that Grades can only be advanced through time, at the end of each adventure, and XP can therefore be used as they want to train and upgrade, but I'm not sure if that will be balanced, either.

I can easily make my own rulings here, but I wanted to get some advice before doing so.

 

[Morrus]

So the elf would use XP rather than years. Typically the time is mainly used during character creation (though you can use it between adventures).

The issue I'm seeing is where one PC decides to purchase a bunch of skills or exploits while another decides to save up and continually advance in grade. Does this wind up being an issue?

I've never seen anybody do that continually. The PC not gaining grades will quickly realise they're falling behind and change their ways!

 

[MacD]

For my running campaigns I changed the XP-rules a little bit;
I´ve been also afraid to split the party - power level as I have some players that use open skill systems to flavour their char and some players that go full progression. Also I dislike the idea to offer an option to flavour a character with skills but at the cost of a slower progression.

I only give out very little XP but they cannot use it for careers, only skills, attributes and exploits.
At campaign capstones everyone gets a free career.

That way every character is on the same level and can use XP for flavour as they like without regrets. My players like it.

Also I bypass the need to do the math for earned XP and simply give 2-4 XP per session depending on whatever happened.