My friend Brandon and I have been putting lots of work into our game A Crisis Paradigm lately (we haven't posted on here since this thread however: http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=13631 ). We decided on a core system where characters roll a number of d10s equivalent to the sum of 4 traits and the top 4 numbers on are considered successes. Sometimes other die types will be rolled and the number of successes required varies with the difficulty of the action but the top 4 numbers being successes never changes. The player characters in the game have learned to recognize and utilize a mysterious presence called Crisis which allows them to rise above
human potential and improve their minds, bodies, and spirits very quickly.

To represent this kind of development and also normal human development we have come up with the Award system and the Style Tree, it would be great if we could get some feedback on these two systems of character growth.

The Award system represents the way normal people(non-Crisis users) develop and improve themselves. The GM comes up with awards that each character deserves and gives them out at the end of each session, awards can be anything that a character did frequently or learned alot
about during a session and often times are related to a particular attribute, talent, or skill. In further sessions the GM can give out the same award again or a completely different one with the idea in
mind that once a character gets the same award 3 times that award becomes a point added to the attribute, talent, or skill that the award is related to. It is up to the way the GM dristributes the
awards to determine how fast a trait develops, but it is meant to be a somewhat slow almost frustrating process, just like learning is in real life. Also notethat no trait can ever rise above 3 points using the Award system because 3 points represents the limits a normal human being has.

Player character's have the benefit of being Crisis users which allows them access to both the award system and the style tree. Player characters are given experience points after each session, experience is used to purchase styles selected from the style tree (go to http://www.vagrantsavior.net/styletree.gif to see a diagram of the style tree). All Crisis users start in the center of the tree with no styles and work their way to the outside by purchasing one of the first tier styles which grants you access to all of the second tier styles connected to it and so on until the fifth tier. The first tier is the most general; mind, body, and spirit. The lower, more general styles serve as proof of the status of being a Crisis user and grant access to the more specialized styles but have little or no benefit as far as game mechanics are concerned. The 3rd, 4th, and 5th tier styles grant characters improved attributes, talents, skills, and unique powers, abilities, or tricks that they can use by spending Crisis. Character traits can not be improved with experience points directly, they can only be spent to gain styles that improve your traits and other things. Styles will cost a small amount of experience to buy once but the 3rd, 4th and 5th tier styles can be improved up to 3 times which will cost a substantial amount of experience.

That is character advancement in a nutshell in Crisis Paradigm, any critiques and comments would be great.

CrisisKristov wrote: We decided on a core system where characters roll a number of d10s equivalent to the sum of 4 traits and the top 4 numbers on are considered successes. Sometimes other die types will be rolled and the number of successes required varies with the difficulty of the action but the top 4 numbers being successes never changes.

The player characters in the game have learned to recognize and utilize a mysterious presence called Crisis (...)

Thanks for your input. Here is some more info about those things.

It is the top 4 numbers on any die type, so yes 7,8,9,10 on a d10 and 3,4,5,6 on a d6 which makes smaller dice much better.

Crisis got its name because people often gain and use it during conflicts and dangerous, risky situations. Crisis is related to potential, dynamism and change but there is no one defininition of it because everyone learns to feel it and use it in a different way.

Player characters have do have some measure of influence over what awards they want, a player can communicate to the GM that they want their character to improve a certain stat and the GM will keep this in mind. Characters recieve the awards they deserve, if you really want your character to improve his/her strength it would be wise to have your character lift numerous heavey objects during play, etc.

As for the tree, it is pretty complicated but it follows a pattern (somewhat). You would never have to use it during play, only between sessions when spending experience but you would have to have an idea of how the styles you have work. The idea behind the size and complexity of the style tree was to allow for each character to be very unique and be as specialized or general as they want to be because they can take as many styles as they want from any part of the tree.

On the tree, I would suggest changing it to a straight horizontal or vertical layout, instead of the radial layout you have now. That would greatly improve readability, and make the separations between the tiers much clearer.

Is it possible to change your first-tier style?

Good call on the layout, I haven't thought about how to lay out the finished style tree, this is just kind of the rough draft.

There is never any need to change styles because you can buy them in any combination, you could buy all 3 of the first tier styles, or concentrate on working higher in one of them. You build your way up to a sweet gunslinging style in the fifth tier and still dabble in the mental and spiritual styles too. You will get enough xp to have multiple 5th tier styles fairly quickly, further developing one specific style will take quite a bit of time however.