How many XP's for NPC's to simulate their adventuring careers?

[dean day]

Question for you guys, how much XP would you give NPC's in your campaign, both heroes and villains to simulate that they started off as 350 point characters but they are now two, five, ten, twenty years on in their careers?

Would it be a range? what would be your maximum?

 

I am trying to simulate and build various NPC's of various experience levels and I want to simulate such xp in as logical way as possible.

 

Would it be anything from 10-50 points a year depending on the NPC? how would you and do you update long running NPC's in your campaign?

 

Dean 

[LoneWolf]

When writing up an NPC I don’t bother about points.  I give the character what I want them to including the disadvantages they should have and give a NPC bonus to cover the rest.   Points for PC are more to balance them against each other than anything else.  When writing up an NPC look at what you are giving them.  If it is too powerful tone it down, if it is not powerful enough boost it up. 

 

The thing to keep in mind about the Hero System is that unlike a lot of other systems the characters effectiveness does not go up as rapidly as the points go up.  I can have a 500 point character whose attacks are not any more powerful than a 350 point character.  I can also have a 250 point character whose attacks are more powerful than a 500 point character.  Some things are also more expensive than others.  It takes very few points to build a world class scientist, but a competent martial artist is more expensive. 

 

The growth rate of characters in the Hero System is a lot different than other systems.  In most other systems the characters start out incredibly weak and become incredibly powerful by the end of the game.  In the Hero System characters start out powerful and usually become more versatile.  They do grow in power, but not as much as other systems.  This means you don’t need to increase the power of their foes.   In a system like Pathfinder the foes the character fights at the beginning of the campaign are no match for the character at high level.  In the Hero System that is often not the case.  A 4d6 KA is dangerous to most characters, especially prior to 6th edition. 

[Christopher R Taylor]

Right, I don't care about point values of enemies for the PCs except in terms of relative power.  I don't balance NPCs, I build them to what I want them to be.  Maybe they're weaker, maybe they are stronger.  Its just a matter of what challenge and the role that NPC has in the scenario.

[dean day]

No what I was getting at was, If i wanted to simulate slow growth on a character that has been active x amount of years and spend those XP at the end of each year active what ranges would be appropriate?

 

Lets just say for example we have a spider-man type young hero that's been active four years, if I wanted to spend some xp for him at the end of each year how much would be appropriate in a range?

[LoneWolf]

You are kind of doing it backwards.  Instead of figuring out what the character learned you are focusing on XP.  That does not work well because some things that take a long time to learn are dirt cheap, but other things that can be learned quickly cost a lot of points.  For example, it cost 5 points or less for a 14 or less knowledge skill which would be the equivalent to a PHD.  For the same cost I can add a martial kick (offense strike) to my martial art.  It does not take 8 years for an experienced martial artist to learn each maneuver.  

 

The XP system is designed to keep allow players to grow their character at about the same rate.  It is designed as a player reward system, not as a system to logically advance NPCs.  You get rewarded for things like role playing and being clever.  It is an artificial game construction to keep the players interested in the game. 

 

Instead of figuring out a point total and spending it figure out what the character has been studying and give them the appropriate skill/power.  For the most part unless a character has a radiation accident or were not fully grown when the campaign started they don’t change much physically.  So, what XP is really representing is what the character learned.  Don’t worry about how much it costs just give the NPC what it should have gained. 

 

The answer to your question is there is no set rate for how much XP to give per year.  
 

[Sketchpad]

7 hours ago, dean day said:

No what I was getting at was, If i wanted to simulate slow growth on a character that has been active x amount of years and spend those XP at the end of each year active what ranges would be appropriate?

 

Lets just say for example we have a spider-man type young hero that's been active four years, if I wanted to spend some xp for him at the end of each year how much would be appropriate in a range?

 

If I understand the question correctly, you're looking to enhance NPCs after X amount of time has passed in the game? I tend to give NPCs some XP as needed. If a starting villain needs to be bumped a bit when they return, I give them what they need to help the concept. So, using the same example, if the young Spider-Dude, as an NPC, needs to be mildly experience Spider-Dude, I would bump him up by looking at what he needs to be. So maybe he originally had an OCV of 6. I may increase that up a few ranks, or even give him some levels to show more experience. The same could be about his Web Tricks powers. Maybe a few raised d6s, or maybe he learned some new tricks. 

It's always better to envision what the character should be, and how their stats reflect that.

[Scott Ruggels]

Experienced champions, characters, tend to learn more and more skills and knowledges. So the difference between a young Spider-Man, and an older Spider-Man, may be a few levels in combat, and a knowledge skill about the sinister six. He may also have up his performance skill for better one liners. The funny thing about Peter Parker is that he was not so much a nerd, as he was kind of a jerk before uncle Ben died, and after he was a jerk only to his enemies. For experience, you may just want to poke around with the background/life paths for your NPCs. As a poster above said, and this is very true, a champions character starts off powerful, and becomes more versatile, with experience.

[greypaladin_01]

Are you actually starting with a fully build 350 pt character and then trying to increase them after?   or is this all theory craft and nothing is built yet?

 

If trying to grow a pre-made character, then what everyone suggests would be about right.  Increase a few skills a point or two, maybe add one or two 11- level skills to reflect new skills learned over the years.   As far as powers and abilities, decide if their powers should grow or just refine.   Grow:  add a DC or 2,  Refine:  add a version of ability that is 1/2 END or maybe a Flash ability for a Blaster to show learning how to make a low-power but high-brightness variant of the power.

If creating everything from scratch anyway... just build the at what you feel fits the role of the character and was seems reasonable for the time spend actve.  XP gains are going to be extremely variable from GM to GM and campaign, so it is hard to say that 1 year = X xps gained.  

[Tech]

I don't give XP to NPCs or villains, and I have very few NPC heroes.  As a campaign goes on, I check to see if the villain has become less effective, simply because the heroes are getting more experienced and powerful. If it's needed, then I may revise the villain a little to make him a little more in line with the concept effectiveness, i.e, more powerful, but that's about it.

[GDShore]

I don't give XP's to the NPC's, like most I build what I need for the moment however I do give prior to game, experience. Up to 18 nothing, beyond 18, 3 points per year which have to be spent on skills and abilities not powers. I don't like the idea of everyone being 18, or how suddenly someone at 45 suddenly becoming a crime fighter out of the blue with no life skills. 

[Cloppy Clip]

Other people have said as much, but I think it bears repeating that points in HERO don't represent a character's power. This is something that tripped me up when I started with the game.

 

Instead, the ability guidelines you set (examples in 6th edition are on page 35) decide how effective characters will be, and as long as everybody sticks to those then you could have characters with completely different points totals that still played together just fine. The points aren't here to balance characters, but to get you thinking about what matters for your character concept, and to let people customise their characters freely from the same starting point.

 

So for villains, it's more reasonable to compare their abilities like CV, DC, etc, to the players', and work out how dangerous you want them to be. A villain built on fewer points than the players could be a truly threatening foe if all of their points are put into combat abilities, while one with heavy investment in skills might be a pushover despite having twice as many or more points.

 

If you still want to use points as a measure of how experienced an NPC is, I still wouldn't assign a fixed number per year spent active. After all, experience can vary in quality depending on what you're doing. A character who spent six months fighting wave after wave of supervillains would come out the other end with more experience points than one who spent ten years rearing cattle in Nebraska (at least in most cases).

 

When designing NPCs with a lot of experience, then, I'd think about what those experiences were in their career. If they've had a lot of useful encounters to learn from then that would justify picking up a lot of skills and variations for their powers, which would bump up the point total. As long as you can justify each purchase based on their backstory, the sky's the limit since you're building a character to reflect a concept instead of to within a points budget.

 

Sorry, that's a bit long-winded, but hopefully something in there can be of use!