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Experience And Advancement

As characters go through life, they become more proficient at their specialisations, and may move into new areas of society. This is represented in the careers system and Experience points.

Experience points are gained by PCs for performing appropriate in-character actions. The exact number awarded for any particular activity is left to the GM’s discretion, but over a reasonable-length session, in which combat, action and interaction are evenly spread, PCs who act appropriately to the situations presented should gain around 100 Experience points.

PCs who do very little to help the game work, clearly behave out of character or simply don’t try anything interesting will earn fewer, in the region of 60-90 points.

PCs who hold the party together, solve every problem and act exactly as the character would do in the given situations, deserve more Experience points, in the region of 110-130 points.

Should the GM wish to accelerate or decelerate PC advancement, he or she should alter the Experience point awards appropriately.

There is a tendency amongst roleplayers, particularly those used to the more traditional, heroic roleplaying systems, to award Experience points based on the number of creatures killed.

This is fine, if the PCs are playing sociopathic killers, and the GM wants players to get into the frame of mind where "We hit it, huzzah!" is an appropriate response to every bar room insult, surly law enforcement official, or encounter in the wilderness.

However, the practice also penalises PCs less inclined towards violence – academics, most criminals, menials… in fact, most characters outside of the Military careers list. While the combat monster characters are blasting their way through problems, more cerebral or skilled characters are floundering at the back.

(As an aside, should the GM realise that certain PCs are responding to situations with unnecessary violence, bring in the realism – violence begets violence, and more importantly, legal retribution.)

To prevent combat characters gaining an unfair advantage, the GM should award Experience for appropriate behaviour. If a PC is a soldier, then killing things within a legal framework, or as self defence may earn reasonable Experience rewards. If the PC’s a seaman, outrunning pirates and protecting a cargo will gain more Experience than slowing down and shooting it out. A burglar shouldn’t gain a soldier’s Experience-per-kill for murdering a householder during a botched burglary. The PC screwed up badly, and doesn’t deserve anything.

Conversely, pigeonholing PCs so that they can only gain Experience by performing actions expected by their career or personality is a bad thing. If a character does something that is unexpected, but understandable in the circumstances, then they should receive a few Experience points, albeit not many as if the action were typical.

Most GMs develop their own strategy for issuing Experience points, nestled comfortably between extremes.

Characters can spend Experience points to gain the following advances:

The advances box on your career chart shows the number of times a characteristic can be increased while pursuing that career. There is no easy way of checking back on how many advances a PC has taken, so it is important that the Advances Taken box on the character sheet be kept scrupulously up to date. The number of advances available for any characteristic is not cumulative, i.e. a PC that completes a career that allowed two advances for WS and then moves into a career allowing four WS advances now has the option of only two more advances on that characteristic.

If the same PC were later to enter a career allowing three WS advances, it would simply mean that no additional WS advances were allowed to be taken, since the PC has already taken four. And no, the PC’s WS score would not go down. Once a characteristic has been boosted, it stays boosted (barring injuries, illness and other debilitating conditions).

When a PC pays for a characteristic advance, the characteristic in question is increased by D10 points.

These are abilities that come to a character throughout their time spent in a particular career. It can be assumed that characters spend time between adventures training with weapons, browsing in libraries, tinkering in laboratories, whatever their specialisation is.

This means that the abilities available to their current career may be taken at a cost of 100 Experience points, and (unless the GM decrees it necessary) no special activities are required to earn them.

When entering a Basic career from another career, there may be abilities with a percentage probability of the character having them. These percentages are solely for the use of PCs entering their starting career, they do not apply to PCs on their second or subsequent career, who may always buy the abilities in question at the usual 100 Experience points each.

Note that buying percentage abilities is not compulsory and the character may complete the career without doing so.

PCs can take abilities not normally available to their current career. However, this can only be done if the GM agrees that the PC has experienced situations relevant to the ability, or has had time to study it, and at an increased cost of 200 Experience points.

The purchasing of non-career abilities is not intended to be an expensive way of buying hard-to-find, yet incredibly useful, abilities. It is a GM’s way of rewarding a player for going beyond what their character would normally be trained in. A character should have at least attempted to perform actions related to the career. For example, a character that has negotiated successfully with an ork warband in their own language may be allowed to learn Speak Alien Language – Ork.

PCs may buy new psychic powers by expending the appropriate number of Experience points.

See the Psychic Powers section for more details.

There are four ways to change career. Three of them involve Experience points, and the fourth isn’t very nice.

1. Taking a Career Exit involves leaving your previous career behind and starting a new, often related, career in a similar field. This costs 100 Experience points.

Career Exits can only be taken after the character has obtained all of the abilities specified in their current career description, and has made at least an effort to collect all the appropriate equipment.

Available Career Exits are specified in the description of a character’s current career. From time-to-time the GM

may allow additional Career Exits, or rule out existing ones, depending on the circumstances.

2. If none of the given Career Exits catch your eye, or you wish your character to change the direction of their life, you may choose any career from the Basic Career Table for your current Career Class. This is known as Breaking A Career and can be done at any time during a career – it isn’t necessary to have all the special abilities or equipment associated with the career being broken. Breaking Careers costs 100 Experience points, and may require the GM’s approval – not every intelligence analyst can become a Space Marine cadet.

3. More drastic than simply breaking career to start a career in the same Career Class that a character was in before, you can spend 200 Experience points to roll on a different Basic Careers Table. For example, a PC who was currently a Freelancer could choose to join the Military. This is more expensive than a normal career change, but is useful if a character ever becomes stuck in a rut and can’t otherwise see a way of getting out.

4. The fourth, and often the nastiest, way to change career is the GM enforced career change. A hitman who is press-ganged into the Imperial Navy will be forced to change career to become an Imperial Navy Rating. No Experience points are spent in order to effect this change, as it’s unlikely that the character ever aspired to take up the next career.

Should there be any untaken advances for the previous career (normally only from enforced career changes or broken careers), they are deleted from the Advance Scheme row of the character sheet. They may not be taken unless the previous career is re-entered.

Note that the Advances Taken row is left as it is. Advances Taken are never crossed off.

The Advance Scheme for the new career is written in place of the old one.

Update the Career Class, Current Career, Career Path and Career Exits boxes on the character sheet.

Unlike in a PC’s starting career, the abilities and equipment for later careers are not gained for free. Abilities must be paid for with Experience points (or implanted using discipulus chips), while equipment can be found or bought over the course of adventures. Some careers (normally Military ones) will issue characters with the necessary equipment, but most of the time it is left up to the PCs.

Note that the equipment listed in the careers is recommended, but not necessarily compulsory. Sure, a flak armour vest might be important for surviving as a mercenary, but is it really vital to being a mercenary?

Good roleplayers will often come up with some kind of story for why or how their character came to be in the new career. This could be as dramatic as an Imperial Guard – Trooper murdering his sergeant and becoming a Rebel – Heretic, or as mundane as a Menial – Clericus taking an examination and being promoted to Menial – Civil Logistician.

Once the character sheet is updated, the character is ready to proceed on their new career and the player is ready to start earning the Experience points to work towards the next one.