Is there a game where there's no XP or levels and you raise all skills by actually USING them like in Skyrim, and you can basically grind them to...

Is there a game where there's no XP or levels and you raise all skills by actually USING them like in Skyrim, and you can basically grind them to 100 by using them again and again?

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  1. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    CoC comes to mind. Too bad your character has the HP of a soggy wafer and you'll die if a strong breeze rolls through, erasing all your level grinding.

  2. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    PbtA games i guess. Failures five XP, so in the end using more skills = more failures = more XP. But they only give genreric XP, not really specific skill XP like Skyrim does.

  3. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Well, Runequest does this specifically, skills you've used have a chance to level up at the appropriate times.
    GURPS, of course, also has this.

    FATE sort of does something like this, where you gain Aspects in play that help (or hinder) certain skills. You can also shuffle your skills around a bit, and at the end of an arc you can improve some skills.

    Can't think of any others right now.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      of course

  4. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Most RPGs won't do that since it's pain in the ass to manage mechanically and also easy to exploit.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >>>Ganker or

      [...]

      homie

      >implying Skyrim is an RPG
      kek

  5. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Mine except you cant grind because thats a videogame concept

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >practice is a video game concept

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >you cant grind because thats a videogame concept
      And stabbing monsters to death somehow translating to woodworking talent isn't?
      Grinding is arguably one of the more realistic ways to approach an increase in skill and ability. The real reason it isn't done is because as other anons mentioned, it'd be obnoxious to track on PnP, which is why its usually more the realm of video games where all the math is automatic and no one has to keep track of how many minutes you'd spent sanding tables multiplied by your intelligence value or whatever the frick.
      Though I will say the sheer scale most games demand is rather ridiculous, as well as their approach to it. The most optimal way to learn how to make a warhammer in a strange magical material you've never used before, should not be to spend weeks making several hundred thousand iron daggers.

  6. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Runequest is the best example of this. Very good systems all around.

  7. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    I know it's not exactly what you wanted to know, but I've got some house rules for the FFG Star Wars RPG that does this.

    At the end of every session, the PCs can roll any one skill which they have failed at Average (2 Purple) difficulty. Any uncancelled failure, Advantage or Disadvantage counts as 1 XP each for the purposes of advancing that skill, as if they were partially buying the next rank with earned XP.

    The whole party is also be rewarded extra Advancement Rolls at the end of the session for the following:

    A very difficult combat encounter
    Advancing in a faction
    Making a notable ally or enemy
    Discovering a location
    Uncovering hidden Lore
    Performing or Completing a task (that does not grant XP)
    Crafting an item

    XP can also be purchased in the form of educational material, equipment and tutoring. The type of instruction purchased also alters the time it takes to advance a skill.
    The cost to buy instruction is (100*Current Skill Rank) per XP point.
    Instruction can be purchased for any level, but the cost begins pricing at the minimum skill rank, regardless of the character’s actual rank. (So a Rank 1 PC can learn from a Specialist, but it costs as if he was buying for Rank 3)

  8. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >grinding skills for hours like a vrpg
    >but four other people have to watch you do it
    What a horrific idea.

  9. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >Implying to be so new, he never heard about Call of Cthulhu
    >But his only reference point is Skyrim
    Please update your bot, OP. It's about a fricking decade behind the curve. Actual newbies have no idea what Skyrim even was.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      They keep rereleasing the fricking thing.

  10. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    I don't remember if it was RAW or a house rule, but the Mekton game I played in for a while had something approaching this -- you could put XP into stuff normally, but at the end of each scenario we also made a check on any skill used during it, and a free bonus XP point added if it was failed. Not something that'll make you a grand master without IC years of grinding, but a nice bonus and incentive to do more than just spam whatever attack corresponds your highest combat-relevant skill and coast on the party extrovert dealing with everything else.

  11. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Forbidden Lands
    Coc of Cocthullu
    FATE

  12. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Delta Green

  13. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Call of Cthulhu, Harnmaster (best)

  14. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    ...It occurs to me that Vancian spellcasting COULD be a good thing to include in such a system, because it gives a hard cap to rate of use that comes subdivided by general areas of application and degree.

    You'd have to go through a pile of effort to be sure the Schools had the requisite task specificity to not devolve back into Conjuration and Transmutation experts with the occasional Necromancer running over everything with near-enough all-solving hammers, but it'd definitely be a more stable constraint than the numerous RNG layers of old-school D&D where a single stroke of luck blows up the entire campaign.

  15. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Real life.

  16. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Literally Cyberpunk 2020

  17. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Twilight 2000 - at the end of each session you can level up one skill you've used during the game

  18. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Mouseguard. You've got to both succeed and fail with the skill.

    >nd you can basically grind them to 100 by using them again and again?
    ew no

  19. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Mythras has a system like this. At the end of each session the GM can dish out EXP points. Each point can be spent on a number of things, one of them being skill point increases. Depending on the GM you may be only allowed to spend points on skills you used that session. To use a point you roll a d100 + INT and if the result is higher than the skill you're trying to increase, you roll a 1d4+1 and increase your skill by that many. Skills can go over 100 if you really focus on them, and by doing so any contested roll subtracts the opponents skill by however many points over 100 you have. It's my favorite system, shame that so few people know or play it.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      A system where advancement relies on both having a specific stat high AND luck? Wow gee oh boy that sure sounds great, you sold me.
      The worst fricking idea I've read in months.

  20. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    As others have mentioned, the RuneQuest family of games (which includes Call of Cthulhu and Stormbringer/Elric) does this fairly elegantly. After the adventure is over, if you significantly used a skill, you get to roll against it. If you *fail* the roll, you get to increase the skill. What this means is that you can relatively rapidly increase skills you're not very good at, but as you become more of a badass, it gets harder. This makes a lot of sense and means that veteran characters aren't constantly smacking their heads on skill ceilings.

  21. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Burning Wheel, an independent game that I've personally had... mixed experiences with, but which has enough going for it that I feel comfortable recommending it. Basic setting is Tolkienesque-with-a splash-of-Donaldson fantasy, but there's expansions for Dark Sun-esque post-apocalyptia, space-faring future sci-fi, and fantasy Japan because of course there is. The author, Luke Crane, doesn't know when to stop tinkering, so there's a couple of editions of Burning Wheel released pretty close together, so it will be worth investigating before you pick up books for any one edition. The author also went on to use the same system to make the games Mouseguard and Torchbearer, but I can't pass comment on those, having not played them, but I know Mouseguard has very good word of mouth.

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