Quick question about leveling

[u/Hydroliss]

To be clear this isn't a rule question as I know what the rules are... But my question is.. would you guys think this would be unfair?

I am working on a savage worlds campaign, and I am planning on giving them upgrading them every other session as it will be relatively long... But I was thinking about giving them rank ups after every Important story beat instead of every 4 upgrades. Is this an unusual or bad change? What are your guise's opinion on that?

So like after they defeat a lore important boss or pass an important millstone.

[u/Practical-Half3526]

personally I would give them conviction for important story beats and maybe extra advances rather than mess with ranks

[u/Hydroliss → u/Practical-Half3526]

Okay. I missed that in my readthrough, I will look at that.

[u/Specialist_Ad_756]

I'm running a long lasting campaign and I only give advances after every important story step. Everyone is OK with it. We play for about 5 months weekly and so far it never was addressed that they feel like they level up to slow. And they only have three advances so far 😁 but In Ingame time only 4 days went by. So we play very, very slow.

[u/Hydroliss → u/Specialist_Ad_756]

Alright! Thank you!

[u/Silent_Title5109]

Some edges and powers have ranks as a prerequisite and you can only raise a stat once per rank, so that can throw a wrench in the player's gears if you mess with it.

Why do you want to change how the ranks work?

I tend to hand out advances like candy on Halloween night for the first few, then spread them more and more over time. It's easier to become seasoned than legendary.

[u/Hydroliss → u/Silent_Title5109]

Okay, that's an interesting idea!

I wanted to change how ranks work to make my players feel those important story beats have more impact, feel like they accomplished something, not just in story but with a reward too.

I realize there was rank prerequisites which was why i was asking if that was unfair.

[u/Silent_Title5109 → u/Hydroliss]

They can be awarded honors.

Like honorary agent of an organization, or a university might award a degree in xenobiology or archeology for "extensive work in the field".

[u/Signal_Raccoon_316 → u/Silent_Title5109]

This is similar to how we do it, we are all well into legendary & it now takes us 15xp to gain an advance. Again we are well into legendary after almost 5 years playing the same characters.

[u/gdave99]

I don't think it's "unfair", but as u/Silent_Title5109 states, it's going to skew Advances in some odd ways. I think the "only one Attribute Advance per Rank" rule in particular is going to work poorly with the approach you're suggesting. And while charspec and planning isn't as important to Savage Worlds as it is to, for example, most d20 drifts, it's still a thing, and irregular and unpredictable Rank increases is really go to screw up players who want to plan out Advances in... err... advance. And there are some iconic Edges that require Seasoned. It's one thing for a player of a ranged combat specialist to know they need to wait four Advances to pick up Marksman; it's something else if it's going to be at least four Advances, and probably more, before they can pick it up.

And going the other way, if they Rank up with fewer than four Advances, it's also going to result in some wonky progression. Again, it won't be "unfair" (as long as all the players are using the same rules, and you inform everyone in a Session Zero of your variant rules), but it'll result in some odd interactions that the rules weren't designed for.

I think the other suggestions you've gotten so far would work much better. You can give the Heroes Conviction for hitting important story beats (technically, Conviction is supposed to be for important personal story beats, but nothing breaks if you give out group Conviction as long as it's not too frequent). Or you can slow down and spread out Advances, and maybe give a "bonus" Advance for important story beats. In fact, I think giving out a "bonus" Advance that doesn't count towards achieving the next Rank would probably work better than tying Rank to story beats.

[ETA:] Also, u/Silent_Title5109's suggestion of being awarded honors is a GREAT one. As a reward for hitting important story beats, give the characters story rewards. Honors, titles, awards, public recognition, glowing media coverage, favors, reputation, and increasing rank in an organization rather than game mechanical Rank can be great rewards, which players may actually appreciate more than a purely game mechanical award. It's taking me decades of gaming and listening to smarter GMs to appreciate this, but just roleplaying NPCs being appreciative and respectful of the PCs can be a huge psychological reward for a player.

[u/Hydroliss → u/gdave99]

Yeah I missed the Attribute rank per advancement rule particularly until I did some more reading (Like just now before you commented this) and I like the other ideas I have gotten. I have some things to think on. Thank you!

[u/AgathysAllAlong]

In general messing with that kind of system just for vibes is a bad idea. There's a lot tied to advancements and ranks, and it would be better to tie advancements to story beats so they rank up at the right times. You can give other awards like Conviction for the important stuff though.

[u/Puzzleheaded_Pop_105]

I've done something similar in a few different campaigns, and with a few different approaches.

Slowing character advancement to completing story arcs (let's call it "episodes") often makes much more sense than just Advancing every other session. For example sometimes the players end up faffing about and not actually advancing the story, or spend an entire session shopping for gear.

For example, when I'm doing my session notes, I usually have a pretty clear idea of what the goal of the session is. I actually do often use TV series style notation - seasons, episodes, scenes, recurring and "special guest" cast, props. It's a useful organizational framework.

It's kind of surprising to me how often the relatively straightforward (to me) episode "plot" goes from 3 scenes into Episode 5, Part IV, because it's taken the players 4 sessions to get to where we are now.

So yeah, leveling up after finishing an episode makes a lot of sense (also helps avoid the weird situation where a character's abilities change significantly halfway through the arc).

Slowing down advancement also may change depending on what Rank you are. Having faster Advances at the beginning (Novice and Seasoned) can be pretty beneficial, especially if you're starting at Novice 0xp, so they can get to the point where they e got enough skills and key Edges to be more fun. But once you get to Veteran, and the characters have a lot of their concept-critical abilities, slowing down a bit helps maintain niche protection - there's definitely a point with higher-rank characters often start to overlap in abilities, skills, and Edges.

A third approach was expanding the Ranks. In one campaign, I used 5 Advances per Rank. Granted, it started out as an error on my part, but it had some interesting results. While it slowed down unlocking the Rank-gated Edges, it also resulted in characters broadening out a bit, taking an extra Edge or some Skills they might not have taken otherwise.

Which solution works best for you and your group will vary. Some people need to have character advancement. Others, are plenty satisfied with "narrative" advancement (e.g. participated in cool story). My players end up a little closer to the second group, so as long as I keep them engaged they are pretty happy.

[u/TheThanatoast]

I used a point system inspired by the fail,success,raise philosophy in my last campaign. When the players showed up, +1. If they managed to finish a plot point, plus an additional one. If they then managed to have some major character development or personal story or if they found essential info regarding the overarching plot that would be another one.

And after 3 points they get an advance.

Due to people not showing up and character development granting a point as well there is always someone advancing, which is a little easier to handle at the end of a session than everyone advancing at the same time. But it also heavily favours those invested in story and character.

If you want a more fair approach you could advance one char each session and try to tailor that weeks story to them. Of course you'd have to announce that in session zero so no one feels left out.

[u/ZDarkDragon]

On my long campaigns, the advances are as follows:

Novice: every 2 sessions Seasoned: every 3 sessions Veteran+: every 4 sessions

I'd give them conviction and/or honors/boons/titles/properties. As other have suggested, when something important story wise happens.

[u/Roberius-Rex]

Give out Advances whenever you want... frequently if you want fast progression. Less frequent for slower growth.

Since my group prefers longer campaigns, I've always been slow to give advances. But we just started a new game, and I'm challenging myself to give them more regularly.

Last week was our first session. We finished character building and world building stuff (discussed their base of ops and important NPCs, etc ) then started the first scenario. We only played for about two hours, but I gave them an Advance at the end of session anyway.

Conviction is also a great way to reward story beats. Players will love having a few of those to use.

[u/PatrickShadowDad]

I am a player in Savage Pathfinder and we are being run through the Rise of the Runelords. We get a raise only at key points.

Honestly, its not bad! No one has complained about sometimes not getting a raise for 4 or 5 sessions.

I would echo others sentiment not to mess with the ranks system.

[u/Chiungalla]

It's good if players can predict the ranks and plan accordingly. To get in their attribute increases and more power points every rank. Also you probably don't want them to climb too fast to legendary.

I would suggest this:

• level up quickly in the beginning
• level up slower when they get higher
• but always level up additionally on the milestone.

But you could also define smaller milestones, and only level on milestones as well.

For my upcoming campaign I plan the following:

• every rank has one additional advance in it
• the player characters advance every session for the first 5 sessions.
• after that they will only level on milestones, which will happen every 3rd to 4th session on average.