A lot of games use “levels” as a numerical measurement of a character’s power in relation to other PCs. Other games don’t - they use skill advancement, points, or something else to track character advancement. ICRPG and its Milestone/Loot system is one of those.
A few years ago, one of my players mentioned how some newer players coming from D&D seemed to be having a hard time understanding a level-less game. Most of these players would eventually have a great time with ICRPG but one or two never really “got it”. And later, one of those players wanted to try GMing and I suggested she tried using ICRPG (mostly for the great GM section), but she said she wanted a game with “levels”, like videogames or D&D.
That got me thinking if ICRPG could be used with levels… And this is what I prepared for her.
The Dragon Age RPG has some great “level 1 vs level 20” comparisons, but I’m useless selecting/copying/pasting. I wanted to share a better picture… but here’s an idea.
This is a great chart! My only thought about it was that a milestone every “level up” might be a lot of milestones. I think if it were me, I would replace some of those with rolls on the loot tables, just for a bit more variety. That being said, nice work!!!
Hey, Alex! That’s actually a great idea, that’s what I did with the Path Rewards. Opening the option of substituting Milestones for Loot rolls might work too! Thanks, your insight is greatly appreciated.
Another suggestion is having most Milestones be in the “Ever Stronger” category, except the ones at levels 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, and 18 (you know, the ones where we used to get feats in the 3e times). That leaves 14 stat points to be distributed over 11 stats/efforts.
I usually cap “natural” stats at +5 in my game (+10 with loot). 14 increases + 8 starting stats/4 starting effort seems strong but not broken. Of course, I’m thinking as a GM trying to balance things, I might need a Player trying to break these rules to see something I’m missing (my own Players tend to build more balanced characters too).
But keeping a lot of milestones might work too, because of the inherent “multiclassing” in these rules. When you get an Ability you might select an Ability from a different Type… Then I would allow that character to select Milestones from that class too, especially if they are synergetic to the Ability chosen.
Anyway, as I said I wrote this for a friend and to be honest I only played it to level 10. I wrote up a few lv15 and lv20 characters to test the rules, but never actually played to that level,.
Love the chart and giving MILESTONES structure! For my group I took MILESTONES and made them into feats, and whenever they level up they gain a fixed amount of hp and roll on a table like this:
Gain 1+CON HP and roll 2d4 on your level up table
Fighter
2: +2 to Weapon Effort, Ultimate Effort, or Defense to a chosen item.
I really like the idea of rolling on a table for level up gains. A lot of people became familiar with this mechanic through Shadowdark but, IMHO, the amazingly overrated game Lion & Dragon (and the setting Dark Albion) does it better (and did it way before Shadowdark was even a concept).
Just like you did, in L&D you gain a small hp boost on level up; then you have the option of selecting one benefit from your class’s table OR randomly roll to gain two benefits. This creates very interesting and unique characters after a few levels.
I once tried playing with small hp boosts each level instead of HEARTS, but eventually I gave up on that. In our games, HP would be something like your base HD (from D&D, so 10 for fighter, 8 for cleric/thief, 6 for wizard) plus your level and Str and Con. Same for monsters.
So, a level 6 fighter (HD 6d10) with Str 4 and Con 2 would have 10+6+4+2 = 22 HP. An ogre (HD 8d10, Str 4, Con 3) would have 8+10+4+3 = 25 HP. An ancient red dragon (HD 26d20, Str 10, Con 9) would have 65 HP and so on. I still use these rules to convert HP to ICRPG HEARTS and it works pretty well.
