Experience

Character growth is measured with numerical points provided by the Storyteller to the players, known as experience.

There are two kinds of experience: banked and total experience. Banked experience is any experience stored by the player for future improvement of a character's traits. Players who "spend" experience in this manner reduce their banked experience by the amount spent.

Total experience is the total amount received from the Storyteller and is never spent or reduced. When the Storyteller awards experience, the player adds this amount to banked and total experience. It is not necessary to track total experience if your Storyteller doesn't need you to track it.

Example: Mike's character Brilliant Monkey currently has three points of banked experience and 29 points of total experience. He records this on his character sheet as "3 / 29" in the experience section. If he receives five points of experience from his Storyteller, he now has eight points of banked experience and 34 points of total experience. Although Mike can spend his banked experience to improve his character, the total experience is never reduced.

Awarding Experience

The Storyteller awards experience at the end of every session. There are five main sources of experience:

Basic Award: 4 points. Players who show up receive this award. Four to five hours of play is a good benchmark for a session, so if you run significantly shorter sessions you can reduce the amount to two points. Longer regular sessions could award six, but this applies only to games planned for around seven or more hours, not sessions that occasionally "run long."

Bonus Award: 1 point. If a player comes up with something really cool, makes everybody in the game collapse with laughter or portrays a character particularly well, hand out this award at the end of the session. Be sure to award good ideas as well as good acting, for some players are uncomfortable being the center of attention. Others have a hard time making everybody laugh. This should be an award for good play, not a personality bonus.

Stunt Award: 1 point. Once per session, a player can opt to receive this award when the Storyteller confirms a natural three-die stunt. The Storyteller records this and provides it to the player when next awarding experience. Players who opt to take this award do not also regain Essence or Willpower. Players cannot achieve this award again until after receiving their next basic award, no matter how many three-die stunts they perform.

Story Award: 5 points. The players accomplished a significant story goal, either set for themselves or determined secretly by you. If you find yourself handing out this award more than once every three sessions, you need to make the story award more difficult to accomplish. If you award it less than once every eight sessions, you need to create more easily attainable goals. Long-Term Award: Variable. Occasionally, a Storyteller might determine that months or years pass between games, and during this time, players earn a basic trickle of experience. See Long-Term Experience Awards.

Storyteller's Tracking Experience

We recommend Storytellers track the experience awarded to each player. Write down the names of the characters on a piece of paper and create columns with each session's date. During a session when a player gets a bonus or stunt award, put a mark down next to his name for that session. At the end of the session, mark down basic or story awards and award the experience to each player. It might help to distinctly mark story goals to help remember when the players completed them.

While not essential, tracking experience helps gauge the rough experience level of the players. Combined with total experience scores on character sheets, it also helps answer any questions your players have about whether or not they received an experience award in the previous session.

It's generally never a good idea to reduce basic awards or to provide "negative experience awards." The only times you should reduce a basic award is when players are hours late without warning or a good explanation, or if they intentionally derail the game. In such a case, you have larger problems at hand than experience-point distribution.

Spending Experience

Players can spend a character's banked experience to purchase new traits or increase existing ones. Increasing a trait costs banked experience equal to a multiple of its current rating. This is the value of the trait before it is raised. Players should always bring up the desired increase with their Storyteller.

Example: Marcus wants to increase the Martial Arts Ability of Jin, the Storm's Eye, from 4 to 5. Jin is Dawn Caste, so Martial Arts is one of his Caste Abilities. Increasing a Caste Ability costs (rating x 2) – 1, which will cost Jin (4 x 2) – 1, or 7 experience points. Should his Storyteller approve, Marcus can subtract 7 from Jin's banked experience and fill in one more dot of Martial Arts.

You can spend experience toward a trait even if you don't currently have enough experience to increase the trait. To do so, reduce your banked experience and write how much you have spent on your character sheet along with the total you need to reach. When you meet this goal, increase the trait and erase the note.

See Experience Costs.

Training

Characters have a difficult time becoming better at what they do without practice, and improvement can slow to a crawl with nobody to show them the ropes. The training times listed in the table assume the character has some form of tutor, which assumes somebody at least as proficient in the trait as the rank the character seeks to obtain. Without a tutor, double all times. Your character cannot begin his training until you spend all the experience points to raise that trait.

Training times assume a character trains for eight hours per day and six days per week, so if a character is unable to train at this rate, increase the time accordingly. Characters can train longer than eight hours per day or more than six days per week, but doing so does not shorten the training time. It is possible to suspend training time for as long as a month without having to begin anew.

Solar Exalted characters do not require tutelage or training to increase Favored or Caste Abilities. They are Creation's true innovators and masterless in both. Use the (Minimum Ability) days formula whether with a tutor or without.

See Experience Costs for training times.

Increasing Magical Traits

Solar Exalted can immediately raise Essence to 3 by spending experience. However, increasing Essence above 3 requires meditation and a long pilgrimage, typically to a place associated with the sun, such as a mountain (which is closer to the sun) or a desert (which is sun-blasted). There, the character must meditate and train for months. Essence cannot be increased higher than 5 in a mortal lifetime. See the "Elder Exalts" section for more details.

Charms are similar to mundane Abilities, as a Charm can be taught by a tutor who already possesses that Charm. Creating a new Charm takes four times as long as training to learn a new one, if the character has the materials and capability to do so. An Eclipse Caste cannot create a new non-Solar Charm unless he possesses at least Essence 6. Even then, doing so requires legendary artifacts, long-lost tools, ancient knowledge and access to laboratories not seen since the First Age. These details are left for the Storyteller to further develop.

Creating a Combo takes longer than learning a new Charm. Figure out the minimum training times of all the Charms involved, and add them together to determine the Combo training time if the character is tutored by someone with the Combo. If the character is not tutored but has details of the Combo's existence, double the time. If you are inventing a new Combo, quadruple the time. (See Combos for new rules.)

To learn a spell, a sorcerer needs the text of the spell itself, as well as a quiet place to study and a private area in which to practice. If any one of these elements is missing, the sorcerer simply cannot learn the spell. Inventing a spell uses a base time of a number of months relative to the Circle of the spell. (That is, a Terrestrial Circle spell takes one month, a Celestial Circle spell takes two, and a Solar Circle spell takes three months.) Without suitable sorcerous materials or a well-stocked place to test theories, that base time is measured in years instead of months. In both cases, a character inventing a spell is incapable of being tutored, so all times are automatically doubled.

New Characters in Old Games

Occasionally, it becomes necessary to bring a new character into an existing game. Perhaps a previous character died, or maybe you've decided to add another player to the game. Should the new character begin with the total amount of experience received by the other characters or with a lesser amount?

Talk with your players. Some might resent having a new character show up who didn't "earn the experience," and they might want the player to come up with a starting character. Others might want any new character to start on an equal footing, as Exalts often need all the help they can get. You must also be sure the player of the new character doesn't feel hobbled or powerless. Ultimately, your decision is final, but be sure you get player input before you make it. It's generally better to do this before a game begins so it doesn't cause problems later on.

The easiest decision is to add the experience you've provided as basic or story awards. Then, for every 10 points or fraction thereof, have the player of the new character roll 1d10. The player totals these rolls and receives that much banked experience prior to the character's first session. Don’t worry about training times, but any new powerful sorcerers need an explanation of where they learned their spells.

If you don't track awards yourself, average the amount of total experience on the other characters' sheets and multiply that by 75% to discount any bonus or stunt awards received by your players—those should only ever be received as rewards for actual play. Have the character use the 1d10 method with this rough number.

See Also

• Experience Costs