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So, on the Infinity News and Rumours thread (here: http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/356404.page ), we had a short discussion on a desired - or not, depending on your opinion - leveling system for Infinity campaigns. To cut the story short, someone said that if I wanted a campaign system for Infinity, I would need to create it myself.

So I have. Sort of...

First, let me explain what I want from the system, what I am leery of, and then I will explain what my solution is:

Wanted:
A campaign system that levels your fighters as the campaign progresses. Necromunda is my first love for Skirmish games, and the benefits of Necromunda's campaign system is that you fall in love with, or learn to loathe and despise - each individual gang member. As the campaign progresses, your fighters advance and grow, becoming, yes, more powerful... but also becoming characters, with their own uniqueness and story.

For example, in playing a game with my cousin yesterday, my Order Sergeant specialist sniper absolutely distinguished himself. Each and every time an enemy would target him he would declare a shoot ARO and defeat the enemy, including and enemy sniper and an enemy HMG gunner. This amounted to 5 kills in 2 turns... he already has a reputation, and as soon as I can think of one, the little bastard is getting a name! Now how awesome would it be if, in a campaign setting, he were to level, and in doing so, gain some skill or ability to represent his badassedness? Not for the purposes of dominating extra face in the next battle, but to actually represent him, as a character, gaining in experience and growth...?

Problem #1: Balance
The biggest issue/concern I got from the folks in the News and Rumours thread was Game Balance. Unlike Necromunda, where balance was a (distant) secondary concern, Infinity is extremely well balanced, for a tabletop game. An example one friendly nay-sayer offered was how broken it would be if an Aquila Guard was given TO: Camouflage. So I sat long and thought hard today while watching my Cardinals get embarassed by the Vikings and came up with what, I hope, will be a solution.

Problem #2: Power
Another big concern, and the biggest issue with Necromunda gangs, was one gang becoming significantly more powerful than his rivals, thus making actual games played boring and one-sided, and inherently unfair.

Solution: Part One
Advancement Ladders!
In Necromunda, when you advanced you rolled randomly to see if you got a characteristic enhancement or a new skill, then rolled randomly from a selection of categories to see what new skill you earned. This could lead to some very broken combinations that, while quite powerful, worked in the grimdarkness of the setting. What I propose is that instead of randomness, you CHOOSE your advance...

Each fighter type would have three short advancement ladders from which to choose from....

Damn, I wish I could draw a diagram here, or at least be able to use the tab key for well defined columns. Well, if you can, imagine a story ladder, like you see in a linked campaign, or a family tree, which has roughly the same shape. This ladder would be titled "Combat". From the Combat box you can choose to go one of two directions: Martial Combat (hand to hand) or Shooting. The first advance would be relatively simple, say +1 to CC or to BS, respectively. From each of those options, two new options branch out. And from each of those options two more options branch out. So each tier doubles the number of options of the tier before it.

Now, when you choose one option or another, the other is completely blacked out, lost forever. So if this was the advancement ladder for my Teutonic Knight and I chose to go down the Shooting path, the Martial Prowess path would be locked to me, unavailable forever. The next tier would have two new options, say +1 to burst of a weapon of choice, or an increased line of fire from 180 degrees to 270 degrees. At my TK's next advancement, I would choose one or the other. If I chose, say, the +1 to burst, then the increased line of fire, and all advancements branching off of that one in the future are locked. I hope my explanation makes sense...

Now each fighter would have three Advancement Ladders named, for general description, "Utility Skills," "Combat Skills," and "Survivability." Utility Skills would be in-game useful, but not for combat. Rather, these would be skills that would make scenario objectives easier to obtain. For example, a bonus to hacking rolls when trying to open the secret enemy vault or something like that. Combat Skills should be self explanatory, I hope. Survival Skills would be things like increased armor, increased wounds, having a cube implanted (which wouldn't affect table top play, but prevent you from losing the fighter when he dies), immunities, etc. Any time a fighter gained a new advance he could choose any of his Ladders to skill up in, shaping his fighter as he thinks appropriate.

Solution: Part Two
Unique Advancement Ladders
To avoid combos that would be too powerful, like the aforementioned Aquila Guard with TO: Camo, each fighter type would have its own Advancement Ladders. The Ladders of, say, a Cutter would be, and should be, vastly different than a Croc-man. Survival Skills would be the closest to universal across the board, with only minor deviations (a fighter with Cube wouldn't need another one, for example).

Granted, it would take a long-ass time to write individual trees for each and every fighter in Infinity, but it seems to me that this would be the best way to a) mitigate power combos and b) ensure that characters stay true to their background.

Solution: Part Three
Beginning Experience and Experience Levels
Each model begins with an amount of starting experience equal to half its points cost (this number is a first guess, playtest/input could move this up or down). He is still level 0 when he is first purchased, but it will take longer for him to reach the next level of advancement. My Teutonic Knight from the Military Orders box, for example, costs 42 points, and so starts with 21 experience. The experience levels are below:

Level 0: 0-5
Level 1: 6-10 <--------- Order Sergeants with their basic rifles start here, with 7 experience (cost 13, divided by 2). He only needs 4 experience before gaining an advancement
Level 2: 11-15
Level 3: 16-25 <--------- Teutonic Knight Starts here, with 21 experience. He will need to earn 4 experience before gaining an advancement.
Level 4: 26-45
Level 5: 36-60
Level 6: 46-60 <-------- Cutter starts here with 59 experience. He will need to earn 1 experience before gaining an advancement.
Level 7: 61-75
Level 8: 76-90
And continues...

NOTE: Looking at where the Cutter finds himself, needing only 1 point to level, I am thinking that you use the points cost to find your starting level, but begin at the beginning of that level. So in the examples above, the Order Sergeant stgarts with 6, the Teutonic Knight starts with 16, and the Cutter starts with 46. It would be kinda lame to level by only gaining one measely experience point.

Solution: Part Four
Experience Caps
In each scenario, a player may exceed his opponents experience cap by only 20%. So, for example, if my entire PanO list had a total of, say 440 experience points amongst all my fighters, an opponent would be capped at a total of 528 total experience. This should keep armies fairly close to each other, relatively speaking, in power. If the opponent had a total of more than 528 total experience, some models would have to sit out the fight to bring his total to 528 or less.





OK, so that is my basic start for an Infinity Leveling system. Comments, concerns, querries? Obviously, this is just the basic outline, so just keep comments to that for now. And sorry in advance for the novel!!

40 views with no responses?

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!...

I don't think cutting off Advancement trees is a good idea, as your essentially forcing people to choose one option only for each model (e.g melee or shooting) who is to say a veteran gunslinger hasnt on occassional needed to parry or get up close and personal?

Not being an Infinity player, I don't know if TO:Camo is an item or an ability? But if its a powerful ability (I gather from other threads that it can be) why not just make it one of the end points of a skill tree, or not include things like this at all?

From my line of thinking, an Advancement Ladder being locked serves three purposes:

The first is to avoid powerful combos. Kogan is completely correct that powerful skills, such as TO: Camo should be the final skill in a ladder, but we also need to prevent it from being combined with another powerful skill on the other side of the ladder. I also plan to build a little bit of redundancy into the ladders.

Let's say Choice A is the first step in a ladder, called tier 1. Choice A divides into tier 2, call them choices B and Z. B and Z divide further into tier 3, B leading to choices C and D, and Z dividing into X and Y. Redundancy won't find its way into EVERY ladder, not when skills or equipment are more appropriate (i.e. not overpowered and makes fluff sense). But in my example, a player chooses A, and then follows that choice up with B, forever locking choice Z and everything that follows it. Well, choice C may be that elite tier 3 choice you're gunning for, but if it isn't, choice D may be something interesting from Z's ladder. Still a very fluid idea, so we will see how it develops.

The second purpose is limiting the power of individual models. The biggest problem with Necromunda, for example, is when fighters end up just being too damn powerful, disenfranchising other players in the campaign and discouraging new players from joining. By locking ladders, you are hopefully limiting (though it is probably impossible to completely eliminate) the awe-inspiring power of individual models

Finally, locking the ladders will be more realistic, I think. The more elite a warrior gets, the more well rounded he will become, not less. Think delta force or seal team six; you become bad-ass elite by being awesome at more skills, not less. By locking ladders, a player is forced to, as a fighter advances, choose other ladders to advance along, thus making the fighter a more well-rounded bad-ass.

That is my line of thinking, though a well-thought-out discussion could still change my mind to your line of thinking, Kogan!!


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Advancement Ladder example


...............................................................................................................||== SKILL ADVANCE
............................................................||== SKILL ADVANCE =========||
............................................................||.................................................||== REDUNCANCY
...................||== SHOOTING (+1 BS) ==||
...................||......................................||..................................................||==SKILL ADVANCE
...................||......................................||== FAST RELOAD (+1 BURST)===||
...................||..........................................................................................||==INCREASE LONG RANGE by 25%
COMBAT===||
...................||
...................||.........................................................................................||== ADVANCE
...................||.........................................................................................||
...................||.....................................||== ADVANCE=============||
...................||.........................................||.................................................||== ADVANCE
...................||== MELEE (+1 CC)=====||
...............................................................||................................................||==ADVANCE
...............................................................||................................................||
...........................................................||== ADVANCE=============||
..............................................................................................................||
..............................................................................................................||== ADVANCE

Well, I tried to make it prettier, but this will have to work...

I suspose it comes down to the number of skill trees you create, for example: Melee, Shooting, Survival etc...

To follow on from the above, If they were separate, you could have limits on the number of 'tiers' or levels a character could have in each. eg a character can have 3 level one skills (meaning he can access the start of all three) maybe 3 level 2s (so 1 of the 2 available from each tree, or any combination thereof) and so on. Obviously the limits set will be based on the no. of skill trees and total branches but it could work as a nice way of limitiing characters access to uber skills, while still allowing some freedom to expand there characters development.

Would you make skill trees race specific - it wouldnt be overly difficult, as stat increases would be the same, however, the uber skills might be different (if there are skills available only to certain races) That way, models from the same race can pick up elite skills, while models from other races can't.

Whadda think?

Ok, so...

I have to choose between CC or BS, in this game INFINITY wich is completely about shooting. BS then.

Then I have the Cutter, wich is the ultimate badass troop completely full of awesomeness, and I can make it better in BS, deal.

Ok, let's play now:

-"Bwahahhaha, it is awesome!!! better than I expected!! this is a truly great system. I am the master of the universe. What do you think about my extremely powerful troop, dear LGS saturday's enemy-rival?"

-"I won't continue playing with you because this is fething UNBALANCED."

have to agree with Boba on this one. Necromunda was bad enough, infinity would be crazy after a few level ups.

two things though...

1. Do it anyway, since you sound like you'd get enjoyment from it (i know, it's a bit of a standard response in these parts)

or

2. Have you thought of running combat group level advancement? rather than miniatures getting xp, have the whole combat group get xp and make it campaign orientated.

ie. you win the first game in the campaign, perhaps you get an extra order to use in the next game due to improved comms or something. Or get to choose to play an extra turn to seal the victory because your squad was ahead of schedule or something... i don't know i'm just thinking off the top of my head.

Another idea could be like the old school fallout tactics or shadowrun perk system.

ie. you get a bonus in one area worth so many points, but then you always have to take flaws worth negative points to balance out.

for example, TO Camo could be worth +4 points as a skill, but you need to spend -4 points on flaws (which could be miniature or combat group specific - or even campaign specific). The -4 points could be made up of x1 -4 flaw
x2 -2 flaws
x1 -3 flaw and x1 -1 flaw
x4 -1 flaws

etc.

Hope it generates some more thinking for you anyway...

Have re-rolls been considered?

As Snowman suggests with his "combat group level advancement", rather than individual models gaining increased attributes, the Lieutenant could gain re-rolls to use for specified skills. (Hacking, shooting, combat)

This would then reflect the veteran nature of the troops by making them more likely to succeed at important times.

This is a tough one. Let's brainstorm! I'm a fairly new Ariadna player so I'm not too familiar with PanO units but here goes...

Advancement Ladders isn't a bad idea but as it is a line troop like a Fusilier could potentially destroy an elite troop like a Magister Knight given enough experience points. Okay a lot of experience points. But I could have a basic troop like a Fusilier have attributes of 20s across it's profile, right?

Would it be possible after certain number of experience points 'promote' the Fusilier to an appropriate class? How about a Advancement Tree where the trunk of the tree is where the line troops start and from there they have the option to be promoted to different branches each focused and specialized. So for example, one could start as a Fusilier, by mid campaign be an Order Sergeant, and maybe be a Knight of a certain order by the end of the game. If using tree idea maybe every player starts with a certain number of line troops depending on the faction (not sure if this is even possible) and maybe at an expensive cost promote a couple to get a head start.

Another thing to help prevent any unbalancing is using the Support Weapon Cost(SWC). Take the Fusilier for example. The Fusilier already has a number of loadouts to choose from but it doesn't have everything. The highest SWC on the list is 1.5 which is armed with a Multi Sniper Rifle. Pretty snazzy and rare for the troop type. If your Fusilier was able to equip himself sometime in the campaign with something not already on the loadouts listed like say an AP HMG or a Viral Sniper Rifle raise the Fusilier's SWC value.

Just my 2 cents. Hope it helps!