The Kung Fu System for RQIII

a Time/Energy Based Advancement System.

Problems With The Standard RQ III Experience System

  1. The skill gain based on time with years as the basis used in advancement by profession, is disconnected from the experience roll method and is completely linear because of it.
  2. Experience during an adventure in its present form...  once is all it takes to get an experience roll and all rules I've seen which track the repeated use of a skill during the adventure result in way too much bookkeeping, It really does take more than one lucky shot to learn something substantial.   Leaps of intuition may be possible but they shouldn't be the standard.
  3. If skills are not practiced for a long time, they really should atrophy at least to some degree  (The lack of this plus number 2 encourages generalist characters way too much)
  4. All characters effectively have the same potential and learn at the same rate because any advantage you had due to talent in Dexterity or Intelligence or whatever is statistically washed away by the skill gain rolls.
  5. Mechanically all skills in RQIII are effectively the same difficulty to learn and advance in, in fact since a skill with lower chance of success can be attempted  multiple times within a developmental period but the experience roll is only made once... a skill with a lower initial rating advances faster in game than one which starts with a higher rating. Essentially the idea of "difficult" skills which are harder advance in simply isn't there.

This method combines RQs time based advancement within an occupation and its experience roll mechanic to improve each with far less documentation than some other variants of RQIII (yes each skill now requires a current rating and a peak rating to allow for skill Atrophy and skill category bonuses for a skill have an intentionally greater influence on skill gain pace than previously).

Time Based Advancement Rolls

Each skill has a separate  Current Rating and a Peak Rating. 


Potential Rating  each skill category has a Potential which modifies learning speed and functions as a maximum for  the advancement of all skills of that type. (Your potential in a category of skills is 90 percent + 3x your category bonus) 

Over time whether or not  a character "explicitly succeeds" in performance of a particular skill as long as the skills are being used and challenged then he/ she may become more proficient in using those skills. Skills are significant definitions of your abilities and shouldn't suddenly poof increase like magic because of one performance.

There is probably considerable room for variation even within the bounds of a profession so the background profession lists of skills can be used as guidelines (for instance any skill with 4% as its normal yearly advancement should choose trying to advance at least once each season and similar) 

Kung Fu Points

Each season analyze how a characters time and energy has been spent, certainly not all of a characters activities will have been during role-played time so giving the player considerable control over this allotment of time and energy is not unreasonable.  (One KF point can be percieved as approximately 40 man hours... they are significant)

The  standard seasonal allotment of time/energy is 26 kf, however the story guide may restrict or influence how you allocate them or modify the number a player has to allocate or even award free KF points based on required activities etc .

KF points can be allocated to activities not directly associated with explicit skills in the game (this could be an excuse to invent them as skills), maintaining intimate relationships or business contacts raising children and other factors.  They represent the usage of time and energy associated with living life, not just the advancement mechanism.

Skill Maintenance

For each skill for which your character already knows you must choose from several possibilities (neglect, maintain or  refresh/advance).

Advancement Difficulty

When advancing a skill the chance of advancement  should be modified as follows , trivial +50 extremely easy +40 very easy +30 easy +20, easy skill +10, normal skill +0, marginally hard -10 Hard -20, Very Hard -30 Extremely Hard -40 Impossible -50. The advancement modifiers should be based on the tools and teachers available as well as the skills inherent nature. They can further be modified by specific cultural specialties. The advancement roll can be modified further by Teacher/Authoritative Text Quality 

Skill Maintenance Advancement Options

cost   Skill Maintenance Choice Effect number of times option may be
chosen per season per skill
0 Neglect 25% chance of skill Atrophy.  If your skill atrophies reduce your current rating by 1%. N/A
.25 Maintain this skill doesn't atrophy this season.  N/A
1 Refresh a skill which 
has faded/Atrophied		 gain 1% in current rating if  it is less than your peak. 3 times (or more with discipline
check* per additional)
1 Try to advance
an "up to date" skill 
or learn a new one.		 Roll according to your Potential in the skill minus your current rating to increase your current and peak rating by 2% (if your skill rating has reached its potential this gain is only 1%) a critical failure results in maintenance effect only a critical success allows a gain of 4%.

Access to proper challenges, teachers or authoritative text on a subject may modify your advancement rolls. This is where setting comes into the picture. The story guide can and should modify the difficulty of advancement checks based on these elements

 May be selected more than once
requires a discipline check*)

*use a power roll versus a difficulty of 11 if not using the alternate stats

Action Difficulties

The difficulty of tasks with a skill do not necessarily correspond to the difficulty of learning/advancing the skill, there really is such a thing as a trivial application of a difficult skill.  The base skill percentage applies only to a very specific application of the skill, other actions can and should be considerably modified according to the story guides discretion.  Non combat skills used in combat for instance should get some penalty  (perhaps 15%) which can be overcome by a suitable act of will.