Quote from: Omega on April 26, 2024, 06:44:02 PMThen O and AD&D were aimed at children too by that logic.
Quote from: Lurkndog on April 27, 2024, 09:28:32 PMI see some problems with this approach.
1) Why does it matter whether you succeeded or not? You can learn just as much from failure. And as a starting character, you'll be failing a lot, and as GM there is good reason to reward failure.
2) Having to roll to see if your skills advance completely sucks. I say this from experience as a former Runequest player. It's hard enough to be a starting character without being unable to spend your xp. Especially when you then lose that xp.
3) By its nature, this will cause some players to advance faster than others, for no reason other than sheer dumb luck. That's not good. And if you say "over time it will all even out," you're wrong. The odds are exactly the same for each roll. The dice have no memory, and someone who pulls ahead because of a streak of lucky rolls is likely to stay ahead. And someone who falls behind is unlikely to catch up.
4) If you think it's bad when people get shafted once on advancement, wait until it happens twice right out of the gate. And it will happen twice to somebody. I wouldn't expect that player to come back.
5) How do you buy up new skills that you don't already have? What if nobody bought Cartography?
6) In Runequest, this encouraged what was called the "golf bag" approach, where players carried around a (figurative) golf bag full of different weapons, each of which they would use exactly once per session, to maximize their chances of getting a successful advancement check.
7) Some find the extra bookkeeping during play to be distracting. And the time spent rolling skill advancement checks comes out of game time.
Basically, this is point buy with extra steps. And those extra steps are problematic.