Debt

Experience Debt, or XP Debt. Is a mechanic that slows a character's ability to gain Experience points. Characters can receive debt in a number of ways including balancing for powerful characters, or as penalties inflicted by in-game events and effects.

Handling Debt

Whenever the character gains experience, 1 point of that XP must be paid to the Debt, and paid to the debt first. In order to prevent Debt from consuming all of a character's experience, the total amount gained in a session can be calculated instead of each time it is rewarded.

"The super-powered alien of the group was given a 25 point XP Debt to account for their powerful abilities in comparison to everyone else in the game. At the end of the first session everyone gets 3 XP. The superpowered alien however had to pay 1 of those points to their Debt. So they keep 2 and have 24 Debt remaining. Once all debt is paid, they earn XP at the same rate as everyone else."

The player can choose to pay more of their XP Debt in order to clear the debt faster. Points paid to the Debt do not count towards gaining Level points needed to level up.

Uses of Debt

As a Game-Master, you may want to impose XP Debt onto player-characters as either a balancing approach, or as a penalty due to actions or events that took place.

As Balance

You may decide that, at a player's request, you allow them to play as, or use Metaphors/powers that go beyond the baseline for player characters for a game. Things such as having magic or powers when characters shouldn't have them, allowing them to play as a Giant or Monster with abilities exceeding that of normal humanoids. When a Game-master allows a player-character to be much stronger than normal, they can set an amount of XP debt in exchange.

A reason to do this is to allow the powerful character to retain the power they should, but give the others an edge when it comes to improving their characters at an accelerate speed compared to the one who received their power early. It limits the strong character's progress so that the others may eventually catch up.

"You run a fantasy game, and one of the players says they want to play as a Rune Giant adventurer, this Rune giant is likely to be about Size 8 and also have a bunch of rune-based powers based on their species. Despite the immense gap in power compared to a regular humanoid, you allow this, but state that this Rune Giant character of theirs has a Debt of 70 due to their species. When their character has paid off their debt, they can start earning experience like a normal character."

As Penalty

Occasionally, a character might get into serious trouble, or even get cursed or killed. While the Status magnitude mechanic can definitely fill most gaps regarding injuries and ailments, one option is to have a character suffer XP debt instead. A character could suffer a traumatic injury that needs time to heal, physically and mentally, and this injury could affect their ability to gain experience rather than outright debuff their capabilities or powers.

"A character was captured by horrific ghosts and spectres, while they were saved in time by allies, the trauma persisted. The Game-master asks the character to roll a Charisma check against a magnitude 20 Experience-Debt condition. The player character rolls a d12 and a md6 (for +2 Charisma) and got a 7 and a 2. With a total of 9, the GM rules that the character has 11 points of XP debt. When the character finally pays the debt, they come to terms with what happened and are able to move on."

XP Debt Guidelines

Here are some example values you can use to justify XP Debt.

Extra Metaphor
"Player requests an extra Metaphor for their character beyond the ones they get for free at creation."
Cost: 5 Debt per Metaphor created at +1, add 10 Debt for value above +1 for that extra Metaphor (+2 costs 15, +3 costs 25...etc).

Extra Trait
"Player requests a functional trait that enhances/modifies their character."
Cost: Determine how effective this trait is and assign debt value between 1 and 50.

Increased Size
"Player requests to enlarge their character to a size bigger than their species allows."
Cost: 25 Debt for each Size rating bigger than 1. Lower to 10 Debt if the character's species is Size 2 or bigger normally.

Raise Base HP
"Player wants to have higher base HP (HP die), such as going from a base-6 to a base-8 (starting HP 8 + 4 per Body/Lv)"
Cost: 10 Debt for each increase to base HP, up to the GM's limit.

Gain Superior Qualities in Attributes
"Player wants to improve certain attributes to gain Auto-die and/or Level-Boost qualities and their respective +1s."
Cost: 15 Debt for each quality added to an attribute (30 for both on one attribute).

Revival/Survival
"Player's character has 'died' but they still want them to still live"
Cost: 10 Debt to retcon character's death into something less deadly. Increase cost by 10 each time this occurs.

Drained
"Player character suffered significant loss to their powers and/or ability, like being drained or enervated."
Cost: Determine how severe the affliction is and assign a value between 15 and 30. Player may roll to reduce Debt further once at the beginning.

XP Boost Mechanic

The reverse principle of Debt is an XP Boost. Instead of requiring the player character to pay off a point of Debt before receiving a point of experience, XP Boosting causes the player character to gain an extra point of experience for every one gained, until the Boost is completely used up.

"Yuvo, who is a Tiny-sized alien character, is deemed to have enough of a handicap due to their size that they start with an XP Boost of 20 points. For each experience point gained, Yuvo gains an additional point of XP and their Boost is lowered by one as well. When their XP Boost is all used up, they gain experience at the normal rate."

The standard rules for regaining Meta Points via XP Boost is that you do not regain MP from the extra points generated by the XP Boost effect. Your Game-Master may rule otherwise.