So a while back I had an idea for allowing players to "Level Up" their stats in D&D 3.5 that I think would translate well to pathfinder. Essentially the idea is to treat each Attribute as though it was of an equal character level to its score, and then any task as though it were CR equal to its difficulty. When awarding experience you would treat the Difficulty of the task as its equivalent challenge rating, find how much exp is generally awarded for that CR and then quarter it because EXP rewards assume a party of 4 is facing a given challenge.

The dungeon master should determine how quickly they want stats to progress independently of character level progression. A character with Strength 10 may require 160,000/105,000/71,000 exp to go up to 11 Strength. I personally would ALWAYS suggest the slow path, but it is up to your Dungeon Master.

So for example when a player must make a Climb skill check of Difficulty 15 the character would receive 12,800 Strength Experience.

So going by both previous examples a Character with Strength 10 along the slow progression path would need to make 13 successful CR 15 Climb checks to go from Strength 10 to 11. This represents a sort of diligence and honest effort that I think should be rewarded and would love to see implemented into a game.

Well, from a system point of view, this sort of effort is what the attribute increases at every four levels is supposed to represent.

The main issues with this sort of thing are that it adds another layer of bookkeeping into a game that already has a lot of bookkeeping. And there's nothing to stop your players from taking some downtime and just making a whole string of checks to get the attribute increase.

In your example, a character could take a few days off and climb a DC 15 wall over and over and over again to jack their strength as far as they want. And same goes for any other attribute as well.

And yes, you could devise a series of guidelines and rules that dictate how many checks you can make in a certain length of time and what situations can logically or reasonably result in a check, but then, again, bookkeeping.

I think it's kinda the difference between class/level based (which is what both DnD and Pathfinder are) and skill-based. In skill-based games, something like this can work to an extent - though again, there's only so high you can raise an attribute. Class-level based I think it's better left alone.

Also truemane is right; but there's another issue. Things based on strength and dex are often used; whilst wisdom not so much. So even your fighter may dump strength, figuring it'd be a lot easier to increase that later on; and give themselves a good wisdom; because chances to practice wisdom are few and far between.

In reply to willvr (msg # 3):

This is true, but even Skill-Based games usually make use of 'non-infinite' resources to raise attributes and skills (usually XP).

And your second point is totally valid, but if the system involves no expenditure of resources, then you can always go find somewhere to make Wis or Cha check. It doesn't even have to make a lot of sense. For example, every time you make a Perception get some Wis experience. A couple of days of bird watching would put your Wisdom through the roof. Or you go to a tavern and tell stories for a week to get some Charisma. Or train a pack of dogs. Or operate some magic items. Or play the Game of Faces for a few days.

How long does a Knowledge check take? How many can you make in a day? In an hour? You could just go sit in a quiet corner for a few hours, try to see if you know increasingly obscure things, and boom, super genius.

Which doesn't make any sense, of course. Which means that to integrate such a system you'd need a whole set of rules around it to make it make sense.

And then it's all bookkeeping and arguing.


Total agreement. It's a can of worms. And d20 has enough of those.
This message was last edited by the user at 13:19, Thu 11 June 2015.

I guess I was assuming they'd be using the "Challenge must be a viable threat" - which is why you can't go around beating up on 1st level commoners to get that extra XP.

And yes, much as I do like D20 for various things; it doesn't need further layers of complexity added to it.

Also, if you were to do this it should clearly be instead of the point every 4 levels not in addition to. Not sure if that was already addressed.

This would also lead to a whole new avenue of min-maxing.  Your weak stats?  Get them as low as possible so they're easier to level up.  Your high stats?  They're already hard to level, so pump them as high at chargen as possible.