Thursday, January 16, 2014

The value of unit points and medals upon character death

Last night's character generation playtest with +Kaan Emirler and +Tre' Grisby raised some good points about unit points and the creation of new characters to replace dead or incapacitated ones.

Unit points are a set of points given to the player after a character dies or can no longer continue to play. These points can be used to boost new characters and prevents the player from starting from zero all over again.

Kaan commented that power points should equate what was lost with the character's death. This would allow players who have a special forces character to pick up with another special forces character with the same skills and training.

While I get his point I'm more inclined to give a fraction of the current character's training as unit points. The player can create a new character, but not as powerful as the recently lost. This prevents the trivialization of death, but can be a let down for players.

I believe medals can come into play here. If the character dies and lacks any medals then the character gets somewhere between 60% to 80% "strength" in unit points to create the next character. If the character has earned medals or earns them posthumously this percentage increases. The increase will be proportional to the medal and possibly over 100% if, for example, the character earns the Medal of Honor. Such a great decoration can allow the player to create an even better character next time around or create two very well trained characters.


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