I am trying to collect the advancement limits from the core book. I am still missing the limits, if there are any, for Foci and Talents’? Did anyone found any?
Yup, you are right on those.
There is no specific limit for how many focuses and talents you can take.
You might even allow higher skill levels if you want to.
The assets limit is also something the GM might choose to increase depending on their campaign.
Essentially the limits in the book are ‘good working averages’ rather than hard limits.
Thank you very much for your answers. Very helpful!
Assets are not only great fun, but great XP sinks, which players love to use. I could imagine a whole concept / system for noble houses around asstes.
I have a related question. How much XP/development point should characters get for an average adventure and average growth? As length suppose an adventure like Desertfall.
How fast players advance depends heavily on the campaign me thinks, and how fast the GM and players want to advance.
A harsh campaign will result advancement points quickly due to failures and difficult tests being common, though easier campaign makes achieving ambitions easier.
An asset costs 3 points, skills start at 10, first new talent would be 9 points. Don’t think one should be able to get a new skill every session/adventure. A new asset? Probably OK.
A gut feeling would peg amount of advancements to maybe 4 per session/adventure. That is based on how i figure my existing group might do in Dune and how i think i’d run a campaign. Might be a bit more.
EDIT We tend to play longish sessions, figure we’d fit Desertfall into one session. Longer adventures would provide more points naturally.
I would lean towards about 6xp an adventure. But given my adventures take between 2 and 8 sessions I suspect I am on the slow end of the scale.
Also I moved to Dune from STA where xp isn’t really a thing in the core book (I think they gave options in a later supplement). So I’ve never really felt the need to hand out much xp.
I’ll probably give a chunk more after the current break in my campaign when I move matters on a couple of years in game.
Late reply, but but in our experience assets are great XP sinks, and the players happily buy their “stuff”. Actually a very, very good idea!
Contrary ot my assumption there was less complaining about lack of advancement than I expected.
Well, sort of. “XP” are still called “milestones” and there are still three different qualities of milestones (although one of three does not necessarily has a name, anymore). First, the way how to acquire Milestones/XP was changed in the Klingon Core Rulebook and the Tricorder Set Digest Rules, respectively.
Second, with the Command Division Supplement awards and commendations were introduced, turning the character’s Reputation more into a second sort of XP. This system was also modified with the Klingon/Digest update.
So basically, STA has two systems of character development, the Milestones tied to the character’s Values and the Reputation tied to the character’s actions in a broader sense.
Looking at STA in comparison to Dune, one can say that a player may change their character at least once after every adventure (swapping talents, foci etc.) and improve their character every two or three adventures. The “big” improvements of adding to Attributes (Dune’s Drives) seem not to be present in Dune, so maybe Dune is in general meant to be a bit more static than STA.
Yet, this is all up to the group’s discretion. 