Team Building

Progression Style: Economy
Recommended For: Medium to Long campaigns
Pairs Well With: Deliberate, calculated gameplay

The "Team Building" progression system is built around rewarding teamwork and growth in the face of adversity. Unlike the "Explosive Protagonist" progression system, skills, proficiencies, modifiers, and other character improvements are not immediately awarded by the luck of a dice roll but by the continued persistence and careful planning. This system especially rewards good roleplaying and strong team dynamics, and balances the use of help die in-game against improving a character's overall strength. For this system, it is strongly recommended to adjust the help die's value down from 1D6 to 1D4. Additionally, use of a Balanced/Unbalanced start for a medium-length campaign, or Weak Start for long-running campaigns is advisable.

When playing with the Team Building progression system, characters should be rewarded for good roleplay -- awarding help die in moments where player characters discover notable plot beats, achieve personal goals, or help fellow characters accomplish tasks by reducing a roll's DC as opposed to expending a help die. After a session has ended, any remaining help die held by the players may be spent to progress their characters' stats. The cost for this improvement may be static or variable [see: economy progression], depending on the length and nature of the campaign.

In addition to progressing stat die with the expenditure of help die, the Team Building system can be expanded to allowing for the purchase of improved or new proficiencies, or team perks. The costs for these other improvements are suggested below.

Proficiency Improvement

The cost to improve a proficiency should be scaling as the die added to the roll scales up. The cost for this improvement should be double the cost of improving the stat die itself -- meaning an improvement from D4 to D6 costs 4 help die if the cost to improve a stat die from D4 to D6 costs 2. This is recommended in order to prevent players from trivializing checks by creating circumstances where dice rolls are de-facto rolled with advantage without a reasonable cost.

Proficiency Purchasing

The cost to purchase a new proficiency should be three times the cost of improving a D4 stat die. That is, if improving a stat from D4 to D6 costs 2 help die, acquiring a new proficiency costs 6. The desire is that acquiring new proficiencies should adequately reflect the time and effort required to build the skills and knowledge necessary to become proficient in a new archetype of task.

Team Perks

Unlike proficiency and stat improvements, team perks are the one place where pooling help die to acquire an improvement is allowed. Where individual progression improves the strength of a given character, team perks provide specific circumstantial boons to the group to be used in times of dire need. These are expendable, either per-game, per-session or per-character, and should be balanced such that players must strongly consider the value of expending their use of the perk against the weight of not having the perk in a future event. Below, some example team perks are listed along with their recommended costs.

Group Check Re-Roll
Cost: 20 help die | Use: single (can be re-purchased)
When used, allows the group to re-attempt a group check. May not be used more than once consecutively.

Otherworldly Favor
Cost: 40 help die | Use: Once per character per session
When used, add a help die to the roll even if no character has any help die in their pool. Can be stacked with player help die.