The Palladium Game System: How I Would Redo it! Part 5: Character Classes, Experience Points, and Level Up.

Due to semi popular demand I continue this project, though by this point its not really even vaguely like Kevvy S.' game system other than trying to not fall into whatever traps and bits of failure the Palladium system has become. Maybe I will come up with some fancypants name for it?

CLASSES:

In our system there are only three classes, Soldier, Scholar, and Sorcerer.

Soldiers are your fighting men and women who get on the front lines and do battle. From Conan to Han Solo to Rick Hunter these are the guys and gals who make with the killy.

Scholars are your learned types who prefer to use their wits and knowledge more than bashing things about. This is the province of Sherlock Holmes, Nene Romanova, and Chief Tyrol. They might not be as tough in a fight, but they know what needs to be known, or they can turn your Aston Martin into a sea plane.

Sorcerers are those people gifted with the ability to put their Ki into action. From Gandalf to Professor Xavier to Yoda, their abilities to use Psionic powers no matter what they actually call it is their calling.

What do classes do? Well, your class determines what Powers you may select from without having to use a Talent to do so. (If you want to play say, Indiana Jones you might use a Talent to let his Scholar class take Soldier powers. Psylocke of the X Men is clearly a Sorcerer who took a talent to take Soldier powers. You get the drift!) Otherwise classes mostly determine how many skill points, damage, and psi points you get per level. The advancement works as listed below:

Soldier: 5 damage, 1 psi point, 3 skill points.
Scholar: 2 damage, 2 psi points, 5 skill points.
Sorcerer: 1 damage, 5 psi points, 3 skill points.

Level Ups: At 1000, 2000, 4000, 8000, 16000, 32000, 64000, 128000, 256000, 512000, and then 1 million additional experience points thereafter your character goes up a level. This is when you gain the above increases to your character, and as mentioned previously, depending on what level you may gain more combat actions, talents, and powers.

At the GM's discretion, the above listed values can be switched around where your classes' highest value increase can take 1 or more points from the other 2 categories. Thus a Soldier could choose to not get any skill or psi points and get 9 more damage this level. I recommend at least requiring 1 point to stick in each of the 3 categories.

Gained combat actions as mentioned can be sacrificed for another power and 5 skill points. You can also sacrifice a power for another talent and 5 skill points if you wish.

Advancing Skill Points: A skill has 6 levels. 0 (untrained), 1 (hobbyist), 2 (basically trained), 3 (Veteran), 4 (Expert), 5 (Master).
As mentioned in the skill section most skills can be used untrained though depending on the skill it is an additional -5 or -10 penalty before other modifiers are taken into account. To buy a skill at level 1 it costs 1 skill point. The value of the next level is the skill point cost to advance it. (Thus a level 4 skill costs 10 skill points in total.) You can save skill points from level to level if you need to learn a skill that costs more points than you gained this level.

Remember your Mental attribute is how many total skills you may know however there are talents and powers to give you either additional skills over this limit, or to give you multiple skills for a cheaper cost. (For example the Mech Jockey power would give you Operation: Combat Mecha, Mecha Close Combat Weapons, and Mecha Ranged Weapons all at level 2 as the cost for a power. One power spent and it saved you 9 skill points!)

Experience Points: Like many RPGs it takes experience points to level up. Its not realistic but its simple and everyone knows how these work. In our system a level 1 opponent is worth 100 experience points if defeated by one character. (Thus if 4 PCs defeated a single level 1 opponent its 25 xp per PC!) Every level of the opponent doubles the XP gained. (Thus a level 7 enemy is worth 6400 XP.) Non levelled opponents or things like role playing or solving tricky problems can be worth whatever the GM wants as a basis for however fast he or she wants the PCs to advance. But woe be it to the GM who would give a level 10 party a measly 1000 xp each for say, throwing the One Ring into the Pit of Doom. That's just being stingy!