Spending XP on the Fly

In my weekly Star Wars campaign, I’ve implemented a house rule that has worked out pretty well so far.

In Force & Destiny and other FFG Star Wars games you don’t gain levels. Instead, you have XP you gain that you can spend in order to increase skills, talents, and other abilities.

As the group prepared for a particularly tricky jump to Jedha, the pilot of the group was worried he’d fail his Astrogation check. So, after looking at his Astrogation skill and his unused XP, he decided to spend it to increase his skill by 2, and made the roll. He succeeded with flying colors.

During last week’s session, the group was exploring an abandoned Jedi temple on Devaron and came upon a sealed door. There was no handle, no visible means of entry. One of the players surmised that with the temple being run by Jedi, perhaps the door was set up with an internal mechanism that needed to have a switch flip using the Force in order to open it. He immediately spent some XP to give him the ability to do so. He reached out with the Force, activated the switch, and the door slid open.

There are quite a few games that give you the ability to spend XP to increase your abilities, and usually, the rules state that you have to spend some time between sessions, or your character must take some downtime to use that XP.

The way our group does it, it feels a bit more epic and Star Wars-y. With the case of the Move power, we assume that all the Jedi have, in the past, moved around little rocks at the Jedi Academy. However, it wasn’t until he really needed it that he reached through the Force to tap into his ability to use that power for the first time in a dire situation.

When planning his Astrogation check, the other character had to look back on all his training, do a little bit of mathematics and such, and dig deep to be sure this was the correct hyperjump to make.

So, how do you make it interesting?

You can’t just let the players spend the XP, you need to make it feel important. Describe how they reached back into their training. Perhaps create a short flashback scene that shows them using the ability for the first time. You could describe the books they are pouring over in the library before they make a Knowledge (Lore) check.

Have I done any of this when my players have spent the XP? No. No, I’ll admit I haven’t. But I’m going to be doing so moving forward, because it’s much more interesting.

I know there are a lot of games out there that let you increase your character’s abilities incrementally. Leave a comment below with the ones you know about, and I’ll put together a big list and talk about how this could work in those games.