Leveling and Power Creep
So I began working on the way XP works within resonance cascades, character creation points, and how resonance threshold will trigger cascades based on level and xp. Turns out that it wasn’t so easy to figure out so I turned to AI to help me graph my ideas out. So what’s the problem?
I am not entirely sure what rules sound too harsh for such a flexible game. I want there to be a cap at lv 10. I would prefer a soft cap where leveling beyond 10 seems impossible but isn’t. However, there’s no elegant equation to do this. Maybe a hard cap is necessary.
Right now I am exploring these ideas:
• Leveling past 10 should feel impossible or unnecessary
• Hard cap at 10?
• Max of any attribute is 10, so a lv 10 character with 10 flux can earn up to 200 xp per cascade.
• The benchmark is 3 flux, the most you can have at character creation.
X = Level of character, Y = Resonance used in a cascade, Z = Flux
Amount of xp needed to level up: 2x²
While the amount of xp you gain from a resonance: y*x
Amount of Resonance possible to use: z+x
Turns out this doesn’t work as well as I thought. Intead I may keep everything the same, but instead of an equation for XP needed, I will simply use a table.
| From Level | To Level | XP Needed |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 6 |
| 2 | 3 | 15 |
| 3 | 4 | 36 |
| 4 | 5 | 70 |
| 5 | 6 | 100 |
| 6 | 7 | 162 |
| 7 | 8 | 280 |
| 8 | 9 | 396 |
| 9 | 10 | 540 |
If you have any recommendations let me know, or if you know how to graph this out in a way that makes sense and can help me see its trajectory that would be awesome,
Something else I need to consider is how Flux is used to generate background, ability, and expertise qualities. Maybe they should be more expensive since you can scale flux to increase all 3 at once.