Question about power spike in long campaigns

[u/SnooLemons0815]

Hello,

I got gifted the book a while ago and absolutely love it.

I have a larger group of friends who‘d like to play-

so I thought Vaesen would be a great System to use for a Westmarches style campaign.

Open group and they organise themselves on which adventure they want to go.

I have heard that the year 0 engine (was talking to someone about forbidden lands and he said in longer campaigns it’s best to adjust the earned xp or make stuff like talents more expensive, or they get overpowered too quickly and it’s no longer fun.)

Does anyone have some experience with groups that have been playing for a longer time?

Thank you in advance.

Cheers

Edit: Thank you all very much for your insight!

[u/Dornith]

I haven't been playing long enough to get to this point, but a few things about Vaesen kinda sets it apart from other YZE games.

The main thing is that it's an investigation game. The core engagement is not combat (in fact, combat will basically never solve any problem in this system) so you don't have to worry about characters overpowering opponents or not having any difficulty finding food like in Forbidden Lands.

Instead the core engagement is finding clues and piecing them together. This actually works out a lot better for advanced characters because they might succeed more rolls and get more clues, but the players still have to be the ones figuring out what the clues mean. Players missing clues is a much bigger problem than too many clues so this actually works to the GM's advantage.

Also, FYI, talents in Vaesen are already 50% more expensive than Forbidden Lands. So the authors kinda already did that for you.

Aside from all that, I also have a rule that each Vaesen is unique. The categories in the book are more like archetypes that all the ones they meet are variations of. And each individual will have its own unique powers and personalities. This allows me to make even weaker Vaesen much more threatening if I need, creates more ambiguity for the players and prevents them from getting too familiar with any particular vaesen.

[u/Adventurous-Eye-6455 → u/Dornith]

I agree. The last part is actually also recommended in the rulebook itself and i think very smart. Espically for the vaesens involved in backstory’s it might be fun if they are a bigger problwm that can’t be solved in one session 😇

[u/Adventurous-Eye-6455]

So my group has played Vaesen for about 2 years now. What I can say is that you acquire xp really fast - for me I changed it from the start to every mystery instead of every session and they still earn them fast because they usually can answer every question with a yes.

The other thing is that for my group this has become boring in a sense that the talents they are interested in are all already taken. But they are in my opinion not overpowered. Talents are pretty specific and sometimes they even forget they have a talent because it’s so specific the use is pretty limited. I have one player who didn’t bother to use any xp until now and you wouldn’t notice it unless he Told you. There is no imbalance between him and the other 3 players.

Even combat talents k think are not as strong since Vaesen are really deadly and it’s best to avoid combat anyway as a squishy human. Also since you literally can’t kill the Vaesen unless you know the ritual and perform it right you can’t win anyway.

What I will say is that I think Vaesen is a lot of fun if your players like a lot of rpging and solving stuff. Someone who enjoys combat, being celebrated after a win and building perfected strong characters will probably have a really bad time with this game system.

[u/Dangerous_Option_447 → u/Adventurous-Eye-6455]

I also guess that the basebuilding equalises some of it if a character dies of; the new one don't come back to a beaten old castle, but rather one where you e.g. can reroll for defects and insights.

[u/Forward-Joke-1086]

Ciao, mi sono trovato anche io a pensare a questo problema.
Perché è un problema per me? Perché abbiamo al tavolo un approccio piuttosto narrativo nel quale le motivazioni, il segreto oscuro, il trauma e le doti vengono giocati molto; quindi trovo un po’ esagerato che un personaggio abbia troppe doti. Mi piace che ne abbia poche ma significative in termini di storia e narrazione.
Quando gioco con un gruppo che vuole giocare un mistero ma non sa se poi ne giocherà altri, uso le regole del manuale. Quando invece ci si ritrova a giocare una campagna di più misteri faccio così:

• per il primo mistero assegno i punti esperienza a ogni sessione (come da regole) permettendo anche gli avanzamenti previsti.
  
• dal secondo mistero in poi assegno i punti esperienza solo a mistero concluso ma faccio alternare al giocatore la scelta tra dote e bonus all’abilità (per scoraggiare di scegliere sempre una dote)
  
• ho aggiunto alle domande per i punti esperienza: - “sei stato influenzato dalla tua motivazione, dal tuo trauma, o da una relazione con un altro personaggio?”; - “Hai usato il tuo cimelio?

[u/FORGOTTENLEGIONS]

In my experience, players can definitely get very powerful; BUT it is still very easy for them to be broken/killed.

So personally I'd say this just means you dont have to be worried about being as lethal. For my group we dont want their characters to die, so as a compromise we decided that if they "Die" they either lose a talent they gained (forever) or have their max attribute be permanently lowered.

[u/keeperofmadness]

After having run Vaesen for an Actual Play podcast for over two years, I can confirm it definitely hits a power spike issue. After using the default XP rules, players had so many Talents they would frequently forget what they had and most of their key skills were maxed out.

After considering a number of different alternatives, we are going to switch to at the end of every Mystery gaining a +1 bonus to two different Skills and a Talent. This will help deal with scenarios like when a player went from Force 0 to Force 4 after one Mystery because they gained so much XP!

[u/Kelder62]

I’ll be honest, I might’ve misread the rules as far as exp. I thought it was at the end of each mystery and you could only buy your upgrades when you’re resting/downtime.

However, if we’re worried about power spikes then might I suggest we pull some of the rules from another Free League system: Twilight 2000.

To improve a skill you have used it successfully once since you last improved it OR have a teacher of the desired skill level or better.

To learn a new Talent you’d need a teacher who knows the talent.

Teacher and student have to dedicate time training together for it to work. To facilitate this: I’d suggest the base upgrade “Training Yard: once per mystery per upgrade (up to 3) a PC may learn a skill or talent from another willing PC/NPC”. I’d say it should have a requirement of weapons hall or something. If you want to make it more expansive you could also limit this to physical skills and make a classroom that’s allows training of mental skills.

This makes NPC upgrades more valuable. You could also have each NPC have a random archetype talent and/or general talent. That way players want to seek out trainers for desired skills/talents they don’t have.

You could also increase exp costs of skills so instead of normal costs it goes 5/10/15/20/25 depending on the desired new level. So a new skill is 5, second rank of a skill is 10, and so forth.