Fast Learner, Slow Learner, and Downtime XP

Two of the most controversial Traits in BattleTech are Fast Learner and Slow Learner. Depending on who you talk to, they are Amazing, Necessary, Broken, Terrible, or even Discontinuity. I'm not terribly interested in weighing in value judgments on the design of A Time of War as a roleplaying system based on these two traits, but they are something that I need to address as a GM, because if you're playing with them (I understand some GM's simply convert them to Flex XP if they come up, and I admire the structure of A Time of War that it can seemlessly handle that) you need to be aware of the effect they will have on your party.

First, the math. The description of Fast Learner says that it provides a 10% discount on skill costs. That's something of a misprint -- the table on page 85 clearly shows a 20% cost savings. Slow Learner does the same in reverse. There's no compiled errata for A Time of War, but the word from Catalyst is that the table is correct and the skill description is wrong. Fast Learner costs 300 XP, while Slow Learner rebates 300 XP. The practical upshot of those two bits of information can be used to calculate that a character that spends more than 1,500 XP on skills can take Fast Learner for "free", while a character that takes less than 1,500 XP in skills might be well-served by the 300 XP granted by Slow Learner, presuming that they did not intend to apply XP past 1,500 to skills over the course of their campaign.

For reference, I have data at hand for three of my five players (the other two haven't turned in final drafts of their characters), and they are spending 2402 (Cameron), 1846 (Morgan), and 3008 (Henry) XP on Skill Points. Morgan saves about 160 XP, Henry about 400 XP.

Interestingly, Cameron isn't taking Fast Learner. Even after having the mathematics explained (It would free up some 180 XP on his character), he was still uninterested in the Trait for roleplaying purposes. The reasons for this have to do with the various different playstyles and goals my players bring to the table, and I'll cover that in another post.

The danger I hear repeated over and over again with regards to Fast Learner is that it sets the pace of the campaign -- if one player has Fast Learner, everybody else needs it just to keep up with the power curve. I disagree. I believe that Fast Learner is helpful for skill-based characters, but less so for characters who spend most of their XP on Traits and Attributes. Also, as mentioned before, A Time of War, as the games before it, are a fairly low-XP-granting system. Rather than speculate, let me do some math on how much XP I expect my characters to earn.

Going off the guidelines on page 332, I can expect a character to earn 14 or so XP per session, on average. In addition, I am implementing an after-action report system that should grant 10 more per session, I can envision each character getting 24 XP per session. Anticipating the campaign runs a bit long (20 sessions), we can expect each player to get 480 XP over the course of the entire campaign from session experience.

In addition, and because this game is expected to take a decade in-universe, we'll be using the Downtime XP rules (p 334). The Downtime XP rules are tricky, because the depend on three major factors: the character's intelligence, the character's Fast Learner/Slow Learner Trait, and the character's career.

I only expect the Resistance members, Anthony and Cameron, to get the 2x bonus from being able to pursue their careers while in the campaign. Averaging the roll values, we can expect Anthony and Cameron to get 0.61 and 1.33 XP per month, respectively, from practicing their careers.

Projecting for each character over the course of the campaign, we can calculate the following expected downtime earnings per month:

Player	Points From INT	Points from Career	Monthly Points
Cameron	3	1.33	4.33
Anthony	7	0.61	7.61
Morgan	4	0.00	4
Henry	5	0.00	5
Bert	4	0.00	4

The game is expected to run from December 3067 to August of 3078, 128 months. Downtime XP for the players thus comes out to: 974 (Anthony), 640 (Henry), 554 (Cameron), and 512 (Morgan and Bert).

This makes the campaign somewhat interesting in that the bulk of the XP earned will be downtime XP, roughly doubling (or in Anthony's case, tripling) the amount earned from the previous session. I'm debating whether I should amend these rules to try to bring the players closer in line with each other, or let the amounts stand.

Training is another item I'll have to manage, and provides even more of a complication in data management to properly execute, as it requires multiple character to be acting in concert on the intersession timescale. That, however, is a post for another day.