Growth and Experience

In any RPG it's important to start with a character who can stay alive and hopefully grow in experience throughout the campaign. When I joined the campaign I am in now I considered my starting character carefully. After all 32-point characters can die easily, even when fighting another relatively weak character or NPC.

I took advantage of a lists of TFT Archetypes posted by Carlisle Childress and created my character. I wanted one that was balanced between strength (ST), dexterity (DX), and intelligence (IQ) so I choose a Town Guard and named him Krupke for the police officer of the same name in West Side Story.

ST11 DX11(10) IQ10 MA10(8) Knife, Sword, Polearms(2), Shield, Shield Expertise(2), Unarmed Combat I, Alertness(2) Job: Police Regular
Spear(1d), Short sword(2d-1), Dagger, Small Shield(2*), Cloth Armor(1)

I made one small change. Instead of a dagger, I gave him a billy stick to club ruffians with when not using his spear or short sword. Krupke got cut up a lot in the early encounters with nuisance creatures, orcs, and goblins. Cloth armor and a small shield only absorb two hits of damage, but he stayed alive.

Our GM didn't hand out large piles of experience points (XP) in the first sessions either and rightly so. We were green and we showed it. We hadn't earned lots of points yet. After two sessions I had enough points though to expend 100 XP to raise my DX. I figured if I could increase the odds of hitting the other guy first, then maybe he wouldn't hit me. The next 100 XP went to ST. 

About that time Krupke was getting dissatisfied with his spear. Spears have an advantage in a charge attack, but otherwise only do one die (1d6) of damage. I traded mine in for a broadsword. I got lucky there because I soon discovered it was a +1 damage fine broadsword.

To bring this post to a conclusion the next 200 XP went to DX and I changed to leather armor and after collecting more XP I spent 300 on IQ again. That brings Krupke to ST12, DX 13(11), IQ11. He will have the intelligence to begin studying the Weapon Expertise talent which cost 1500 XP.

Growth takes time in this game and if you grow one attribute too quickly you do so at the expense of the others.