Merging Hero Points and Experience

Arguably, Hero Points (aka Action Points, Karma, Fate, Bennies, etc.) and Experience Points are two very different types of player rewards, serving different purposes. But do they have to be? I’ve managed to combine them under a few different systems with a high degree of success. Here’s why you might consider doing it, and how to do it with the system of your choice.

How I Did It
When I first tried this, the system I was using had HP and XP on roughly the same scale; they’d automatically get 2-3 HP at the start of each adventure, and then get 2-3 XP at the end of the adventure. My initial thought was to just remove the automatic HP award and replace it with a merit-based HP system — you do something cool, you roll really well, you get a HP. The goal was to motivate the players to roleplay and do cool stuff. To offset this lack of up-front HP, I allowed them to use XP as emergency HP. This drove an interesting change of behavior; did they want to spend the XP for an immediate benefit, instant gratification as it were, or bank it for a permanent benefit. The players liked it, because it really made them think about the balance between the character’s in-game goals and their own desire to munchkin up. It was intriguing enough that I permanently made the change. HP were awarded for doing cool stuff throughout the game, but also at the end of the game for completing the objective. They could be used as either HP in-game for short-term benefits like rerolls, extra degrees of success, or dramatic editing, or banked until they could be spent to increase abilities or buy new ones.

Controlling Advancement
There are times when it makes sense for characters to be more or less “static” within a setting. They shouldn’t logically “level up” and become more and more powerful. Combining HP and XP solves this problem, as it gives the players the opportunity to burn the points on things other than character advancement. There’s a different sort of power creep to be aware of however, and that’s potentially ending up with so many HP that they can get away with anything. Depending upon the system and how HP can be used, you may want to initiate a cap on how many they can accrue, or only allow a certain number to carry over from adventure to adventure. You also want to manage your rewards, which I’ll get to in a moment.

Player Decisions, Choices, and Control
There have been times when a character I’m playing is, in my opinion, perfect just the way he is. I know, I’m a bit of a freak in that regard. I felt that “levelling up” or gaining new, or higher-rated, abilities would ruin the essence of who the character was and what made them fun to play. Yet I was forced to advance. Merging HP and XP would have solved that. I would have jumped at the chance to keep my character from getting killed by spending points to make the villain miss, or to do some dramatic editing to the storyline, rather than because they’d become an expert in combat.

It Rewards Roleplaying
Conversely, you’ve got the character that’s not really good at much because they’re low-level, but the player has a lot of great character bits. They may not be able to slay a who tribe of goblins, but they did other things that advanced the plot and kept the story going. Give them HP for that. By letting them spend HP as XP, they can power up so that they’re able to fight goblins without getting smeared.

How To Do It
First, figure out how many HP are typically awarded during a game session. Then figure out how many XP are given out. Divide the XP by the HP; that’s your conversion. For example, if you typically give out 5 HP and 500 XP, then 1 HP = 100 XP. I suggest using the lower number, as it’s easier to track, and letting the players do the conversion. In this example, you’d end up giving out 10 points per session. Understanding that players can use that as either twice the XP or twice the HP they’re used to and dramatic power creep can occur, you may want to halve either the total reward (5 points instead of 10) or halve the value per point (1 HP = 50 XP instead of 100 XP), depending on the problem you’re solving for.

Make It Tangible
A lot of games use poker chips or other tokens to track HP. Traditionally, XP is just a bunch of numbers on paper. By using the smaller number, players get tangible tokens to fiddle with. They can throw them onto the table when they use them as HP, they can cash them in to the GM when they power up, and they (or the GM) can write down the total they’ll start the next session with at the game’s end.

Obviously, this isn’t for everyone, but hopefully it will put some ideas in your head on how to manipulate existing systems to get different styles of play out of them.