An off topic question - help with some math?

This is a non-COH question, and if it's in the wrong place, I apologize.

I'm creating a character for a Vampire game. He's an old character, being many hundreds of years old, so he should have a good deal of experience to spend prior to play.

In general, people get around 1xp per year from day to day life, but as the Vampire gets older, the amount of xp he gets should diminish.

What I need is a formula that I can use to calculate starting xp for older characters, where I can input the character's age, and get an xp amount as a result.

As I say, the amount gained per year should diminish as the age increases. I just don't know how to caculate diminishing returns like this.

Any help is appreciated.

You're going to have to provide at least some general information as to how you want the drop off handled. Myself or someone on this forum can probably provide a general formula for you but we need a idea as to the type of curve you're looking for.

1. Is there a minimum age at which the vampire starts losing XP? (we don't need the value bu need to know that it exists)
2. Is there a minimum XP a vampire gets per year or does it eventually go to zero?
3. Do you want a steady loss of XP/year or a 2nd order equation where the rate of decrease increases?

Well, the decline should be slow enough at first that during the typical life of a human being you would still round up to 1xp per year (ie .5 or better rounds up). However, the rate should increase as the age of the vampire increases.

I'm not sure that helps, but I'm not used to wrapping my brain around this kind of calculation.

As an example (and this isn't definitive, just descriptive), during the first 100 years, 1xp/yr. Thereafter, it would start to take more and more time to get that 1xp.

I guess what I'm looking for is a formula into which I can plug the numbers (if I can figure out what numbers I would need to plug in).

Maybe I'm looking at it the wrong way around?

Maybe what I need to do is find a formula to calculate increasing cost (ie you need more years to get 1xp, the more years you have)?

That's a very general formula you're going to get from that, but I'll give it a shot.

Okay first assumption: You get 1 xp per year as a human. Humans can live 100 years if they're lucky. The first 100xp are not diminished.

So we begin. In this formula "y" is the amount of xp:
y=100

That takes care of the first 100 years. Let's decrease the xp by 10% per century. That means you should get 90xp for the next 100 years.
y=100+0.9*x

Where y is total xp and x is number of years -100.
So a vampire 662 years old would have 605.8xp.

To get the number used for the actual decay of xp per century, do this:
[Decay] = (100 - [Percent to Decay per Century]) / 100
[Decay] must be a number between 0 and 1.

Then plug that number into this:
XP = [Freebie Years] + [1 - [Decay] * ([Years] - [Freebie Years])

Examples:

A 500 year old vampire will have this much xp at various decay rates:
10% = 460
25% = 400
50% = 300
70% = 220
95% = 120

A 1000 year old will have this much xp:
10% = 910
25% = 775
50% = 550
70% = 370
95% = 145

Since it's more or less an estimate you're doing, you shouldn't need anything more complicated than that. Tailor it to suit you vampire.

I hope it's useful to you.

Is this oWoD or nWoD? For oWoD, you might try checking out the Dark Ages: Vampire book, since elder vampire characters are more common in that game, so it's more likely they'd have rules for it written out in the sourcebook.

Exalted, for example, has a table in the Experience section for elder Exalts, or for long periods of downtime between sessions:

Code:

Age                  Max Essence  Annual Exp*  Base Exp**
Exaltation to 99***  5            10           None
100 to 249           6            5            +[(100 - Exaltation age) x 10]
250 to 499           7            4            +750
500 to 999           8            3            +1,000
1,000+               9+           2            +1,500

* Character receives half this amount for downtime between sessions
** Quick cumulative total for starting a character in this age bracket
*** Calculate beginning with exaltation age, not birth

While it's a different game, it's the same publisher and the same core system, so it might help you

Old World of Darkness. Bloodlines, the video game, actually.

Thanks guys, I appreciate the help!

~giftxp, I take it?

*looks at the numbers*

Ohhhhh...

*confused*

Yeah, console commands ftw. I just didn't want to give an arbitrary amount of xp, and 1xp/yr is too much, when the character is hundreds of years old.

XP = [Freebie Years] + [1 - [Decay] * ([Years] - [Freebie Years])

Outstanding, this... However, I wonder if there's a way to wrinkle it so the rate of decay increases as they age?

I bet Arcanaville could figure out something simple for this without breaking a sweat. :X

Quote:

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