The XP System

[Draco_Argentum]

Loseing levels is a dumb mechanic.

Catharz, your complaints apply equally to the current xp system. Only since it also includes xp costs its even more messed up.

[RandomCasualty]

1091430651[/unixtime]]Loseing levels is a dumb mechanic.

Possibly, but I think it's a nice mechanic in that people fear it, and that's the idea. I can't offhand think of a better mechanic for generating the "you really don't want to die" atmosphere.

[Sma]

You don´t come back, or even worse under the current system: Lose all equipment.

[Username17]

Losing a level is a shit mechanic, especially in regards to the LA system in which it can actually end up being in your favor to lose a level after being infected with lycanthropy.

The only thing I could really see as a problem would be people missing a session - as we know how thouroughly that can fvck up a party (I've seen level disparities as high as four levels). I say: just get rid of the level imbalance altogether.

Simply assume that when people aren't around they are studying or adventuring or something off camera. Use the Chronotrigger XP system - when people go up levels, everyone goes up levels. And it doesn't matter where they are or what they are doing.

Next story arc, you are a higher level, regardless of how much you actually participated in the last one. Using Levels as a reward or penalty is stupid, you play the game to have fun. Showing up and going on adventures is its own reward, and there's no reason to make people who had to work late last week have to suffer with a character who is outmatched by the next adventure.

Character level is supposed to be a gauge of how powerful the party is, and what they can deal with (how good a measure it is can be debated on one of the many threads about fixing the Fighter). The only reason for it to ever change is to make the characters different over time so that the game does not stagnate. Not to reward people for stuff.

-Username17

[The_Hanged_Man]

1091293368[/unixtime]]

IMO, it would be so complicated that in the end it would end up being "whatever the DM damn well feels like" when all was said and done.

So who cares? For all I care, the players could simply write down how much XP they thought they deserved and everyone could get the average - it just doesn't make any difference. The only thing that really matters is preference. That is, if characters advance too quickly they will have a difficult time appreciating (or even understanding) their abilities, and if characters advance too slowly they will feel frustrated by their perceived lack of advancement.

What the line actually is, will necessarily be in radically different places for different groups. That being said, why have XP at all?

For good and experienced DM's, it's obviously fine to get rid of XP and do whatever seems right. I hand out whatever XP I damn well want to.

BUT - I can only do that b/c there were guidelines to follow that I understood and used until I knew enough to do whatever I damn well pleased. You have to have some system to based things on. That IMO is the beauty of D&D, it has a system that you can then alter.

So, assuming there is going to be some sort of system, IMO it should be a general one, not a bunch of strict rules like the current ECL system. That would quickly break down and be unworkable. Not everybody starts as Frank Trollman, bending rules to his will.

[Username17]

BUT - I can only do that b/c there were guidelines to follow that I understood and used until I knew enough to do whatever I damn well pleased.

How so? The first time a meaningful "system" for handing out XP was established in D&D was in the year 2000. Before 3rd edition, "give out whatever the hell you feel like" was the system. Heck, for thirty years there wasn't even a guideline to hand out equal XP to different players.

People started playing this game, had children, and taught them how to play this game before we had a system for XP distribution. I think it's pretty clear at this point that we don't actually need one.

-Username17

[Desdan_Mervolam]

Sure there was. It was a crappy system, but it was there. That goblin you just killed was worth a set amount of XP that the Monster Manual told your DM to give out. Your wizard got a set, book-determined XP reward for each spell he cast effectivly. Your theif got set, book determined XP for sneaking up behind the dark knight and shiving him in the kidney. And if he managed to swipe the Dark Knight's magic sword beforehand, he got more XP, also set down by the book. In first edition, as you pointed out, you got XP for each point of gold you managed to dig out from under the Red Dragon's smouldering corpse, but in first edition, it was assumed that you were out for money, and that your goal, regardless of class, alignment and background, was to end the game sitting on the biggest pile of money you could get your hands on. These systems are no less of a train wreck than you said they are, but they are set out in stone and clearly available to be used. Just because they suck doesn't mean they don't exist. It just means we wish it didn't exist.

-Desdan

[canamrock]

What I think Frank is trying to say is that the older XP distribution systems were so arbitrarily set that it was no 'system' in the sense of interaction. If you created a new monster, you'd probably go and compare its XP value to roughly equally difficult monsters. In 3E, you just find its CR, and it does a lot of the paperwork for you. Fair treasure? Fair XP? It's not perfect even here, but it can go through and give this information a lot more quickly than if you had to do it manually. That's the difference a real system makes.

And if that's not what he was going for, roughly, I'm not sure.

[The_Hanged_Man]

1091471078[/unixtime]]

BUT - I can only do that b/c there were guidelines to follow that I understood and used until I knew enough to do whatever I damn well pleased.

How so? The first time a meaningful "system" for handing out XP was established in D&D was in the year 2000. Before 3rd edition, "give out whatever the hell you feel like" was the system. Heck, for thirty years there wasn't even a guideline to hand out equal XP to different players.

People started playing this game, had children, and taught them how to play this game before we had a system for XP distribution. I think it's pretty clear at this point that we don't actually need one.

-Username17

That's not true at all.

The system as I remember it was bad, but had rules governing it. YOu got XP for killing monsters based on hit dice (stupid, but there you go). You got XP for lewt. You put the numbers into a big pot, and divided by party members. Then there were some rules about "if one player did all the work, it gets all the XP," and "if one player didn't meaningfullly contribute, it gets no XP."

This obviously bad system formed the basis for everybody's houseruled XP system, because you knew that X encounters w/ orcs should get a group to 2nd level, then X encounters w/ bugbears should get a group to 3rd level, and so on. So you fiddled with it and got something you liked.

That's all I'm saying a story-XP system needs. It needs a framework to start with. Seriously, if you don't have something that says "Do X, you get Y XP," how will any new player know what XP should be?

[Username17]

YOu got XP for killing monsters based on hit dice (stupid, but there you go).

Not quite, each monster had an "XP value" which was some number plus some other number per hit point they had (so a Flynd who rolled more hit points was worth more XP, while a Flynd who was equipped with a +3 Morningstar was not). But some creatures didn't have a listed XP value, and there existed multiple competing systems for deterining how much they were worth, which ranged from their number of hit dice (retarded) to the (I'm not making this up) dungeon level they were encountered on. So an enemy wizard might be worth more or less experience based upon whether he had to walk up a flight of stairs to fight the party or not.

You got XP for lewt.

This varied. Getting XP for lewt was at various times (often in the same edition) referenced as an optional rule, a normal rule, and a special (possibly optional) ability of Thieves.

there were some rules about "if one player did all the work, it gets all the XP," and "if one player didn't meaningfullly contribute, it gets no XP."

And some other stuff about how you supposed to encourage the players to snipe at each other or bring you Pizza in exchange for more XP. This was Gygax we are talking about.

This obviously bad system formed the basis for everybody's houseruled XP system, because you knew that X encounters w/ orcs should get a group to 2nd level, then X encounters w/ bugbears should get a group to 3rd level, and so on.

Well, actually noone knew how many encounters with Orcs were supposed to take you to second level, which is precisely my point. Since the "system" was so flawed that noone even agreed how it was "supposed" to work - it may as well have not existed. In actual practice, the number of encounters required to get a Fighter to 2nd level was wildly disparate in different play groups. Not only because some people wanted faster or slower advancement, but because the writing was so bad that people couldn't even agree as to what it was supposed to say.

Who here remembers what an "Experience Group" is?

-Username17

[Draco_Argentum]

1091488319[/unixtime]]
That's all I'm saying a story-XP system needs. It needs a framework to start with. Seriously, if you don't have something that says "Do X, you get Y XP," how will any new player know what XP should be?

Right now its meant to work out to 13.33 encounters of EL = party level gives you a level up.

This can be redone as "you get a level up every x sessions". xp system finished.

[Absentminded_Wizard]

I heard somewhere that the 3.x XP system was supposed to get an average party (four people) from 1st to 20th level in one year of weekly gaming. 52 weekly sessions/20 levels = 2 3/5. So we can assume a standard advancement rate of 1 level every 2-3 sessions and use that as a baseline. The tricky part is working out guidelines to get that rate of advancement consistently.

Once you've got that worked out, CR becomes less of a problem, since it's just a guideline to determine appropriate encounters to throw at the PCs instead of the basis for character advancement.

This assumes, of course, that you don't find an alternative to XP costs and level drain and other kinds of mechanics and just ditch XP.

[Username17]

The tricky part is working out guidelines to get that rate of advancement consistently.

How so? Here's some guides:

At the end of each adventure arc (usually about every 2-3 playing sessions), every player character in the campaign advances one level.

I can't think of anything easier. It's hard, perhaps, in a computer game, which tends to not have "playing sessions" per se, but in a table top game you really can simply put your foot down and define your advancement rates in terms of your goals for advancement rate and it works fine.

-Username17

[Absentminded_Wizard]

I was talking about making an alternate XP system based on adventure objectives/roleplaying. If you go with an XP-less advance-when-the-DM-says system, you don't even need a benchmark. You can just advance everybody at a rate that's comfortable for the DM and players. You can even be inconsistent, with 3 adventures to get to 2nd level and 5 to get to 3rd just because you've got so much good 2nd-level material, for example.

[Username17]

The proble with any kind of XP system in a level advancement system is that you really are playing an "advance when the DM tells you to", except that it's abstracted through some math sufficiently complicated that not all DMs actually know when they are telling you to advance.

In a point-based system, the XP is often affected as character points (except in really shitty character advancement systems like White Wolf, where the XP is an entirely separate system completely independent from the character building system) - and that means that the characters are advancing a little bit all the time, and the math just has to be simple enough so that the DM actually knows how much he is advancing your character when he does so.

-Username17