XP-free Advancement & Action Point Variant

[Psion]

As I am looking at the possibility of starting a PbP after GenCon, I thought I'd gather together some of my disparate house rules. One of the most telling ones that I have taken a shine too is my XP-free advancement rules. These rules started life as my "no death penalty" and "simplified advancement" rules, but took major cues from PirateCat's XP-less gaming rules. The main goals/implications of these rules are:

• Simplify advancement (eliminate need to calculate and track XP)
• Eliminate level spread in the party. The entire party is at the same level and nobody ever gets left behind.
• Take the sting out of PC death; bringing in a new character just as viable as having the character raised.

The Advancement and Action Point rules are as follows:

Character Advancement and Levels

Players don't track experience in this variant. The DM tracks level by the means of "encounter points" (which include both combat and non-combat challenges). The encounter points are not tracked for each character; there is a single encounter point allotment that applies to the whole group. When enough eps are received to advance, the whole group will level simultaneously.

Any effect that would drain XP or cause permanent level loss is applied to essence points instead (see below). If no essence points are available, the character has a negative level (using all the standard rules for such) that persists until the character pays off the "essence debt".

Note that XP costs can also be paid by the use of power components or "levin". This is the favored method for many NPCs. See Green Ronin's Advanced GMs Guide for details on acquiring and using Levin.

Tracking Encounter Points

The DM sets a "per level" encounter point rate; the standard is assumed to be 25 eps/level. The DM rewards the party 1-4 encounter points per meaningful encounter or goal. 2 points is considered a normal encounter, on the order of facing a creature with CR=party level. 1 point should be allowed for simple encounters or challenges without great risk or effort (but nothing so trivial as a single skill check unless the consequences were severe). 3 points is a difficult encounter (for combat challenges, CR > APL+2), and 4 points for climactic encounters. The 4 point award should be rare.

Keep in mind that EPs can be rewarded with no creature threat involved at all; all sorts of noncombat tasks can be tracked with this system.[sblock=Discussion: Advancement with EP's]The standard of 25 eps/level is based on the assumption from the 3.x DMG that it takes about 13 encounters to gain a level. Assuming an average ep award of 2 points, it should take 26 eps to gain a level. The number was altered to 25 so you can have a nice round number.

For the standard 25 ep/level advancement rate, this gives an advancement table like:

level eps
1.....0
2.....25
3.....50
4.....75
5.....100
6.....125
7.....150
8.....175
9.....200
10....225
(etc.)

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Action Points

PCs have action points in 3 categories: Fortune, Essence, and Karma. All types of action points operate as described in Unearthed Arcana (summarized here) except as noted below:[sblock=Action Point Categories]Fortune:

• All PCs start with 5 fortune points.
• Fortune points are restored to 5 points at each new level. Any fortune points unused from previous levels are lost.
• Fortune points have the standard action point functions.

Essence:

• Essence points represent a certain spiritual energy and will in exceptional individuals. All PCs start with Essence points equal to half their character level (round down).
• Like fortune points, essence point are restored at each level. In the case of essence points, at each new level, the essence point total is set to one half of the new character level.
• Essence points have the standard action point functions.
• In addition, essence point may be sacrificed to make an XP pool that may be used to pay for item creation, powerful spells, and XP draining effects. Each essence point sacrificed produces a pool of 1000 xp for this purpose.
• If the character ever suffers an effect that would cause them to lose a level (including being restored to life), they lose an essence point instead.
• Losing XP when a character has no XP pool or essence points causes the character to acquire a negative level. This negative level persists until the player gains an essence point to pay off the "debt". A character cannot voluntarily take an "essence debt" in this way.

Karma:

• Unlike fortune and essence points, PCs do not start with any Karma points and do not gain (or lose) any merely for advancing. Karma points are strictly awarded by the GM.
• Karma points survive the death of a character. If a character dies and is not restored to life, the karma points are transferred to the player's new character.
• Karma points can perform all the standard functions of action points.
• A character may use a karma point in the place of an essence point, but is never required to do so.

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This post will be echoed to my blog, which will be the "living" version of these rules that will be updated as changes occur to me.

 

[Clay_More]

Okay, I'm going to try again (already wrote a post once, but while writing it I got logged out and when asked to log in my entire post was lost.. *sigh*).

The system of EP as a way of handling level progression is actually quite elegant. I can see a number of benefits to it, in addition to the benefits you already noted. It is very easy to increase or decrease the level progression of your players, as you can easily adjust the amount of EP required to level (while doing the same with standard XP is wonky, to say the least). Adjust it to 15 or 20 per level if you want faster progression or make it 30 or more if you want slow progression. The progression also becomes completely linear (provided that the amount of EP given to the players remains constant) as compared to the wobbly progress of standard XP (I bet a mathematician would be able to calculate the disparities between the effort required between individual levels in normal XP progression).

Eliminating level spread is also a good idea (unless there is a level spread in your group for gameplay reasons). While level draining attacks could easily disrupt the lack of level spread, I can see that the system of essence points has an capacity to greatly negate that problem. I personally removed all level draining attacks in my own campaign and just made them Con-draining attacks instead, since level drain is a pet peeve of mine.


The action point system is also quite elegant, a bit more complex than the EP system but elegant. I've played with an action point system in both GURPS and Warhammer and it usually causes the effect mentioned in the description, it provides for more dynamic gameplay since the players have a tendency to take greater risks. Especially the essence points are a nice touch (even more so if you allow a player to "donate" essence points to another player for the purpose of crafting magic items, in a similar way that some rules exist for players to donate XP to the crafter, as a way of enabling a magic-using PC to craft items for the group without having to pay the hefty cost himself).

Anyways, to sum up, elegant house-rules, easy to implement, I might nick the action point rules for my own campaign.