LEB Discussion Thread '09

Add me to the list of non-Character Builder/DDI users. I'd much rather have myth-weavers if we are going to change how we do sheets.

Well my Dial up is slow but mighty and I finally got through everything so far.

I like the mixed approach to fast advancement LS. 1.5/year from time exp plus doubled exp awards seems to make sense to me. Way easier as a dm to work out ye olde parcels that way, and it should lend itself to the desired effect.

Also Hello everyone! I was not involved in LEB previously but I think most of you know me from L4W. I'm hoping to be nice and involved here as well

That being said I agree with Chairwoman Gene, in this setting I think Sharn really is the only logical place to use as our Hub. Its the only truly "metropolitan" city in Eberron, and definitely as was already mentioned the easiest to explain away PC's from all races and walks of life.

I'm in favor of an approval system much like that of L4W personally, although to reiterate maybe not quite as strict as we are over there. Switching to an approve/deny only system seems pointlessly limiting when we could instead just try and bias ourselves towards that kind of adjudication without actually making it a rule. Obviously judges like it better when they can just stamp things and say go, as do players. It just isnt always the right thing to do.

Also with the increased/accellerated advancement should we perhaps have a more formalised adventure submission process? With the accellerated exp, treasure parcels etc will be even more important then normal, so maybe we should look at being more specific about how adventure proposals should be laid out? Or are we all ok with leaving it to the judges to ask for more information when it's needed?

I've begun flushing out the LEB Charter on the wiki; I'm making it (hopefully) better designed as it is split into relevant sections (especially amongst Players and DMs) and such. This is going to take a bit and somethings still need to be settled in this thread.

In the interim, for those that want to start roleplaying, I've created a Tavern thread. Remember, only one character per player right now.

Sleepy now; I'll try to address LS and ukingsken thoughts tomorrow.

Woot! a tavern thread! Too bad I don't have a character yet.

But I DO have this shiny new eberron players guide just waiting to be used for the first time.

elecgraystone said:

Woot! a tavern thread! Too bad I don't have a character yet.

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No one does.

But, I'm assuming several have an idea for a character (or they have an old LEB character that has not ben converted yet). Since hanging out in the tavern doesn't require approval (as RPing in the tavern doesn't earn XP), folks can feel free to show up and start chatting in character. Once we have judges and approval in place, then we can approve those character and head out on adventures.

Lord Sessadore said:

So, the underlying motivation for this is that we want faster character advancement. What if we use another method besides time XP to achieve that?

This is a brainwave that just hit me. What if we set the time-based XP to be, say, 1.5 levels/year (or a different number, if that's too awkward for people), and then have DMs double the normal rewards for their adventure? Doing this, defeating a level 1 monster would earn the party 200 XP intead of 100, and so forth. Still use the normal values for figuring out encounter difficulty and so on, just double the values when awarding XP for the encounter.

This way, it's easier for the DMs to plan to give out more significant treasure (say, magic items instead of just massive sums of gold pieces). If we went with time XP at 2 levels/year and normal encounter XP, then roughly 1/3 of the XP in an adventure is going to be from encounters - this makes it quite difficult to adequately plan treasure ahead of time, since you don't know exactly how much time it's going to take, and even more so if the time XP is to be accounted for with time gold.

But, if time XP is 1.5 levels/year and encounter rewards are doubled, then the time XP:encounter XP ratio will be about 1.5:2 over the course of an adventure. In the end it shouldn't really matter what that ratio is if we have time gold, all I'm aiming for is giving DMs a bit more stable footing when planning treasure during the adventure proposal/start of adventure phase.

Thoughts?

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I had intended to write almost exactly this post, but what with one thing or another, it kind of escaped my feeble brain.

At any rate, I agree: In L4W, time XP ends up contributing roughly half of the overall xp, on average. I'd like it better if it were more like 1/3 or 1/4. It's more satisfying to level based on your character overcoming challenges than just by time served. But that ratio can only be achieved by a) adventuring faster -- nice, but not necessarily practical, b) reducing time XP, or c) increasing xp for everything else.

Doubling XP has its advantages, especially in being simple. Could make for shorter addies, though. Parcels would also have to be given out at twice the rate (10 parcels every 5 encounters, instead of 10). Quest XP (which I haven't seen a lot of in L4W) should be included here. My only concern is to make sure DMs give out XP often enough so that players don't "skip" a level. Of course, that last bit might just be a bias of mine.

Still leaves the issue of how time XP factors in wealth and how this will effect DM rewards. Going by the modified parcels on page 125 of the DMG, a single person party (which time XP is rewarded) should get in one level:
- Magic item n+2
- 13/9 * Magic item n in gold
For a first level character, thats 100gp per month for time XP that's worth 1/12 a level per month or 132gp for a level 2 character—that's higher than the same proposal in L4W (i.e., total wealth/5/12). Interesting. How about this: The goal is amortized over our period of time, but the item be awarded every full period (12 months or 8 months). Thus, there is a big *bang* for staying with the character. Any thoughts on this approach to time rewards?

I'll be putting more text on the wiki tonight.

If we increase XP awards do we also need time XP? If the goal is advancing the characters faster one or the other should be more than enough.

hornedturtle said:

If we increase XP awards do we also need time XP? If the goal is advancing the characters faster one or the other should be more than enough.

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I thought about that, but time XP is a form a player reward and serves to balance out the fact that some DMs run games slower than others. It encourages players to stay with the game.

Of course, with double XP awards, we can just nix Time XP as such, but there there is less of a reward structure for players (other than player, of course). Also means advancement would be about as fast as L4W (as time+normal XP is roughly what we'd get with just double XP in LEB). I'm open to feedback on this.

FYI: I've put up a draft of the Player's Guide. Character creation, player rewards, and such haven't been put up yet, but the skeleton is there.