Proposal: Adjustments to Time Experience

Tenchuu · Aug 28, 2010

Proposal: Adjust Time Experience in two ways:
Part 1: Increase the amount of time experience given per month by a factor of 2. So, instead of a character gaining a level's worth of time experience after 1 year, they would gain it after 6 months.
Part 2: Remove the policy that time experience is only given in whole month increments. Ideally, the charter would list experience-per-day amounts.

The Short Rationale: make gaining experience more fair for all players and easier to track for DMs.

The Long Rationale: Since games run at different paces, players are not gaining EXP evenly/balanced. If you're lucky and you get a fast-paced DM and player group, you will level much faster than someone who is in a group with slow posters. Since it's a living setting, that's kind of unfair. Time experience tries to fix this, but it is inadequate (see examples from R1 here).

For part 2, it would make a DMs job of tracking Time experience easier. By removing the whole month policy, a DM could always grant time experience at the end of each encounter. For example, if the first encounter of a multi-encounter adventure only takes 22 days, it doesn't make sense to wait 8 days to award the time experience (or more likely, wait until the next encounter, or the end of the adventure). It also it more easy for the players to have all rewards given at one time, so updating their sheets is easier.

renau1g · Aug 28, 2010

I think 4x is a bit too much for most games, I'd prefer more like double, which worked out very well for regular xp. Otherwise 1.5 months of DM'ing would = 1 level and my 33 credits could take Murphy or Kane close to Epic.

Tenchuu · Aug 28, 2010

Any increase would be better than none, but I would still advocate for more than 2x.

If it was 4x, we could either reduce DM credits from 2:1 to 1:1, or limit the number of credits (DM or player) that can be used on a single character. I just don't think 2x will have enough of a balancing impact.

stonegod · Aug 29, 2010

There is a trade-off, however. Fundamentally, if you make time-XP the major source of XP, then there is no incentive for a player (or a DM) to mix up encounters—all they need is time. In addition, very large time XP incentives longer games for all involved which may lead to "dragging it out" in some cases (though, to admit, I have not seen much evidence of this as of yet). There is also the question of how quickly we want folks to level: 1 every 3 months may or may not be too quick (esp as there will be normal, doubled XP in there as well).

Not making a suggestion, just posing questions to be considered from this greybeard (not that I actually have any grey hairs, mind you...)

LadyLaw · Aug 29, 2010

Do most DMs award time exp mid adventure? I ask due to the wanting a day-by-day breakdown thing. I'm only in one adventure, but my character has been awarded regular exp twice and leveled up once, but not been awarded any time exp yet. I was therefore wondering if it's common practice to award it mid-adventure or wait until the end. If most people wait until the end, then a day-by-day breakdown seems unnecessary.

renau1g · Aug 29, 2010

Well the awarding of it is up to the DM per the charter

"DMs may choose whether to withhold time XP until the end of an adventure, or award it during the course of an adventure, as they see fit. Time XP during an adventure should only be given for complete calendar months; a 1st level character should not be awarded 8 xp for 3 days of adventuring except at the conclusion of an adventure."

Luinnar · Aug 29, 2010

If the time xp awards are changed, the level needed to make a 2nd or 3rd character might be need to be changed as well. LEB has 4 real time months adventuring for a 2nd character. We could instate something like that if needed.

LadyLaw · Aug 29, 2010

renau1g said:
Well the awarding of it is up to the DM per the charter

"DMs may choose whether to withhold time XP until the end of an adventure, or award it during the course of an adventure, as they see fit. Time XP during an adventure should only be given for complete calendar months; a 1st level character should not be awarded 8 xp for 3 days of adventuring except at the conclusion of an adventure."

I know that it's up to the DM, I was just wondering how the majority of DMs choose to run it since he was proposing breaking it down into a day-by-day amount. If the majority choose to award only at the end of the adventure, then it seems like that sort of effort (and math, which I know many people aren't fond of) would be superfluous.

Otakkun · Aug 29, 2010

I hope that we get at least a 2x policy. I'd really like to play paragon or even epic in here somewhere within the next decade. At this pace, we'll be well over 5.5E before anyone hits level 21.

Someone · Aug 29, 2010

That's a common trait of pbp games. Juzging by my earlier experiences, some may be very lucky and advance very fast (and by that I mean once every 3 months), but normally you can count yourself fortunate enough managing 1 level every 6 months; threads stall when players lose interest, people dissapear, adventure is particulary slow or DM misjudges the pace, there's not enough people of your level to for group or simply there are no DMs available for a while. That means 15 years for a complete tour through the levels, which would be quite a feat, so can IMO count ourselves fortunate if a single character ever manages to adquire a paragon path.