Experience Point Costs

S

Samothdm

First Post

• Jul 29, 2003

• #1

I'm working on something wherein players can gain certain small abilities or "powers" by paying XP costs. I've seen this done in various other d20 products but I'm wondering how to figure out how much XP the PC should have to pay to gain the powers/abilities. Any thoughts on how to figure this out?

 

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Umbran

Mod Squad

Staff member

Supporter

• Jul 29, 2003

• #2

Creating magic items is, in essence, the same thing - payng Xp to get an ability. So, you might consider using the magic item creation costs as a starting point.

 

diaglo

Adventurer

• Jul 29, 2003

• #3

an article in Dragon goes into this a bit more.

 

S

Samothdm

First Post

• Jul 29, 2003

• #4

Which issue of Dragon?

 

MerakSpielman

First Post

• Jul 29, 2003

• #5

they should have some sort of multiplier for being permenantly attached to the player.

I've honestly considered a freeform version of D&D where you remove the classes and assign an XP cost to all feats, skill points, abilities, ability score increases, (formerly) class abilities, increases in BAB, etc... It would be hard to balance, but I'm sure I could do it if I really tried.

 

C

Cybern

First Post

• Jul 29, 2003

• #6

diaglo said:

an article in Dragon goes into this a bit more.

Click to expand...

Which issue?

 

The Sigil

Mr. 3000 (Words per post)

• Jul 29, 2003

• #7

MerakSpielman said:

they should have some sort of multiplier for being permenantly attached to the player.

I've honestly considered a freeform version of D&D where you remove the classes and assign an XP cost to all feats, skill points, abilities, ability score increases, (formerly) class abilities, increases in BAB, etc... It would be hard to balance, but I'm sure I could do it if I really tried.

Click to expand...

Okay, I'll spill the beans...

I already have a pretty close version of this system... it handles BAB progressions, Save progressions, Skill Points, Feats, Abililty Score Increases, Spells, Caster Level, and "Special Class Abilities" through direct expenditure of XP. Surprisingly enough, when I "reconstruct" the core classes, they are within about 10% of this system in terms of total XP needed to get the same abilities as Level X in Class Y (sometimes a little lower, sometimes a little higher)... at least, they're that close through 20 levels (haven't extrapolated).

Trouble is, it's all in mathematical formulae format... not very good reading - LOL - but it's one of my "projects in the hopper" for conversion into full-blown PDF (though I imagine I'll have to go OGL only, not OGL/d20 route). If I'm lucky, I might have it all dressed up by the end of the year.

--The Sigil

 

MerakSpielman

First Post

• Jul 29, 2003

• #8

I'll keep an eye out for it! I'd just love it if you saved me doing all the work, Sigil.

 

S

Samothdm

First Post

• Jul 29, 2003

• #9

Sorry to bump this but it fell to the second page already!

Anyone else have any ideas? Also, any word on which issue of Dragon discussed this topic?

 

ichabod

Legned

• Jul 30, 2003

• #10

MerakSpielman said:

they should have some sort of multiplier for being permenantly attached to the player.

I've honestly considered a freeform version of D&D where you remove the classes and assign an XP cost to all feats, skill points, abilities, ability score increases, (formerly) class abilities, increases in BAB, etc... It would be hard to balance, but I'm sure I could do it if I really tried.

Click to expand...

I already wrote up a system sort of like this, based on TFT. Everything is done with feats. Ability raises, BAB raises, skill points, class features, all come from feats. I put it on my web page.