My only criticisms are:
1. I makes magic items readily accessible by claiming that losing XP makes up for increased power. That argument didn't work at all in 3.x, and I don't see why that should change. Given that a +1 weapon is essentially equivalent to four experience levels (the number of levels required to get +2 to an attribute) I find that argument difficult to sustain.
By itself, the XP-for-gold concept does not do anything of the sort.
You might want to have a magic item economy (where magic items are offered up for sale) to increase, not decrease, hard choices. But you don't
have to - you can still run the game so any items must be found, not bought.
But.
If you can buy a +1 Longsword for the same amount of gold that would give you a whole level's worth of XP, what do you choose? This can ideally be incredibly difficult decisions
Ideally the game would then differentiate between +1, +2 and +3 items just like in the good old days, so that even after you finally splurge on a +1 Longsword, you will eventually have to redo the entire decision point when at mid-level monsters start becoming resistant to any weapon not +2 or more... so you again need to choose between xp and magic items.
By the way, +1 is nowhere close to four experience levels. Sorry but that's so outrageously wrong I don't even know where to begin. Unless you're fine playing at level 1 (with your +1 weapon) while the rest of us is level 5....
2. It discourages altruistic PCs. Even if you allow tithes and donations to substitute for carousing, character advancement is driven by the accumulation of wealth. This style wouldn't work if, for example, you were trying to run a campaign modeled after Lord of the Rings or Star Wars where the ultimate goal has nothing to do with wealth at all. That means you need to structure the campaign around the fact that character advancement requires wealth. That's not going to be every campaign.
You seem to think characters need to keep the money in order to advance, or what do you mean by "accumulation of wealth". The idea is to offer an outlet for all that gold standard D&D module heaps upon heroes. The idea is to keep heroes perpetually lean, strapped for cash.
You just need to allow tithes and donations to count just as much as any other downtime expenditure. Whether you blow your characters on blow and hookers or food and toys for orphans doesn't matter.
But you're right - the heroes must all be motivated to amass the wealth in the first place. But I don't think I need to tell you that if the only way to gain xp is to spend gold, then characters that don't care about money aren't really appropriate...
3. It requires access to a place to expend wealth during downtime. If you're stuck wandering around the wilderness or plane-hopping, you're unable to advance. If there's a time limit hanging over the PCs head, you're unable to advance. Again, you must structure your campaign to allow for downtime, and allow for the ability to spend wealth -- often absurdly large amounts of wealth as levels increase. You'd be making the Count of Monte Cristo look like a chump.
The Monte Christo problem is
not because of xp for gold. You're placing blame where it doesn't belong. Instead that problem comes built into the core of the D&D game - it is right there in the DMG treasure tables.
If anything, xp for gold provides an explanation why you should go out adventuring when you already have a mountain of gold at home.
If you want less absurd amounts of gold, just change the ratio of gold to xp. Or require, say, half as much xp to level as in the PHB table.
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That you need somewhere to unload is correct. This variant is not meant for story-driven campaigns. Use it in a sandbox or hexcrawl campaign. There will always be a "home town", trust me.
4. It encourages PvP. Since wealth is transferable and XP isn't, it encourages players to steal from each other, lie about treasure, etc. Great for a pirate campaign, maybe, but not all the time.
Who said anything about "all the time"?
And if your players attack each other, find new players.
5. Treasure disbursing is a lot more difficult for the DM. In 5e, you really only have to think about gold until players have about 2,000 gp each. At that point, they can essentially buy everything they could want. You can let them find troves with tens of thousands of gp, and there's really no problem with that because it doesn't translate directly or easily to more character power. This eliminates that benefit.
That gold ceases to be a motivator and have value is THE FRIKKING PROBLEM that this variant sets out to solve
I can see it being fun for a specific campaign, or even for one or two adventures in a campaign, but I think that it wouldn't work well a lot of the time.
And somehow you translate that into general criticism...?
Can anyone explain to me why anyone takes the time and effort to write essentially a post on "six reasons NOT to do what the thread is about"...
This thread is for those interested in xp for gold. It is not a thread for those that need to be cautioned against using xp for gold.
I see it being fun for a specific campaign, or even for one or two adventures in a campaign, and... that's it. Its suitability on other campaigns is of no concern because it is fun for
this specific campaign you're running!
