Would you play a Class with an XP adjustment?

[Lokishadow]

Yes I would, but...

...it would be a bit like 2e.

I don't really care if the system is "broken" or not. I play to have fun. That's what the game is about. I my own campaign world, I have a variety of "LA" races that run that gamut from +1 to +5...at least, they run that gamut from the technical aspect of the rules. Though they are technically more powerful than the other players, such things as "effectively one size category larger for purpose of grappling and weapon size" don't have enough of an impact in my game world to make a difference. So the forest dwarf (avg. 5 1/2 feet tall) can wield Bastard Swords and War Axes one handed as martial weapons, whoopee. A d10 compared to a d8 is not a huge increase, at least, not huge enough to merit a FEAT, IMHO. But then, I'm the DM, so what I say goes.

My players don't mind, I don't mind, everyone's happy, and that's what REALLY matters. I'm not being a despot or a tyrant, or even impossible to reason with. An average damage increase of 1 point just doesn't make that big a difference, so I ignore it.

Technically, the Forest Dwarves and Night Elves in my campaign world are substantially more powerful. But when you really crunch the numbers, it's not that big a difference. So I don't use LA. It complicates things too much.

Personally, I'm an old-school World of Darkness groupie. I like D&D, though. I cut my RPG teeth on the Basic Set and 1st ed Advaced. I love the game...it's just plain fun. It's not realistic, it's not even really balanced. But it works. And it's fun. So there.

Would I play an XP penalized class? Yes. Assuming I could come up with a good character concept, of course. My characters aren't about "two weapon fighting" or "maximized widened fireballs." My characters are CHARACTERS. It's about the character's personality, how they behave, and real, deep, engrossing ROLE-PLAYING. That's what I live for. It's what I play for. Swinging two swords or hurling lightning bolts is the icing on the cake. I don't care if everyone else is sixteen levels higher than me, as long as I can have some fun.

End of rant. =)
-Loki

 

[was]

Yes, but nothing higher than +1.

 

[the Jester]

I would under the right circumstances, but the idea strikes me as bad enough that I'm voting no.

I think the standardized xp system is one of the best things about 3e. I think that an xp penalty would fail to correct for a more powerful class, that the CR system would be useless with such classes, and that LA for races is an entirely different boat than an xp penalty. Bad, bad idea imho.

As always, however, YMMV.

 

[ARandomGod]

No. Standardizing the XP table was one of the really good things that 3E did.

Well, if you do it *right* you'll be duplicating the level adjustment effect exactly. If you do it wrong you're either being too harsh or too easy.

And note that doing it *right* depends on you being prescient enough to absolutely know how many character levels that character will be played.

 

[delericho]

However, would you play a Class that was slightly more powerful than other classes if it meant you leveled up less frequently than your peers? Basically a class where you had an XP penalty of say 10% or 25% or even 50%.

The introduction of such a concept into the game is one of the few things that could cause me to abandon all future products from the manufacturer. If it were Wizards of the Coast who introduced such a feature, I would immediately go from my current position of being certain of buying 4e whenever it is released to a position where I absolutely would not buy 4e (without a cast-iron guarantee of a reversal of the position, of course).

At present, (effective) character level gives us a fixed marker of PC capabilities. Adding the concept you've described removes that marker for no actual benefit. If you want a more powerful character, why not just play at a higher level?

(The difference between this and level adjustment is this: a character with a level adjustment still has an effective character level which, in theory, maps to a human character of the same level. The rules don't quite work as intended, but that's a flaw in implementation, rather than concept.)

 

[Mouseferatu]

Bad idea IMO. Very bad. Extremely bad.

• It breaks the CR system, making it useless; throwing a CR 6 creature at a super-powered-class 6th level character is no longer a challenge.
• It breaks the XP system as well. Say you have a party with three 7th lev characters and one 5th lev super-powered-class character who is on par with them despite being 5th. The SPC character gets substantially more XP than the other three, for no reason.
• It breaks multiclassing.
• It produces all the problems of high-LA monstrous characters, chief among them the lack of hit dice.
• Unlike high-LA monstrous characters, whose problems tend to diminish with time, such a rule would create characters whose problems tend to increase with time since their "LA" keeps growing. At 2nd, they are 1st and have one less HD than the others; at 20th, they are 15th and have FIVE less HDs.

And, besides those issues, the idea is entirely pointless IMO. D&D already has several perfectly good ways to represent characters that are more powerful than others. They are called "being higher level", "being a LA race", and "having a template". There is no 'unusually powerful character' concept that cannot be represented within existing rules.

Quoted for emphasis. Zappo has the right of it.

 

[BryonD]

Quoted for emphasis. Zappo has the right of it.

I agree with the mostly dead mouse.

 

[Greylock]

Never have played an LA+ char, but I'm currently running a Cleric with a Celestial bloodline (UA) in a homebrew. The substitution levels are a pain in the rear, and my spell sheet mocks me. My char won't get into the nifty 3rd level spells until he is 7th level. But overall, it is worth it. This fellow is one of the best characters I've ever played. Not too strong, kinda weak sometimes. But full of flavor. The quirks and tweaks make playing him fun.

But I can't wait for those spells!

 

[Conaill]

3rd edition has had Level Adjusted races since the begining, based on the idea that you could play a more powerful race in exchange for progressing as a character more slowly.

However, would you play a Class that was slightly more powerful than other classes if it meant you leveled up less frequently than your peers? Basically a class where you had an XP penalty of say 10% or 25% or even 50%.


The idea behind this: In most Sword and Sorcery/High Fantasy novels magic users are frequently seen as much more powerful than their fellows. Ars Magica grants this by having all players play a mage and others at the same time. But what if you didn't want to play a magic user? Could you have an Ars Magica style (AM is just an example, don't get caught up on that) mage class in a d20 game, obviously more powerful than the other classes, if you penalized the class in some way such as XP? Thus say a 4th level Swordsman would be balanced against a 2nd level Mage, or the like.

I honestly don't see the point of this additional complication. If you have such a class which is clearly more powerful level-per-level than standard classes, then why not simply spread that power level out over a greater number of levels?

For example, let's say you'd like to have a "Supermage" class who gains spell levels and number of spells twice as fast as a regular wizard. So he'd get 2nd level spells at 2nd Supermage level, 3rd level spells at 3rd level, etc. Now add in XP penalties, such that the class is "balanced". Let's say you would need not just 1000XP but 3000XP to reach 2nd Supermage level. And after that, you would need an additional 7000XP to reach 3rd Supermage level, etc. In the end, what have you really accomplished? NOTHING! Your 3rd level Supermage would be entirely equivalent to an ordinary 5th level Wizard - including how much XP is needed to get to that power level. The only thing you've "accomplished" is to throw out all meaning of character level and screwed up every thing else that is tied in with that (such as CR calculation, unified XP tables, etc.)

Entirely pointless...

 

[Rassilon]

There is an actual example of this: the Guild Wizard of Waterdeep prestige class in Magic of Faerun has a 10% XP penalty.

Rassilon.