What is an Experience Point?

What is experience?
Like many of us I've thought at times of attempting to write stories using the characters from DnD campaigns, and comments from various areas convinced me to try and use a framework that has the limitation of level one being where most people reach and level six being legendary like Hercules or king Arthur.

In an attempt to come to grips on what a level one character was I decided to set twenty years as equivalent to becoming a college graduate. (Wrong, I know.) And that half of the thousand experience needed to reach level two would be what's required to reach level one. (Wrong again, but it seems fair.)

(Level 1) 500 xp divided by 24 (2 xp per month) = 20.83 years
...2 points? Two experience points a month? That's it?
That's like, one experience point every fifteen days.

(Level 2) 1,000 xp divided by 24 (2 xp per month) = 41.6 years
(Level 3) 3,000 xp divided by 24 (2 xp per month) = 125 years
(Level 4) 6,000 xp divided by 24 (2 xp per month) = 250 years
(Level 5) 10,000 xp divided by 24 (2 xp per month) = 416.6 years
(Level 6) 15,000 xp divided by 24 (2 xp per month) = 625 years

So what does it take to reach legendary status?
(Level 6) 15,000 xp divided by 240 (20 xp per month) = 62.5 years
Perhaps a little older than expected...

(Level 6) 15,000 xp divided by 24 (30 xp per month) = 41.6 years
Good grief. If you're gaining an experience point every day then you could reach legendary status a little while after forty years.
You'd have to be carpe diem'ing the hell out of every day, and probably hiring/bribing/haggling with those around you to teach or search out valuable information/skills, but it'd be possible.

However, it leads to the question, "What in the world is an experience point?"

In 3.5 only...

I toyed with the idea of making experience points a sort of magical life energy - rather than a pure game construct, they were in an-game measure of literal magical power. That's why they are used to create magic items and power certain spells.

I came up with a simple formula for non-adventurers to slowly accumulate experience over time. In addition, killing a creature caused its "life energy points" to disperse to all those present within a certain radius at the time of its death. Thus, small bands and groups are more common than armies because those aware of the nature of life energy are a bit loathe to share it with a 100 other people.

I never actually played with any of these ideas - it was mainly just a thought exercise.

Experience is a thing you get from killing monsters in a game about killing monsters. If it wasn't there then there would be no advancement and people would find the game less satisfying.

But what about experience gained diplomatically, from traps, and managing to bypass conflict altogether due to cleverness?

Whatever. The point I was trying to make is that XP is a number that goes upwards as you play a game of D&D. It has no rock-solid correlation with any particular aspect of the game except perhaps killing monsters. It serves no other purpose, descriptive or otherwise, than to mediate how quickly players gain levels; which are themselves entirely abstract concepts that attempt (I cannot overstate my emphasis on that word) to equate the "power" of multiple player characters (and sometimes the creatures they frequently find themselves in combat with). Unless you are playing in a setting where the characters are literally inside of a video game or a plot that is so meta even the acronym, then they cannot possibly have any connection with the narrative.

It's just there so the players feel good at get a sense of progression out of the game, a carrot and stick game that makes all MMORPGs tick.

Experience points are a measure of how much experience, knowledge and wisdom you have amassed. Now consider why wizards are reluctant to make magical items, especially powerful ones...

1) A game-balance element to allow partial advancement (advancement in parcels smaller than a level)
2) 5 gp (3E only, excluding Pathfinder)
3) A tool for preserving inequalities in a party and allow the DM to hand out selective rewards.
4) A quadratic measure of advancement, where challenge overcome is proportional against level times xp gained (again 3E only)

In making my own game I attempted to use a method that increased skill level based in game usage. That proved to be extremely complicated, so I still use xp. In my game xp represents the things we don't actually care to roleplay. It is that time spent practicing and training to maintain and/or improve your abilities. If you spend xp to increase your strength, that xp represents the time the character has spent in the out of game time doing strength based exercises

The real world does sort of have levels. After learning a skill for a while, you hit a plateau and have to go out and apply it to practical problems and internalize it. Game mechanics only approximately resembles game reality, but the difference is not always as large as many people think. For an example straight from Tolkien, Boromir took a score of arrows before dying.

Kiraya_TiDrekan said:

In 3.5 only...

I toyed with the idea of making experience points a sort of magical life energy - rather than a pure game construct, they were in an-game measure of literal magical power. That's why they are used to create magic items and power certain spells.

I came up with a simple formula for non-adventurers to slowly accumulate experience over time. In addition, killing a creature caused its "life energy points" to disperse to all those present within a certain radius at the time of its death. Thus, small bands and groups are more common than armies because those aware of the nature of life energy are a bit loathe to share it with a 100 other people.

I never actually played with any of these ideas - it was mainly just a thought exercise.

Click to expand...

So sort of like the orbs from Fable?