D&D General Experience Points & Leveling: A Brief Primer on XP in the 1e DMG, and Why It Still Matters

[Alzrius]

That's right, we should still be able to sell creatures for money, and gain experience. Um.... wait. No, that's not it. That is most definitely not the lesson.

What? But without those, what's the point of having special rules for subduing dragons?

 

[Undrave]

If the average hit dice or level is 10 times greater than the average level or hit dice, there must be an adjustment of at least halving or doubling the experience point (x.p.) award as the circumstances dictate, except if the lesser group is approximately 20 times more numerous than the greater value group.

...What.

"All items (including magic) or creatures sold for gold pieces prior to the awarding of experience points for an adventure must be considered as treasure taken, and the gold pieces received for the sale add to the total treasure taken." I am so not going to touch that with the 10' pole.

Yikes yeah...

Finally, there is a useful note regarding realism and XP- Gygax acknowledges that it would probably make a lot more sense for (to use one example) Magic Users to get better by reading ancient scrolls, experimenting with alchemy, and so on, but that would be insanely boring. So .... nope.

Let's leave that tedium to MMOs then

That said, the rules were complex and many people did not apply them in whole or in part; the wording of the rules suggests that XP for monsters is awarded on a per-combat basis, while XP for treasure is only awarded at the end of the adventure. While this makes sense (especially if you have the XP value for the monsters handy, and treasure is divvied up at the end of the adventure), it could be difficult to do on the fly. Constant discretionary adjustments were difficult. And as I stated before, it is difficult to imagine DMs "policing" your RPing as a factor in the cost and length of your training. While I am sure that there are those that will pipe up in the comments, IME you rarely saw DMs apply all the rules, as written, for XP and leveling.

Which means that if you top up on XP you would rather have a smaller cut of the treasure this time around...

Actually, the reason for the training rules, IMHO, has to do with troupe play (doesn't everything!).

Seems like 1e was built for a completely different, and very precise, type of game than 5e. Is there a game out there fit for this style? I feel like you could make an interesting game (maybe more Hero Quest-y than RPG) with simpler characters and more narrow specialist classes out of that play style. Like, fit a character on a bigger index card with less levels to worry about.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Seems like 1e was built for a completely different, and very precise, type of game than 5e. Is there a game out there fit for this style? I feel like you could make an interesting game (maybe more Hero Quest-y than RPG) with simpler characters and more narrow specialist classes out of that play style. Like, fit a character on a bigger index card with less levels to worry about.

1e is simply Gary's codification of his rules for running his Greyhawk campaign(s), maybe slightly genericized and cleaned up. It is nothing else except a recipe to reproduce THAT EXACT GAME. This is something people often fail to understand about his games, they are not some broad generic system, they are the house rules of one guy, who was a master GM, but had no interest in systematic rules making.

So, yes, it is apparently a game which is intended to be played serially with a large number of players and a GM who manages stables of PCs who wander the world, forming different parties, and then go off to train/build a castle/make a magic item/etc. for a few months at a time while the player plays some other PC. As written it doesn't do other formats super well, though if you ignore about 50% of the rules you can make a game which is not entirely hapless at the sorts of play that were actually common (IE single party linear adventure games).

I don't actually understand however, why the training rules came out misadjusted as they did. I would assume that either they worked in Gary's campaign because he gave out HUGE amounts more treasure than was indicated, or because the numbers got tweaked during codification and AD&D really doesn't seem to have ever had much playtesting after it was written up. Everything got tried in Gary's game, but if some numbers got shifted during writing/editing/printing, then stuff was just off.

As I said above, IF I was to use the training rules, I would reduce the costs by about 500%. Even that will mean you will have a lot of "no XP will be awarded" adventuring, because your average RP rating is presumably 2.5. If you wanted things to really balance well, either give out a lot of extra treasure beyond the charts, reduce the cost to 150 gp/level, or just hard code all RP ratings to 1.0 and be done with it (and still reduce to 300 gp/level). Either of those three approaches, or a mix of them, will produce a game where the PCs wind up with the treasure needed to train roughly at the same time they reach the XP required for the next level. If you RP well, you will get to keep some treasure, and if you don't, you will end up falling behind, badly (but cheer up, you will be lower level than the rest of the party, so you will never tend to fall TOO far behind).

 

[pming]

Hiya!

We tried the "training for your level" thing for a while. It bugged us. Not the cost or time, just the idea that an adventurer would need to stop adventuring and "attend school" in order to get better just made no sense to us. It's like someone being in the military, going into a war zone, fighting off the enemy, saving dozens of lives, gathering vital intel and then having to fly back home to take a 6 page test that includes a written essay in order to get promoted. LOL!

But all the rest? Yup. Makes sense and I like (and use) it! Mind you, it's a bit different as I use primarily Hackmaster 4th Edition (the 1e/2e hybrid...not the latest 'new' system).

Oh, and why do people always jump to "GASP! SLAVERY!??!!" when "...or creatures sold" comes up? I'm not going to comment on my theory, but I will say this: are these not also creatures... chickens, guard dogs, horses, wolf pups, bear cubs, monkey's, dragon eggs, griffin eggs, etc? I mean, once you defeat the evil Black Heart Bandit Gang what are you going to do with the 14 riding horses, 3 war horses, 6 guard dogs, 23 chickens, 3 cows and that strange monkey with the big eyes that always give you a head ache when you look at it? Sell them, of course!

For the Record: In 5e I award only 1/3 to 1/2 (maybe 1/1...maybe...) for defeating monsters, but I award 1:1 XP:GP for treasure recovered/gained. This puts the focus for the players on "lets 'win'..." and not "lets kill it...". When the Fighter can hack for XP, and the Thief can steal for XP, both "win" by doing what they do best. Nobody feels like they have to "ignore their class focus and just kill stuff" in order to advance in level. I think the XP:GP is the BEST way to handle xp in a D&D-style game.

^_^

Paul L. Ming

 

[Voadam]

Lots of the 1e MM monsters had gp sale value for the young or the pelts. So after fighting griffons you could raise the young as future mounts, or sell them to somebody interested in doing so.

That still leaves issues like incentivizing taking the pelts and kids of the intelligent talking giant beavers from Narnia after they offer you ham, toast with jam, and tea.

"Their hides are worth from 500 to 2,000 gold pieces each. Giant beaver kits of under 8 hit points can be subdued, captured, and sold in the market for from 100 to 200 gold pieces per hit point."

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

@pming I always thought of the training thing as more reflecting an incremental process. The idea of gold producing experience really makes no sense. I mean it is literally nonsensical in a realistic sense. The idea that you would need to spend that gold to pay someone to teach you, makes a lot more sense! Then the XP you get from monsters looks like "I practiced my skills, that helped and now I'm ready to advance." Of course levels are an abstraction, so also the training rules are a bit of an abstraction. More realistically you train constantly, paying for lessons as you go, and slowly improving. But it is after all a game, so...

Personally, had I designed this system, I would have reduced the XP requirements a LOT (or increased the XP awards from monsters). Gold would then simply be there to pay for training, but XP would be related only to performance. In a delve setting this would pretty much be a wash, so it should work for most of the play 1e was designed for, including basic hex crawling. You could then do what 2e did and add in XP awards for "doing your class thing" and that would replace the 'RP Rating' number. You could also include quest XP like 4e does.

I think in terms of 5e, it already is basically pretty close, since it doesn't have XP for GP, just require training and payment for training, and maybe make quest XP and such more explicit (I haven't read the 5e DMG too thoroughly, maybe it is already in there). I don't think it would be too hard to add in 1e-style stronghold and follower rules either. I don't think 5e really talks about henchmen much, but doing those in a 1e-like style shouldn't really bork up the game much, though combat might slow down too much.

 

[Dioltach]

So GP means XP. Once you have enough XP (based on GP) you can exchange GP for a level advancement.

Why not cut out XP entirely? "Advancing to level X will cost you Y amount of GP. Go out and find some!"

 

[not-so-newguy]

I haven't cared (or used XPs) in my D&D campaigns since about 1992. It changed player behaviour for the better.

i admit that my exposure beyond this message board is limited, but I don't see many arguments for this approach. I'm curious to hear your reasons why this works better. (This may require a separate thread)

 

[Voadam]

i admit that my exposure beyond this message board is limited, but I don't see many arguments for this approach. I'm curious to hear your reasons why this works better. (This may require a separate thread)

For me, it means dropping the xp accounting as a DM and a player, allows the pace of leveling not to be dependent on things the system awards xp for, and allows the whole party to maintain general power balance by advancing together.

 

[Marc_C]

i admit that my exposure beyond this message board is limited, but I don't see many arguments for this approach. I'm curious to hear your reasons why this works better. (This may require a separate thread)

It ended unnecessary murder-hobo behaviour to hunt for XPs. Levelling up is based on story advancement and resolution. And like Voadan said it eliminated the xp accounting.