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

[the_redbeard]

@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...

Remember that D&D evolved from a miniature wargame, and some of the first characters were warlords leading armies into battles. How do you get armies? You pay them with gold.

Even in the early middle ages, when much of the cash economy of Rome had collapsed, warlords still used wealth to attract soldiers to their service (and food and shelter and such but). Precious metals were still social currency. What did the vikings do with the gold and silver that they looted from England's monasteries? They used it to attract more vikings to their service.

Edit to add: it's also not a bad rational for why those orcs deep in a cave without any place to spend their gold still have gold. The orcs still use the gold as social currency to attract other orcs to their service.


70s era D&D assumed that your 'goal' was to reach name level, claim and pacify terrain, build a stronghold and attract followers. To be a classic early middle ages warlord in the worlds of Gygax and Arneson, you needed gold.

People have written how analogous the basic structure of D&D is not unlike colonialism or imperialism: go to another culture's home, kill them and take their stuff. Not just the vikings but another example of murder-hoboism in history were the Conquistadors from Spain and their conquest of the Americas. A perhaps apocryphal exchange I've hear is that Montezuma asked Cortez (who took up being a conquistador to pay debts!) why Spainiards loved gold so much and Cortez replied that he had a sickness to need so much gold. Another possibly apocryphal story is that when the Aztecs rebelled and some of the Conquistadors had to flee the island city that was the Aztec capital, some drowned because they were laden down with too much gold to swim. So, encumbrance systems are a necessary part of Xp from gold. hah.

I somewhat sympathize with the OP's skewering of the often contradictory passages of the wonderful 1e DMG (what is the Walt Whitman quote: "Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes." That is the 1e DMG.) But as others in this thread have indicated, one of the key reasons that many of these rules seem absurd today is that the play style, content and perhaps even purpose of the game is different.

Lower level old school play was more about exploration to find the treasure. Combat was more of a risky failure condition then it was a goal. Today's main play style is very different than that.

 

[the_redbeard]

I can't find where this was (I keep thinking it was in Mongoose's Conan d20 game, but I'm not able to confirm that), but I distinctly recall seeing an RPG where you received XP for GP, but only for GP that you spent. Furthermore, it had to be spent on inconsequential things, rather than stuff that had game mechanics.

So for example, if you spent 15 gp on a new longsword, then you gained 0 XP. But if you spent 50 gp on ale and whores, you gained 50 XP for that. The idea was that this kept driving the PCs to go adventuring for gold (rather than murderhoboing) and then immediately spend what they recovered so that they'd have to keep doing it. It was a great mechanic.

That’s awesome. I might use it if I run a sword and sorcery campaign.

Here's a blog post on the history and some variants of 'carousing' mechanics in D&D.

 

[Lanefan]

Who says I play 5e?

I made an educated guess based on how hard you had to hack down the training costs to match your party's treasure hauls.

As I said though, the problem then is still the HUGE amount more gold you need than what you get. A 5th level monster would net a 5th level PC a few 100 gold, by the treasure tables. By the time you have the XP needed for 6th level (maybe 30,000) you would have, lets say, 25,000 GP (because most XP comes from GP). So, what does it cost to advance? 7,000 GP for training. So that isn't so bad. It might work. By 1e rules it takes (average) 2.5 x 1,500 x 6 = 22,500 GP for the training. If you had no other expenses or desire for any other things that gold might do, it might barely work. If your GM isn't nice to you and rates your RP a 4 at some point, you will be completely broke and spending a really long time scrounging gold without XP at all. For some classes and level ranges things don't really work at all.

That alone makes me think that the whole different XP charts thing was pretty much a boondoggle. Since the provision of XP and costs of training don't vary, the XP progression really should not either. In fact the idea that the XP charts 'balance' the classes doesn't hold water either, since the more powerful classes often get to progress FASTER. This is particularly true at higher levels, but basically there seems no rhyme or reason to it. Progression is whatever the guy who originally wrote the class thought it should be, and they are all over the place.

Second point first: the xp progression charts in the 1e PHB as written really are a bit of a mess when looked at closely. That said, it's not a whole lot of effort to go over them and change the numbers more in line with what makes sense, particularly after you've run a campaign or two and have an idea where the holes are: MUs bump too fast between about 5th and 10th levels; Thieves bump too fast for the first three levels or so; Paladins and Cavaliers are slightly too slow across the board, etc.

As for training affordability: a party of six taking on a typical low-level AD&D or Basic module can, if they're halfway efficient about their looting and can liquidate their found magic items into cash using DMG-ish pricing, easily each come away with a 15000+ g.p. share. Some modules can give twice that. That's from just one adventure; and even after training you'll still have a pile left over.

 

[Lanefan]

Yep. I start my players at 3rd level for just that reason. I don't think PCs should start out as putzes. They don't have to be heroes, but they should at least be competent enough to go out and adventure.

Yeah, we differ some on this one.

Sometimes I almost wish the game would cap out at around 4th level - low-level play is often so much more enjoyable, never mind gonzo. I would never start a campaign out at anything other than raw 1st unless it was just a one-off. (I'm DMing a very-low-level group right now for the first time in about 8 years, and boy is it a refreshing change!)

 

[David Howery]

So here's the deal - imagine you're in the middle of your dungeon quest, and you (the Thief) just got to 1,251 XP to get to level 2

hmm... under every DM I had way back in the day, you couldn't 'level up' in the middle of an adventure.... we generally calculated all XP from monsters and treasure at the end of the adventure... we always had one player whose job it was to keep track of all the things we slew, and another who kept a list of the treasure, and figured it all up after we got back to base... as you might guess, that is when PCs would hit the 'you got too many XP', and lost some of them.
Training was something we handled on a strictly 'off the record' matter.... if you had the cash, the party was assumed to be on downtime between adventures, and whoever needed it got the training done...

 

[Lanefan]

hmm... under every DM I had way back in the day, you couldn't 'level up' in the middle of an adventure.... we generally calculated all XP from monsters and treasure at the end of the adventure...

Figuring out treasure xp at the end of the adventure is/was common enough (if only because you need to get it evaluated to know what xp it'll give you), but I've never heard of holding back monster xp like that.

we always had one player whose job it was to keep track of all the things we slew, and another who kept a list of the treasure,

In any group I play in I'm almost always the treasury recorder; mostly because I volunteer for it so as not to be the mapper...

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Righto. And you'll be happy to know that Gary never used it either! No one in our game groups did. If that starts an inter-topic response, let it be known that I'm heading to bed here in France to avoid that fusillade.

ROFL! That probably explains why the numbers don't quite mesh. Going through a few examples of various classes/levels it isn't TOO far off, assuming the GM doesn't give out 4's very often, or too many 1's, then there's a lot of cases where JUST ABOUT ALL of your gold will end up going to training, assuming 90% or so of XP is earned from GP, which seems like a pretty reasonable ratio IME. Lower levels you'll be short money for training all the time, BUT you can probably get it from other PCs, they might give you a discount. At the very least they'll have the gold, so it may still do you some good. So it might work out somewhat, but I sure don't remember that happening much when we tried to use it.

Anyway, was training a thing at all? Or was that just something Gary made up because it sounded good? lol.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I made an educated guess based on how hard you had to hack down the training costs to match your party's treasure hauls.

Second point first: the xp progression charts in the 1e PHB as written really are a bit of a mess when looked at closely. That said, it's not a whole lot of effort to go over them and change the numbers more in line with what makes sense, particularly after you've run a campaign or two and have an idea where the holes are: MUs bump too fast between about 5th and 10th levels; Thieves bump too fast for the first three levels or so; Paladins and Cavaliers are slightly too slow across the board, etc.

As for training affordability: a party of six taking on a typical low-level AD&D or Basic module can, if they're halfway efficient about their looting and can liquidate their found magic items into cash using DMG-ish pricing, easily each come away with a 15000+ g.p. share. Some modules can give twice that. That's from just one adventure; and even after training you'll still have a pile left over.

Well, if the 1e progressions were going to match up AT ALL with PC ability growth, then casters would, at all levels, have a MUCH steeper XP requirement than the other classes. Think about it, a 1st level Magic User has ONE level 1 spell. He basically gets one shot to use one spell, then he's kaput for the day. I mean, there is RP and whatever, maybe he can still do SOMETHING, but his only 'class function' is that one spell, period. Even reading magic and such is out, it all requires casting. So his power growth to level 2 is a 100 percent increase in effectiveness. In fact, with 2 spells, he could be pretty effective (though honestly it depends on which spells, so its hard to gauge). Likewise a cleric goes from 3 spells to 4 (nobody has under a 13 WIS, come on), and he gains melee effectiveness by doubling his, pretty good, hit points. Maybe not a 100% increase, but it is pretty solid. The fighter is kind of middle-of-the-road. His hit points double, and he gets a +1 to-hit (if you use the optional rule, we always did). It isn't a 100% increase, but its a 50% increase anyway, almost as good as the cleric gets. The thief. Heh. His abilities hardly change. He does double his mediocre hit points, but with his lousy AC he can't really melee. Even if he back stabs, his damage is the same as level 1. I call it a 35% increase.

So, if we baselined the fighter's 50% increase as worth 2000XP, then the wizard should require 4000XP, the cleric maybe 2500 or 3000, lets say 2750, and the thief around 1750 or even 1500. So we can see that the actual level 1 progression is WAY off for clerics, and maybe a bit generous to Magic Users. It seems like they got the melee classes OK, but undervalue casters. I have NO IDEA where the cleric table comes from, it is just way out of whack!

Things go downhill from there however. Magic Users start to get higher level spells, and their effectiveness continues to increase at a fast pace because of that. Level 2 has a number of really potent spell options. If you even get one decent level 2 spell, you will be getting ANOTHER doubling of effectiveness basically at 3rd level. It should be worth something like 8000XP, but the actual number is a mere 5000XP. Clerics at 3rd gain up to THREE level 2 spells, again this is a really large effectiveness increase, close to 100% better (remember, PHB says you have two 15s). The fighter OTOH is going downhill in terms of gain, he gets another 50% hit point increase, a +1 to-hit, and by now he's probably managed to get plate, so his XP for 3rd really should be on the order of 3500 or so, under HALF that of a wizard. Pity the thief, 3rd level means squat to him. The hit points will be nice, but he still cannot improve his AC any, and his abilities all still suck. To say he should require 2500 for 3rd level is almost harsh, but we do see that he's actually not far out of line.

It goes on like this, except the melee classes get harshly punished at higher levels, and the cleric never really does come into line at all, and the wizard gets a huge windfall. Some of it almost seems to work, like non-casters are not far off, but spell casting is just drastically discounted.

 

[Lanefan]

Well, if the 1e progressions were going to match up AT ALL with PC ability growth, then casters would, at all levels, have a MUCH steeper XP requirement than the other classes. Think about it, a 1st level Magic User has ONE level 1 spell. He basically gets one shot to use one spell, then he's kaput for the day. I mean, there is RP and whatever, maybe he can still do SOMETHING, but his only 'class function' is that one spell, period.

However at 1st level a MU isn't that much worse of a warrior than a Fighter, at least when it comes to offense, so they can at least try to bring the pain a bit as long as someone's there to take care of any incoming blows. Yes they can pretty much only use staff or dagger, but that don't mean a thing: in a session I DMed two weeks back a combat saw a 1st-level Illusionist absolutely roll up the line using just his staff! Fight of his life, that was.

Even reading magic and such is out, it all requires casting. So his power growth to level 2 is a 100 percent increase in effectiveness. In fact, with 2 spells, he could be pretty effective (though honestly it depends on which spells, so its hard to gauge). Likewise a cleric goes from 3 spells to 4 (nobody has under a 13 WIS, come on), and he gains melee effectiveness by doubling his, pretty good, hit points. Maybe not a 100% increase, but it is pretty solid. The fighter is kind of middle-of-the-road. His hit points double, and he gets a +1 to-hit (if you use the optional rule, we always did). It isn't a 100% increase, but its a 50% increase anyway, almost as good as the cleric gets. The thief. Heh. His abilities hardly change. He does double his mediocre hit points, but with his lousy AC he can't really melee. Even if he back stabs, his damage is the same as level 1. I call it a 35% increase.

So, if we baselined the fighter's 50% increase as worth 2000XP, then the wizard should require 4000XP, the cleric maybe 2500 or 3000, lets say 2750, and the thief around 1750 or even 1500. So we can see that the actual level 1 progression is WAY off for clerics, and maybe a bit generous to Magic Users. It seems like they got the melee classes OK, but undervalue casters. I have NO IDEA where the cleric table comes from, it is just way out of whack!

Several things here.

First, there's a bit of a built-in assumption (IMO anyway) that Thieves and Clerics won't get involved in as many xp-earning situations as will Fighters and MUs. My own experience tells me different, particularly for Clerics, but there it is.

Second, if the MU is so pathetic at 1st level then a 100% gain in ability at 2nd doesn't mean much, as it's 100% of a very small number. For example, if we say on an open-ended scale that a 1st-level Fighter's ability is a 6, Cleric's a 5, Thief's a 4, and a MU's is 3, then at 2nd level they've gone to 9, 10*, 6**, and 6 respectively.

So the Fighter's still better than the MU, but instead of being twice as good she's now only 1.5x as good. At 3rd level using the same ratios the numbers become 14***, 15, 6, and 12. The Thief's really lagging now and never does catch up, the others are much closer to parity than they were. However - and here's where the staggered bump points come in useful - the Thief is probably going to get its next bump way sooner, meaning it won't be as far behind.

* - using a 100% increase for the Cleric; it could be 80% which would make it a 9.
** - can't translate 35% in such small whole integers so I was generous and gave the Thief 50% for this level.
*** - rounded 13.5 up to 14.

So, taking that into account, if the Fighter needs 2000 xp to go from 6 to 9 (a gain of 3) then the MU should also need 2000 to go from 3 to 6; the Thief would need 1333 to go from 4 to 6, and the Cleric needs 3333 to go from 5 to 10. (or 2667 to go from 5 to 9).

Things go downhill from there however. Magic Users start to get higher level spells, and their effectiveness continues to increase at a fast pace because of that. Level 2 has a number of really potent spell options. If you even get one decent level 2 spell, you will be getting ANOTHER doubling of effectiveness basically at 3rd level. It should be worth something like 8000XP, but the actual number is a mere 5000XP. Clerics at 3rd gain up to THREE level 2 spells, again this is a really large effectiveness increase, close to 100% better (remember, PHB says you have two 15s). The fighter OTOH is going downhill in terms of gain, he gets another 50% hit point increase, a +1 to-hit, and by now he's probably managed to get plate, so his XP for 3rd really should be on the order of 3500 or so, under HALF that of a wizard. Pity the thief, 3rd level means squat to him. The hit points will be nice, but he still cannot improve his AC any, and his abilities all still suck. To say he should require 2500 for 3rd level is almost harsh, but we do see that he's actually not far out of line.

Given the treasure amounts in most 1e modules, a Fighter who hasn't got plate after (or even during!) her very first adventure hasn't got the sense gawd gave a goose.

A long time of doing this stuff tells me that certain classes rock at certain levels, and I'm pretty much fine with that. I would like to find a way of overall beefing up the Thief somehow; that's on the agenda for the next rules go-through before I start my next campaign...if and when I ever do; the current one's still got lots of life in it yet.

 

[Helldritch]

Well, if the 1e progressions were going to match up AT ALL with PC ability growth, then casters would, at all levels, have a MUCH steeper XP requirement than the other classes. Think about it, a 1st level Magic User has ONE level 1 spell. He basically gets one shot to use one spell, then he's kaput for the day. I mean, there is RP and whatever, maybe he can still do SOMETHING, but his only 'class function' is that one spell, period. Even reading magic and such is out, it all requires casting. So his power growth to level 2 is a 100 percent increase in effectiveness. In fact, with 2 spells, he could be pretty effective (though honestly it depends on which spells, so its hard to gauge). Likewise a cleric goes from 3 spells to 4 (nobody has under a 13 WIS, come on), and he gains melee effectiveness by doubling his, pretty good, hit points. Maybe not a 100% increase, but it is pretty solid. The fighter is kind of middle-of-the-road. His hit points double, and he gets a +1 to-hit (if you use the optional rule, we always did). It isn't a 100% increase, but its a 50% increase anyway, almost as good as the cleric gets. The thief. Heh. His abilities hardly change. He does double his mediocre hit points, but with his lousy AC he can't really melee. Even if he back stabs, his damage is the same as level 1. I call it a 35% increase.

So, if we baselined the fighter's 50% increase as worth 2000XP, then the wizard should require 4000XP, the cleric maybe 2500 or 3000, lets say 2750, and the thief around 1750 or even 1500. So we can see that the actual level 1 progression is WAY off for clerics, and maybe a bit generous to Magic Users. It seems like they got the melee classes OK, but undervalue casters. I have NO IDEA where the cleric table comes from, it is just way out of whack!

Things go downhill from there however. Magic Users start to get higher level spells, and their effectiveness continues to increase at a fast pace because of that. Level 2 has a number of really potent spell options. If you even get one decent level 2 spell, you will be getting ANOTHER doubling of effectiveness basically at 3rd level. It should be worth something like 8000XP, but the actual number is a mere 5000XP. Clerics at 3rd gain up to THREE level 2 spells, again this is a really large effectiveness increase, close to 100% better (remember, PHB says you have two 15s). The fighter OTOH is going downhill in terms of gain, he gets another 50% hit point increase, a +1 to-hit, and by now he's probably managed to get plate, so his XP for 3rd really should be on the order of 3500 or so, under HALF that of a wizard. Pity the thief, 3rd level means squat to him. The hit points will be nice, but he still cannot improve his AC any, and his abilities all still suck. To say he should require 2500 for 3rd level is almost harsh, but we do see that he's actually not far out of line.

It goes on like this, except the melee classes get harshly punished at higher levels, and the cleric never really does come into line at all, and the wizard gets a huge windfall. Some of it almost seems to work, like non-casters are not far off, but spell casting is just drastically discounted.

Nice analysis. But way off in what was really happening at tables. Synergies has to be taken into account. The cleric was more or less a healbot and its true fighting capacity came at third level with silence and hold person spells.

The wizard might get double its spell allotment but there were usually more than one fight per day and fights were resolved way faster back then. This left your wizard stuck with darts and daggers for most fights. The wizards' job was to know when to cast their spells to tip the balance of hard/ key fights.

This is also true with the thief. A backstab was a relative rare occurrence at low level. Most of thieves' job was to find/remove trap and to scout ahead. They were not the damage dealer they are today.

Also, no classes were guaranteed average HP from the get go. I have seen fighters with 18 con having a mere 40 hp at level 6 and a wizard of level 11 with barely 21 hp at 11th level... Your first level cleric might only get one additional HP for its second level. This is hardly doubling hp. Average hp on leveling was not thing in AD&D. At least not at every tables. I have seen players use a wish to reroll a bad HP roll that they had.

Also, you also have to remember that a wizard was not a true wizard until he reached name level and so was it with all other classes. You were simply dabbles in your class until you reached that name level. When my players were meeting a paladin, they knew immediately that the NPC was 9th level. If it was Justicar, it was an 8th level paladin in becoming.

This is why training was a thing. Yes it was a mean to relieve players of their gold, sure. But it also reflected the journey that they had started. They needed time to assimilated what they had learned and training was also to make them learn more about their profession. Contrary to modern RPG and 5ed, the starting characters were simply apprentices, novitiates in field. They were not fully formed and ready. I consider the AD&D characters as people that have learned the basic of their trade. Started to work/adventuring before fully ready and taking time to learn more about their trade in their downtime, taking time to catch up with what they have missed by going away early in their training...