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

[Maxperson]

(but maybe 2 since you won't get the best items).

Heh. Back during 2e I was a player in a 9 player game. We were stuck underneath a temple of Set, exploring the ruins of a temple of Osiris that the temple of Set had been built over. We found a magical longsword and didn't have any way to identify it immediately. Everyone in the group had a magic weapon. Mostly +1 or +2. I was the only exception with a +4 longsword that was an artifact that I had gained during an adventure. The only one who didn't have a magic weapon as the 2nd level Paladin henchmen of the party Paladin of Horus-Re. So we gave the weapon to her. Later we found out that it was the only +5 weapon we had ever found. Sometimes they DO get the best items.

 

[Hussar]

Moldvay Basic Page B22:

"MAXIMUM XP: A character should never be given enough XP in a single adventure to advance more than one level of experience. For example, if a beginning (0 XP) 1st level fighter earns 5000 XP (a rare and outstanding achievement), he or she should only be given 3999 XP, enough to place the character 1 XP short of 3rd level."

Thankees sah. I KNEW that was a rule somewhere or other. Generally it usually came up when we flogged a magic item or two to pay for training - somewhat ironically. But, yeah, it was a rule we kept in our AD&D games.

 

[Benjamin Olson]

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.

I'm sure Gygaxian prose reads better in the original Latin.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I fully agree on that.
But Keogtom's ointment is pretty clear that it will clear poison.
DMG p149 about Keogtom's ointment...
Placed upon a poisoned wound (or swallowed), it detoxifies any poison or disease.
That is pretty clear to me.
At a price of 10000 gold for five jar each with 5 uses that means a mere 400gp for each use of the ointment. That is pretty cheap compared to having a caster cast neutralize poison on a character (1000gp, DMG p104). If it could be possible...

Yes, Keotum's will detoxify poison, effectively it works the same as Neutralize Poison, at least to my reading. Slow Poison goes further, it actually retroactively cancels death from poisoning (in fact it will even do so several turns after death). AFAIK nothing else in AD&D does that, and the effects of MOST (there are a few exceptions) poisons are INSTANT, you fail the save, you are dead, do not pass go, do not collect 200gp. At that point it is TOO LATE for ANY other nostrum except Slow Poison (normally then followed by some true permanent curative). Honestly I think it is one of those readings that isn't particularly intended, but the haphazard writing of AD&D leads to a lot of these weird cases. I think Neutralize Poison is MEANT to be a more potent spell, and frankly I always ran it that way, but you cannot count on that, there are plenty of DMs who are out to rule you dead, not to cut you any slack at all.

Even a scroll of neutralize poison does not come cheaper. 100xp x4 (4th level spell) X 3 or 1200gp. As per DMG p121. And that is if the caster does not charge the 1000 gold for casting the spell for the scroll creation. And you need an 11th cleric to scribe scrolls... I do not think that a high priest will not charge that additional 1000 gold. At least not in my games.

Yeah, scrolls are really kind of ridiculously expensive, but they are also super useful, so...

The last possible solution would be an elixir of health from the Unearthed Arcana. At 2000 gold, it is even costlier than the scroll option. Healing solutions beside having a cleric in your party would not come cheap. The best solution is the ointment, yet, you need a nice friendly alchemist and e en these do not come cheap. Many groups were pooling their resources to get these. Often making quests for the alchemist or the church.

Well, Sweetwater might also work, but that will depend on your DM being a bit friendly IIRC. Mainly it would have been nice if poison had been slightly more realistic and took at least a couple minutes to finish you off. Even a massive dose of sodium cyanide doesn't kill you in a single instant. Basically every poison monster attack does. 4e's approach of assessing poison damage each round is a bit more interesting, though few of the poisons in that edition are very dangerous.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Sure. I'm talking about those levels before you can cast Neutralize Poison. The vast majority of the time you simply won't be close enough to make a difference with Slow Poison.

Agreed. I never thought it was much of a good spell unless you also have a plausible way to achieve an actual cure. If you pick up a jar of Keotum's or etc. then it starts to be more worth thinking about. Assuming your GM won't simply allow those other techniques to have the same effect (which I would for the record).

 

[Helldritch]

Yes, Keotum's will detoxify poison, effectively it works the same as Neutralize Poison, at least to my reading. Slow Poison goes further, it actually retroactively cancels death from poisoning (in fact it will even do so several turns after death). AFAIK nothing else in AD&D does that, and the effects of MOST (there are a few exceptions) poisons are INSTANT, you fail the save, you are dead, do not pass go, do not collect 200gp. At that point it is TOO LATE for ANY other nostrum except Slow Poison (normally then followed by some true permanent curative). Honestly I think it is one of those readings that isn't particularly intended, but the haphazard writing of AD&D leads to a lot of these weird cases. I think Neutralize Poison is MEANT to be a more potent spell, and frankly I always ran it that way, but you cannot count on that, there are plenty of DMs who are out to rule you dead, not to cut you any slack at all.

Yeah, scrolls are really kind of ridiculously expensive, but they are also super useful, so...

Well, Sweetwater might also work, but that will depend on your DM being a bit friendly IIRC. Mainly it would have been nice if poison had been slightly more realistic and took at least a couple minutes to finish you off. Even a massive dose of sodium cyanide doesn't kill you in a single instant. Basically every poison monster attack does. 4e's approach of assessing poison damage each round is a bit more interesting, though few of the poisons in that edition are very dangerous.

Fully agree on that. Neutralize poison should have done the same retro active thing as slow poison (and the same goes for elixir of health and Keogtom's ointment for that matter...)
Also, the goals of having these is to allow slow poison to run its course protecting the character until a suitable counter measure would be taken. I never said that any other spell would do the same as slow poison rulewise, but like you, I did and would still allow these to do the same. We had ruled that you had 10 rounds (or 10 minutes) to "save" the person dying of poison. In each instances, the person would be at one HP but alive.

As for sweet water... Nah... it is to neutralize poison in a well, in wine or whatever. I would not allow it to neutralize in a body. I don't think it was the intended use.

 

[TheSword]

Huh? Can you explain what you mean here?

I’m saying that giving different XP tables to balance progression requires giving a numerical value for a given set of abilities. A 5th level wizard is with 10,000 XP. A 5th level cleric is worth 7,500 XP. If you are capable of calculating these precisely enough to do this, give a cleric 2,500 XP worth of abilities and keep them balanced. [For what it’s worth I don’t think you can be that precise so the idea of using XP to balance development is flawed from day one.]

Player, or character.

If a character does more then damn right it should get more xp. Pretty much non-negotiable, that.

What a player does shouldn't enter into the xp equation at all. Bring beer? That's nice, but it won't get you any more xp.

For this purpose it’s interchangeable. D&D is a team game. The team achieves things, and even when they do something by themselves how much of that would have been possible without the rest of the team supporting them. When a player gives another player advice, or reminds them of a fact. Or just gives up their own game time so that player can have their moment in the sun, they are supporting. Rewarding individualism is not what I want to encourage in the game.

D&D isn’t granular enough to have players levelling up at different rates. Players on different levels is one of those fundamentally unfair imbalances. If Player A dies because they took a hit from a monster, that was a hit player B didn’t need to take. Punishing player A by having them restart a level, or several levels lower sucks.

 

[Mannahnin]

It feels bad, but the extent to which it really sucks depends on a number of factors.

Among them:
1. How wide is the power scale, and can they still meaningfully contribute with a lower-level PC until they level up?
2. How does the XP system work and can they catch up?
3. If they can catch up, how quickly does that happen?
4. Is this an open table where not everyone attends all the sessions and so folks are naturally more comfortable with different characters having earned more xp and stuff if they've attended and survived more sessions?
5. Do your players enjoy the feeling of "yeah, we can really die" and how it increases the tension and excitement of the game sufficiently that this overall enhancement to the excitement outweighs the feel-bads of having a character die and your new one lagging behind the power curve for some period?

In my experience of old school games online over the last year, for most of the folks interested it does seem to add up to the balance of fun being in favor of individual xp and starting from 1st. Combat feels more exciting, all advancement feels more earned, and the group still functions as a team.

That being said, I do think there's some merit in starting above 1st once factor 1 hits a certain point, and the 1st level character isn't meaningfully helping anymore.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Now, I will absolutely agree on the rings thing. Fair enough. At least you're not banging the drum that no one ever found magic items in AD&D. That's a pleasant change.

I also didn't really try to talk about magic items. It is a very difficult thing to evaluate. All classes do get them, and they are helpful to everyone. There are both minor type items, mundane-but-really-useful magic items (rings for instance), and then a few 'big ticket' items. Overall my feeling is that thieves were overall the most likely to be underrepresented in really good items. Also the protective items good for light/non armor using classes are really sought after. After all, a bracers of AC2 is just as valuable to a fighter as it is to a wizard or rogue! I guess you could say "magic armor, weapons, and shields are also valuable to many" but clerics are mostly the only ones that compete with fighters for most magic armor. Fighters are pretty close to unchallenged on the more significant weapons. OTOH clerics and magic users have a really awesome set of things they can use which are really powerful and some of which are common enough (wands for example) to expect to get fairly often.

So, my feeling is that assessing items doesn't change much, except to show how thieves are kind of shortchanged in most aspects of classic D&D...

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Fully agree on that. Neutralize poison should have done the same retro active thing as slow poison (and the same goes for elixir of health and Keogtom's ointment for that matter...)
Also, the goals of having these is to allow slow poison to run its course protecting the character until a suitable counter measure would be taken. I never said that any other spell would do the same as slow poison rulewise, but like you, I did and would still allow these to do the same. We had ruled that you had 10 rounds (or 10 minutes) to "save" the person dying of poison. In each instances, the person would be at one HP but alive.

Right, as a Cleric I just wouldn't bother with Slow Poison. It isn't a terrible spell, but on its own all it does is delay the inevitable. By level 3 you are probably deep enough in the dungeon/wilderness that getting back to town is not in the cards before it runs out. There are simply better spells that you can take that are more likely to avoid the situation in the first place, like Find Traps (talk about stepping on the thief's toes...).