A thing about d20 D&D I didn't like, and still don't know why it was done...

[Crothian]

BTW this is a d20 site.

BTW, not exclusively so. We talk white wolf, paranoia, star wars (d6 even), and many other games here.

 

[Aaron L]

That's funny, the unified XP chart and easy multiclassing is one of my absolute favorite things about 3E. Whereas in earlier editions characters of the same level were, by design, of different "levels" of power, now everyone of the same level has nearly exactly the same amount of power, so it's a much better method of measuring character advancement. Now when characters are all the same level, they really are all at the same "level" of power.

And the multiclassing rules are so much better now that it's just amazing. It's a great mix between a class system and a skill system. I'm no longer restricted to a few straight jacketed classes to make characters with, I can freely mix different classes to get the right mix of abilities I need to model a character exactly the way I want.

 

[Umbran]

BTW this is a d20 site. Go have a grognard whine fest elsewhere.

Um, no. We discuss a whole lot of stuff that isn't pure 3.x D&D around here.

You're free to go find yourself another thread, if you don't like this one. Please don't post insultingly dismissive and threadcrapping stuff like that here again.

 

[jonathan swift]

WHat I was saying was "here's a situation where characters overcome a monster and gain some XP. They all overcome the monster in different ways, and apply what they learned about overcoming that monster differently."

(That's all it was, really! I promise! )

Yes, but you can say the exact same thing if they got the same amount of XP in their different classes. None of them necessarily learned more than the others, they just learned differently.

 

[Tiberius]

"3rd Edition."

Heh, I've had the urge to do that too.

 

[Gentlegamer]

What's not to like?

It facilitates the idea of "taking" a level in different classes via multiclassing. It's as if the character is shopping at the character class market and decides to pick up a level in a class as an afterthought, in my opinion.

 

[hexgrid]

I did like how in 2e (the edition I started with,) the characters all advanced on their own schedules instead of as a group. It seemed more -for lack of a better word- organic.

It's a pretty minor issue for me, though.

 

[Brimshack]

One thing about the old x.p. rules that I never did like was that it effectively tilted the general power level in the opposite direction from what would have made sense to me. Because the Paladin and the Mage were the hardest to gain levels for (if memory served) and teh Thief was the easiest, this meant that your highest level characters were actually the ones that struck me as having the least claim to some sort of meta-uberositude. So, for anythign keyed to levels, the Thief actually did better than the Mage or teh paladin. I would have preferred for the situation to have been the reverse.

...As I continued playing the game for 26 years, this obviously wasn't a deal breaker for me.

 

[molonel]

I loathed the old XP advancement charts with every fiber of my being.

Well, not really, but it sounds good.

I don't miss them at all.

 

[Psion]

Well, if you don't unify the XP charts, you don't have a solid concept of character level separate from class level - and that puts the idea of free and easy multiclassing pretty much out the window.

Umbran FTW.

Unified XP charts (and classes with abilities targeted at making their relative worth comparable) makes LEVEL into a meaningful scale.

Making LEVEL into a meaningful scale stops us (to some extent) from having to weigh each classes benefit individually when estimating party capability.

This enables:
1) getting away from the madness of xp-divvying based multi/dual classing rules, and the attendant convoluted rules that exist to try to make it work in this wonky model, and
2) makes CR/EL as a measure of gauging opponent effectiveness possible.

The simplified tables is really a secondary (but obviously beneficial) effect. The effect that making level a more meaningful across-the-board measure of capability is the MAJOR benefit to the game.

So, in short, I totally, absolutely, and completely disagree with thedungeondelver. Unified XP charts, and the results of them, are a major net positive for the game.