Abilities in exchange for Experience points: Good or Bad Idea.

[Victim]

The difference is that in an XP-for-power system you can get the evasion ability from the fighting style AND another item, thus throwing off the balance of the game. When you use wealth (as Path of the Sword does) as at least one part, then that's no longer an issue.

Are you familar with items that don't take up item spaces, like ioun stones and such? They cost more, but don't take up an item space (duh).

If the ability that functions as a virtual item is priced appropriately, the fact that it doesn't take up a space will already be taken into account.

 

[LokiDR]

Ok, Path of Swords must be a much better system than Quintesential Fighter. Here are some winners from that book:

Professional Solider:
you can take weapon specialization at first level but you only start with 4d4x10 gold.

Savage:
Dectect magic at will as an extraordinary ability but very low starting equipment.

Fop:
You get weapon focus or weapon finesse in rapier but can only wear light armor.

Ok, those are just kits, but you get the point. The fighting style are just as bad. If you take a large number of feats (all useful to you) and you only fight in a particular way (for example rapier and dagger) you get what amounts to a feat. Only time is required, but you can pay to make the process go faster. There are several trees of these.

If you count the gold/XP spent by a person against them for the rest of the characters life (treat it like an item or a minor ECL adjustment) I can just look at like an item. But that money, once used, normally comes around again as a DM tries to balance a party. And if it acts like an item, it might as well be one. I would rather try magic tatoos than the sort of style that is in Quintisential Fighter.

 

[Crothian]

Ok, Path of Swords must be a much better system than Quintesential Fighter. Here are some winners from that book:

Well, they did revise the book, so you might want to look into that.

 

[WizarDru]

Ok, Path of Swords must be a much better system than Quintesential Fighter. Here are some winners from that book:

Professional Solider:
you can take weapon specialization at first level but you only start with 4d4x10 gold.

Savage:
Dectect magic at will as an extraordinary ability but very low starting equipment.

Fop:
You get weapon focus or weapon finesse in rapier but can only wear light armor.

Yikes! Path of the Sword is much better, then.

The way that Fighting Styles in PotS works (from memory):

you seek out a school, fighting master or similar teacher willing to impart the knowledge to you. For a fixed fee, a set amount of time and an amount of xp (arranged on a sliding scale), you can get training. If you manage to complete the training, the lesson eventually provides you with a moderate benefit. To qualify for certain lessons, you must have attained a certain level requirement.

Unfortunately, I don't have the book handy to identify an example of such benefits, although I recall that none of the lower level abilities were terribly impressive. Useful, but not unbalanced.

For example, I believe one school gave you the first lesson that took a day. You only had to be 1st level, spend 100 x.p. and 100 g.p., I think. The benefit wasn't very much, IIRC, even for a low level character. By the time you got to the fourth lesson, you needed 1000 x.p., a larger amount of gold, and needed to spend an uninterrupted week of training. You could only qualify for said training if you had taken the previous three lessons, and were sixth level.

As for the Legendary classes, which are more like open-ended deal-a-meal prestige classes, they have a lot of good requirements on them. They emphasize strong-RPing requirements, put at least one customizable skill/feat requirement in the DM's hands, and cannot be opted out of until you complete the class progression.

I heard that Quintessential Fighter was awful, and this doesn't do much to change my impression. Mongoose, in general, has left me with a poor impression. I thought about getting Quintessential Rogue for my wife, until I thumbed through it. The only thing worse than unneccesary pictures of topless elven women are really poorly drawn pictures of topless elven women. Couple that with poorly written rules, and that was one lost sale. Badaxe games didn't mind, though.

 

[DonAdam]

If the ability that functions as a virtual item is priced appropriately, the fact that it doesn't take up a space will already be taken into account.

Agreed, if it is priced appropriately... in gold pieces, where there is always a trade off.

My argument wasn't a space argument, by the way. It has nothign to do with using multiple items or bypassing the limit of one hat or one glove or whatever. I find those arguments inconsequential, even though they're on my side.

What I'm saying is that as an x level character I have x amount of power beyond my class and level. XP is not the standard. Class and level are. That x amount of power beyond that is wealth. Without the wealth standard, I can have both the ring and the power and avoid the opportunity cost.

My whole point is that there is no tradeoff with xp at higher level when you're earning much more than that anyway and it only works in large, discreet increments.

 

[DonAdam]

I think I might be misunderstanding you here. Do you mean that its OK to spend XP to buy extra abilities, so long as they look like feats, but its not OK to buy extra abilities if they don't look like feats? You could possibly end up with the same problem in the end anyways. It may take longer, but if you spend too much XP purchasing feats and not "purchasing" class levels, you could make it too hard on yourself.

You misunderstood my point. If you want such an ability, and it would be balanced for XP, it would probably be balanced somewhere in a feat chain, rather than introducing a new way to gain power.

And when I say "new way to gain power," that's your cue to say, "magic items," to which I respond, "Magic items actually cost gold, which does not take large increments to set your character back."

Like I said, I buy level adjustments, BECAUSE THEY SCALE WITH LEVEL. XP sacrifices do not.

Imagine if it cost 1,000 XP to play a drow. That's all it would take to move them up a level at 1st level. It becomes a no brainer to do it, because you're only behind at first.

I know that if people buy lots of abilities it will hurt them, but my concern is them buying one or two and it never hurting them.

 

[Victim]

Magic item creation costs XP. That's the only cost. The gold piece price for the item can be made up by selling items. Watch.

A wizard wants some Boots of Speed. Since he has Craft Wonderous Items, he can save some gold and craft them at half price. To make the boots, he expends 4000 GP, 320 XP and 8 days.

Wizard B also wants some boots of Speed. However, he expects to need some money in the future as well, so he doesn't want to be short on cash for a while. But he's got lots of money now. He decides to craft some Boots of Speed, but not for him. He spends some time, 4000 GP, and 320 XP to make the boots. Then, he SELLS THE BOOTS. Now he has 8000 GP to spend. Flush with cash, he buys more reagents and crafts his own Boots of Speed.

Net cost: 0 GP, 640 XP, 16 days.

What do you know? Magic items with no GP cost. With some advanced finances, he might even be able to jump start the process with very little starting gold by taking out a loan. But that costs more XP and time as he needs to make 3 items and sell 2.

 

[LokiDR]

Magic Item Creation

Item creation has its place in the game. Wizards really do need scribe scroll a number of times. Wands are nice things to have around. And making those items you can't find for cheaper than you could buy them is always a bonus. If they count against your gp/level, it fits into the current sceme.

However, item creation can fall to the same problem as XP-for-ability scemes if you apply modern economics. If a character is going into business with their item creation feats, I think they are bending the system the same way XP-for-ability scemes do and this practice should be put to a stop.

In the end, I want spellcasters and non-spellcasters to have similar chances to spend their resources. HP go to the same place-out of you. Money goes for items, no matter what class you are. XP should be only for classes, or everyone should be able to spend it. If not, then all spellcasters should be introduced at a lower level than non-spellcasters. One way or another, I think they should be evened out, but I don't see XP-for-abilities being a good balance.

 

[Li Shenron]

But the 1st level guys will not be just as powerful as the others though. After all, they have 1 hit die. They're adventuring with a couple 10 hit die characters. What are their odds for survival? Pretty bad, I'd wager. So, while not as powerful, they certainly are front-loaded, and they'll die young.

Yes, I agree, he'll have few HD, may be still subject to spells like Sleep for a long time

I suppose this drawback could work as a built-in limitation to buying too many extra abilities by spending xps: if he stays too late in levels, and you still count spent xps to calculate the average party level, he has obvious disadvantages.

I think you're exagerating a little here. Its either that or I'm just not catching your meaning. Can you try explaining it another way?

Yes, I was exaggerating, sorry
In fact I was thinking already that a DM may later want to give extra HD, BAB, ST increase and basically everything for an xp cost, which would make an interesting system but I am afraid it wouldn't work very fine together with the normal level advancement. Plus, I don't see the point of such extreme flexibility since D&D is already flexible enough, and it's still a class-based system. But, as you say, that goes too far...

 

[green slime]

I like this mechanic, but I'm wary of pricing the benefits too cheaply.

First off, before we all go flying off our respective handles, I'd like to point out two issues which haven't yet been mentioned:

• 
  [*]A similar mechanic already exists in the spell permanency.
  [*]Magic items can be lost, stolen, pulverized, disintegrated, destroyed, trashed, canned and wasted.
  

Thus I reach the conclusion, that similar mechanics already exist, and it is of interest to players. Thus the only thing really left to worry about is finding an appropriate cost for the benefit.

Obviously the use of this to gain feats, IMC, would be out, as feat are solely the realm of levelling. Thus no +1 BAB. But a spell-like ability to fly - I would consider.

Secondly, great care must be taken to ascertain that the correct XP cost is assigned. My presumption is that it would be vastly more valuable and valued than a mere unslotted magical item, as it is something that the character cannot loose.

As permanency as per the rules, is dispellable (although many including I rule that the effect is merely suppressed), you need to consider how you want your PC's abilities to behave: are they suppressable or not? Is it possible for the PC to loose these abilities? Under what circumstances?

Lastly, you must decide whether these abilities are Extraordinary, Spell-like or Supernatural (Sort hangs together with the above, but not completely).