Buying action points

[Wycen]

I generally think advancement is too fast in 3rd edition, and for my next campaign I want to slow it down. I plan to do this by skimming XP off the top.

However, I plan to use some or all of this XP in a reserve pool. Each player can draw off the reserve for crafting magic item XP and, for those who don't craft, buy actions points.

So, I'm trying to figure out how much an action point should cost.

Anybody else done this before?

 

[BiggusGeekus]

I haven't done it before, but I can tell you now that buying action points is problematic.

What are action points used for? To save your charcter's butt. So if you put your players in tricky situations they may actually come to feel like you're charging them exp to fight dragons.

Here's something else to gnaw on: rather than tacking on an exp penalty, you might want to scale it:

1-4 == 75%
5-14 == 125%
15-20 == 100%

That will shoot your players through the first four levels and give them an early feeling of accomplishment and progress. The 7-14 range is generally considered to be D&D's "sweet spot" in terms of what can be accomplished with the d20 roll. So that's really where you want to slow advancement down. I'm suggesting normalized progression in the late game because by then the PCs are going to have a large number of crazy abilities at their disposal and you'll be thinking about winding the campaign up at that point anyway. You don't want to slog through a climax, you want to charge through it.

Just some thoughts.

 

[diaglo]

can we donate action points?

i'm not a fan of them. but our group uses the mechanic.

the only thing i think you need to worry about more than cost is: disparity

how will you explain NPC crafters? or even noncrafters?

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

So, I'm trying to figure out how much an action point should cost.

Anybody else done this before?

Oh, boy have I. Wanna look at an action point as if it's a magic item?

An average roll on a d6 is 3.5. An action point's bonus, then, is 3.5.

Most magic item costs are based on bonus^2. Bonus^2 = 12.25.

An action point is a one charge, one use item. So we'll divide the final cost by 50.

Skill check: Bonus^2 * 100 = 1225/50= 24.5 gp.

Saving throw: Bonus^2 * 1000/50 = 245 gp.

Unnamed Bonus to AC: Bonus^2 *2500/50 = 612.5 gp.

Unnamed Bonus to Attack: This one's hard to say. Personally I think this overvalues them a little bit, but if you compare the cost of a Stone of Good Luck against an Ioun Stone, you can deduce the cost of a +1 bonus to an attack roll at 10,000 gp.

So, Bonus^2 * 10,000/50 = 2450 gp.

Now I suppose if you wanted to you could go on to calculate "No space limitation" and also, "Multiple use item" since an action point can be spent on any one of the above uses.

Personally I don't think multiple use item really applies since an action point, when you spend it, really only does one thing. If you're a stickler, what you could do instead is calculate all the things that the pool of action points can do, as if it were a single item, with a number of charges equal to the total number of action points you have. That'd be fair.

But personally, I don't think that's all that useful.

Finally, I guess you'd want to convert from gp values to xp values; also from the DMG we know that 1 xp = 5 gp.

And there you go.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

If you think advancement is too fast then change it - tieing it in with the action dice mechanic is problematic, it is easier to just give action dice as normal and multiply XP by a fraction.

The Auld Grump

 

[enworldatemylogin]

Adding them might be useful if the encounters are truly deadly.