Scurvy_Platypus
Explorer
Flynn said:
Oh the XP calc thing is something else completely.
No, I was looking at it from the perspective of "If I toss creatures X, Y, and Z at the group, is it going to kill them?" Older editions of D&D you broadly guessed at it, and relied on personal experience. The CR system as it was implemented (or at least attempted) is actually a pretty spiffy thing.
It kinda puts me in mind of Rune the RPG, which was based off the computer game. Rune was/is a "competitive" rpg, in the sense that that a player can actually "win" the particular session. The GMing duties rotate (or are supposed to) around the table, with each player taking a go at GMing in addition to playing. Now the important part is that the GM has an allocation for making the challenges for the characters. Critters are worth X amount, traps are worth Y amount, and so forth. Adding treasure and magic items can help defray the "cost". The GM is penalized if he actually kills a character, because the point is to challenge the characters, not simply meat-grind 'em into oblivion.
The CR system is kinda like that... a consistent (in theory at least) way of being able to design the encounters for the players to confront. It seems to me that since C&C is mainly about trimming down stuff as well as making old stuff play nice with the new, that the CR system ought to be able to still be fairly functional for C&C. I'm just trying to see if there's any obvious issues that someone might point out (besides something obvious like C&C doesn't have skills) that would mean the idea was pointless, instead of possibly useful.
The whole XP thing....
Yeah, the assumptions behind C&C and it's rate of CP gain and so forth are different. Here's what the author of the M&T book has to say about it...
Now there's an interesting note about that above quote... it's the one about XP only being from fights. This thread has some bearing on that: http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=167628Serleran said:
Now, what that treasure and leveling comparison thread illustrates is that the old default rules of D&D gave XP for gold and expected it. However, every DM I ever had houeruled that out. "Treasure is its own reward!" was the cry. Of course, that resulted in much slower leveling since the expectation was that you'd have both gold and critters to help. One of the posters in the comparison thread mentions that the suggested ratio of critter XP to gold XP be 20%/80% with the 20% coming from the critters. I haven't bothered to fish out my old books and double check this, but if it's true it means that the advancement rate would have been _really_ slowed down.
So C&C comes along, and many of the folks involved want it to be like it was back in the day, so they turn around and jack the XP requirements way up. And in keeping with the old approach, they recommend giving XP for gold, and just like before most people decide not to do it that way. The first few levels for a Fighter in C&C require a bit more XP than D&D, and then 4th level requires 2k more in C&C, 5th requires 7k more and it quickly spirals out of control from there. To the tune of 1 Million (!) XP to hit level 12 in C&C compared to 66k in D&D.
That's a pretty bloody different operating assumption for the XP.
But the scheme for deciding the XP requirement is completely different too. It's not just the amount, but how you get there.
C&C basically follows a "double the requirement of the previous level to advance" and uses that scheme until 10th level. For example, the fighter hits 2nd level after getting 2k XP. 3rd level requires 4k. And so forth. At 11th and 12th level, the cost scheme switches over to being 250K for those two levels, and then 13th onwards switches to a flat XP rate that depends on the class.
D&D on the other hand simply goes with "Your previous level in thousands of points added to the amount needed to reach your current level." So level 2 costs you 1k (previous level in thousands of points added to the zero amount required to be level 1), and then level 3 costs you 3k (previous level in thousands of points is 2k, added to the XP you required to reach your current level which is 1k of XP) errrr... yeesh, lousy explanation, but look at the XP chart and it's easy to see.
I'm honestly still on the fence about the whole rate of XP gain between C&C and D&D. I think if you're going to have as many dead levels as C&C does by default, then it should follow the D&D progression. I mean you're only getting more HP, gold and a +1 to your class ability checks for 90% of your levels.
On the other hand, rebuilding the classes so there's virtually no dead levels means that a slower leveling probably won't be as boring to players, so I wouldn't mind something more like the style that C&C uses.
And then there's the option of doing something like rycanada did with his "epic progression after level 6" which has been split into a new thread here:http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=200045
So yeah, XP.... something I'm definitely thinking about but being able to use something like the CR system to consistently rate a critter's challenge would make things a bit easier and certainly more consistent.
And that's part of the other big thing for me... it's not so much of an issue of "balance" although I do understand people's focus on that. What is just as important (or even a bit more for me) is the issue of consistency. Balance can be worked out and tweaked over time, but if you're not operating from a consistent base, it becomes much more difficult to work out that balance.
