KesselZero
First Post
No, for all the reasons everyone else has given, mainly that it's unnecessarily confusing. I never liked it in 2e and I HATED it in Rifts.
Different XP progressions as a means of class balance?
- Thread starter Elodan
- Start date
steeldragons
Steeliest of the dragons
Here's your class...here's your XP progression.
Yeeeah...it's on a chart/table. Look it up...right there, on the page that describes your class.
This is really too much "trouble" or "confusion" for people to handle?
Someone explain that for me please.
Yeeeah...it's on a chart/table. Look it up...right there, on the page that describes your class.
This is really too much "trouble" or "confusion" for people to handle?
Someone explain that for me please.
howandwhy99
Adventurer
IMHO it is not meant to balance classes absolutely, only relatively and even then only a scale. It's probably easier to think of XP amounts as complexity ratings and the content of those amounts as only partially overlapping between characters and classes. So some F-M potential XP sources overlap with that for an M-U, but the overlap justification only occurs for different reasons.
The amount of uniformity overlap isn't completely ignored though and the amount of niche protection diversity is built into the game too. This balance being no small working, art or science. The numbers being used in each case are almost strictly for in-class balancing, balancing F-M with other F-M according to F-M content each may address. The amounts only haphazardly balance content and class-based abilities across classes by range.
How do we balance by range? A Thief at 1250 is half as difficult to play as a Magic-User at 2500. However, the M-U is understood to have twice as many content opportunities to earn XP while within 1st level. How long it actually takes any PC to increase in level is, of course, entirely up to the player. If XP isn't sought out or XP gain is purposely avoided, then a player's character will not be going up in level.
There is some sort of power doubling min/max high/low framework used to balance pretty much everything in AD&D. It comes up in class ratings too (ignore Paladins, which break a lot of rules just so Nigel Tufnel's amp can go up to 11). Obviously Thieves are half of M-Us, but most PC Classes are somewhere across this span. When other stuff is rated by level (and really, everything is rated by level in AD&D) they use a similar span. A kind of doubling minimum and maximum. I could be wrong though. I'm still looking at the bell curve numbers and a possible Fibonacci sequence built in there somewhere.
Anyway my point is, almost everything back then had multiple meanings attached to it (like a 15 STR meant several more ratings in other ways). And between character and between class ratings, heck, between anything ratings were on progressions. It was not stochastic balancing like d20, it was all along progression markers. If you fit on the line somewhere between two predetermined points then you qualified. (beer & pretzels, bistro math at its finest)
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I'm a first-level wizard, and I want to take a level of Fighter at second level. Do I use the wizard's chart or the fighter's? At third, I want to go back to wizard. Do I need the difference between wizard levels 1 and 2? Or do I need some arcane multiclassing progression chart?
It's much more intuitive and simple to have everyone progress at the same rate.
Answer: You don't swap classes willy-nilly like that, that's silly. You train for years as an Elven Fighter 1/Magic-User 1, pre-campaign.
steeldragons
Steeliest of the dragons
I'll preface this by saying, I would NOT want to see or allow "multi-classing in such a manner...That said, let's see if I can do this without getting confused or it causing me too much trouble...
A) Why weren't you multiclassed to begin with?
B) To answer the question, you are a wizard, you go to 2nd when the wizard goes to second.
A) Why weren't you multiclassed to begin with?
B) To answer the question, you are a wizard, you go to 2nd when the wizard goes to second.
KesselZero
First Post
In RIFTS, the charts weren't on the pages for each class. They weren't anywhere near them. They were impossible to find, level after level. This is because Kevin Simbieda is insane.
Obviously that wouldn't be the case in D&D5, and maybe confusion was the wrong term. There are various issues caused by differing XP curves:
1.) New/young players getting confused about how much XP they need for the next level, when their fellows are all leveling at different rates. This may seem dumb, but I know this confused and frustrated me when I was a kid playing 2e.
2.) Breakdown of meaning in what a "level" is. If a wizard hits level 3 at 5000 XP and a fighter hits level 3 at 2500 XP because the wizard is twice as powerful, why are they both being called "level 3?" This means that levels don't correlate with power OR amount of XP. If the wizard is more powerful at level 3 than the fighter, they're not at the same level.
3.) Breakdown in time between rewards. This may be a feature-not-bug to some, arguing that wizards should have to wait longer to get to the good stuff, but it seems to me that playing a class who has no new powers, features, bonuses, abilities for twice as long as your friend could be frustrating and become boring.
4.) Breakdown in maximum power caps/character usability time. If a wizard levels at more XP than a fighter, because he gets more power per level, then a wizard effectively has more overall length in-campaign AND more overall power than a fighter. A wizard's player can use that character for much longer (because he'll take much longer to reach level 20 or 30) and when he hits level 20 (or 30) he'll be way more powerful than the fighter who hit level 20 6 months ago, especially if that fighter's player started a new character in the meantime. Or should the fighter's player just play a static, unchanging character until the wizard maxes out?
Obviously that wouldn't be the case in D&D5, and maybe confusion was the wrong term. There are various issues caused by differing XP curves:
1.) New/young players getting confused about how much XP they need for the next level, when their fellows are all leveling at different rates. This may seem dumb, but I know this confused and frustrated me when I was a kid playing 2e.
2.) Breakdown of meaning in what a "level" is. If a wizard hits level 3 at 5000 XP and a fighter hits level 3 at 2500 XP because the wizard is twice as powerful, why are they both being called "level 3?" This means that levels don't correlate with power OR amount of XP. If the wizard is more powerful at level 3 than the fighter, they're not at the same level.
3.) Breakdown in time between rewards. This may be a feature-not-bug to some, arguing that wizards should have to wait longer to get to the good stuff, but it seems to me that playing a class who has no new powers, features, bonuses, abilities for twice as long as your friend could be frustrating and become boring.
4.) Breakdown in maximum power caps/character usability time. If a wizard levels at more XP than a fighter, because he gets more power per level, then a wizard effectively has more overall length in-campaign AND more overall power than a fighter. A wizard's player can use that character for much longer (because he'll take much longer to reach level 20 or 30) and when he hits level 20 (or 30) he'll be way more powerful than the fighter who hit level 20 6 months ago, especially if that fighter's player started a new character in the meantime. Or should the fighter's player just play a static, unchanging character until the wizard maxes out?
Ahnehnois
First Post
Multiclassing. How is that working? They're not going back to pre-3e multi/dualclassing madness, nor are they cutting multiclassing out. How can you have a chart that covers every possible combination of classes?
Also, I think if you can't fit what you need for a class on one table in one page, that's too much info.
And, frankly, XP shouldn't be in in the PHB at all. That's a DM issue.
tlantl
First Post
This assumes the god awful multiclassing rules from 3e. If you could only multiclass at 1st level then there's no problem, especially if you are dividing xp between classes and using the separate charts.
The thing is I don't expect the devs to want to do this since they are looking to make the game appeal to those who hate math and other complicated concepts in their otherwise complex and involved rpgs.
I still can't believe there are DM's who don't use the experience point system in their games. Perhaps including more xp related rules might curb this too.
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