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Message: <blockquote data-quote="howandwhy99" data-source="post: 5834665" data-attributes="member: 3192">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)</blockquote>

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