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Message: <blockquote data-quote="seankreynolds" data-source="post: 2431543" data-attributes="member: 3029">I agree.I don't disagree. However, using the XP-penalty system rather than the LA system has two serious flaws.1. It rewards powerful races at lower levels because the XP totals are so small that you are almost always the same character level as a human (86% of the time for a 10%-penalty race compared to a human of level 1-5). That means that you're almost always more powerful than a human at low levels (because if you're the same character level, you still get all of your racial goodies that make you better than a human), and in the infrequent times that you're actually a level behind, you're still as good as the human because your racial abilities compensate for that missing level. In other words, the XP-penalty system means at low levels you're the same (at worst) or better (at best).2. It penalizes high-level characters because the greater amount of XP total of the high-level character means your XP deficit (compared to the human) is greater, which means you're always a level behind, if not more. A human with 190k XP is 20th level, whereas a 10%-penalty race has 171k (just barely 19th level), a 20%-penalty race has 152k (not quite 18th level), and a 30%-penalty race has 133k (almost 17th level). In other words, using the XP-penalty system gives you the same sort of level disparities that the LA system does, and (barring extensive playtesting) you really don't know if the numbers you picked are right, so you may be penalizing powerful races even more.So if you're using XP penalties to get of the unfairness of LA, you've succeeded (by making it a no-brainer to play an XP-penalty race at low levels). If you're using XP penalties to make it fair to powerful races at high levels, you've failed (you end up in the same boat as the LA system, except that it's Christmastime for the powerful races at low levels).I did a bunch of calculations, it's all right <a href="http://www.seankreynolds.com/rpgfiles/rants/LAvsXPpenalty.html" target="_blank">here</a>.</blockquote>

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