Erik Mona's Lo-Fi Experience System

[DonTadow]

There you go. Simple, fair, and gets the job done.

I'm with you on this. But I guess it depends on how much the pcs need individual XP. I've always felt that the individual XP takes away from the community group feel of the game. I award based on how well the pc's own personal goals were accomplished. That way, they are not punished for taking the end about way of doing something.

Love ya eric. But it seems like a complicated (though slightly less) than the original system. Why not just scratch it and say ok this is the xp you get, lets get to the game.

 

[Rel]

Just one more quick point on individual vs. group XP. I did individual XP for YEARS and I thought I was doing it for all the right reasons. They system I used strongly encouraged the players to GET INVOLVED. The players who made sure that their characters played a part in every scene and had interesting backgrounds, motivations, a diverse skillset and willingness to engage in social interaction were mopping up the XP. As a bonus, it was punishing the guys who kind of sat back and just let things happen without as much input from them.

But then I came to understand (thanks to Robin Laws) that the "Casual Gamer" is a common player archetype. And in my opinion (and his) a valid one. That guy is not as involved as some of the other players and he's never going to be. He's just having fun showing up and hanging out with his friends. And there was another key: Those guys are my friends. If they are showing up and having fun and they're my friends, why am I punishing them again?

So I dropped individual XP and have never been all that tempted to go back to it.

 

[Baumi]

@ Firelance: Awesome Idea! 8D

In my D&D Groups we usually ignore XP at all, the GM says when we level up and thats it. We rarely create Magic Items ourself, but if we want to do it, we have an XP pool of 10% of the XP-difference needed for the next level (you need to gain 3000 XP from Level 3 to 4 -> you have 300XP to create Items).

My non-D&D Groups handle the XP on the Adventure as a whole: how successfull they were, how good they played there role and how much fun it was and give out as much as XP as fit (example Savage Worlds: average: 3, bad:2, awesome: 4)

 

[Festivus]

I have done experience three different ways before. First, the traditional hand out exp for encounters and traps, and a smattering of exp for things like roleplay, journaling, etc.

Second way was to dump everything into Excel (wow did that take out the tedium of it), you can grab a copy of my spreadsheet at http://www.zackfamily.com/excel for an idea of what I do.

The third way, I hand out levels when the adventure calls for it. In other words, I don't do any experience at all. The problem with this system is that you also have to toss out crafting exp penalties. In the adventure where I am doing this it's not such a problem as they don't really have any time (Red Hand of Doom) to stop and craft for two weeks.

Simplifying the exp like you suggest also needs to consider the experience costs for crafting, or at least needs to toss it out.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

Because the basic XP system is designed to level up every 13.33333 encounters (40/3), I'd go with a "Standard" XP award of 3 points and a "cost per level" of 40.

An "Epic" encounter (EL+2 over the party) is worth four times as much XP. (Eric has this ratio correct in his model.)

Bumping the "Standard" award up to 3 points gives you a little more fine control over the system-- you can easily drop in 1 point rewards (good ideas, memorable quotes, tasty snacks) and 1 point costs (certain spells, item creation, etc.)

You should also adjust the XP awards for larger parties on a straight ratio. Multiply the base award by 4 and divide by the actual party size. I don't know if that starts to become too much math for you.

 

[pogre]

It is interesting to me how many posters here and on my blog have scrapped the experience system entirely.

Is there any other "foundational" part of the third edition rules that you have also scrapped or modified to this extent?

--Erik

I largely ignore alignment. I only keep track of religious dedication to deity for Paladins, Clerics, et al.

 

[kenmarable]

It is interesting to me how many posters here and on my blog have scrapped the experience system entirely.

Is there any other "foundational" part of the third edition rules that you have also scrapped or modified to this extent?

--Erik

A couple years back I went to a simpler XP system as well. I forget the details off the top of my head (man, I need to get a new campaign started!), but it was session based. I got the idea from somewhere, maybe the Babylon 5 RPG or something, I forget (but scaled for level unlike that one). An average session got the group something like 1/4 or 1/5 of the way to the next level. If they didn't really do much, I might dock it 25% or something. If they had some real tough challenges or great character development, I'd up it 25-50%. (Of course I has exact numbers so I didn't have to bother with the math, but I forget what those numbers were offhand.)

When I first tried it out, I kept track with both the out of the book style (with making sure to consider all "challenges" not just killing monsters) and the simpler system. That campaign lasted 1st to 7th level, and the XP totals were never more than a few percent off. That sealed it for me and I'll never go back to the out of the book style.

As for other things we've thrown out - multiclass penalties. Never used racial level limits in prior editions, and never bothered with multiclass penalties in this edition(s). Thought about some bonus for taking your favored class, but our groups were always eclectic enough that we would rarely take favored classes anyway.

Also item creation is something we've messed with. We usually wound up scrapping the XP cost (too much hassle keeping individual XP vs. group XP anyway), and were quite liberal in allowing construction time. Either "if you can make it in less than a day, then you can make a bunch of similiar items - i.e. scroll of X, scroll of Y, etc." or "it may take a little longer, but you can just work on it when we camp for the night".

Lastly, in playing at least a half dozen different 3.x campaigns and dozens of characters, no one EVER took a metamagic feat other than to qualify for a PrCls. Even then, they would rarely if ever use it.

 

[kenmarable]

The third way, I hand out levels when the adventure calls for it. In other words, I don't do any experience at all. The problem with this system is that you also have to toss out crafting exp penalties. In the adventure where I am doing this it's not such a problem as they don't really have any time (Red Hand of Doom) to stop and craft for two weeks.

With published adventures, I've found myself doing the same thing. When I ran Red Hand of Doom and Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil, both of them were divided nicely enough that I just forgot all XP tracking and said "When they reach this section, they will be level X." As long as I kept the sidetreks to a minimum that kept things very easy.

 

[Joshua Randall]

A couple of people have said "XP should be awarded based on EL instead of CR". Uh, isn't that effectively how it works now?

The APL 5 characters encounters two CR 5 creatures, an EL 7 encounter. At this APL, CR 5 = 1500 XP, times 2 = 3000 XP. If you used the EL as a CR, then a CR 7 = 3000 XP.

You can freely substitute EL for CR.

(This may break down at the extremes of the XP table, but it certainly works in the big middle part.)

Also, why all the wailing and gnashing of teeth over calculating XP? There are a variety of good web-based or offline sites or programs that can do it for you. It takes maybe five minutes, and that's if the PCs are all different levels and encountered many different ELs. If the PCs are all the same level and the ELs match, then calculating XP takes about 30 seconds.

 

[FireLance]

I would really like to adopt this system. Please could you let me have a few more details.

So do you bother to place treasure at all? My players like occasionally finding a massive treasure hoard; it makes their little eyes light up.

Are there any limits, either express or implied? For example, could a character "lose" his mithril breastplate and gain a cube of force?

Yes, in the purest form, this means that the DM doesn't place treasure. NPCs will have their gear, and PCs may find useful items in the course of the adventure, but once it's over, it's back to standard wealth levels. In our games, the PCs might find a huge hoard, but that's just story or flavor; in mechanical terms, they are still at standard wealth next level. Of course, you can always tweak the system if you want, so that if the PCs do find the big hoard, they get a 10% or 20% bonus to their wealth next level.

We usually play with one restriction: no single magical item can be worth more than half the character's total wealth. Apart from that, a character can change out his entire inventory if he wants.