Erik Mona's Lo-Fi Experience System

[delericho]

Sorry, that system's not for me. It's just a bit too simplified.

I do agree, however, that XP should be assigned based on EL rather than by CR.

And the current system is mathematically clunky - there is no need to have both a non-linear number of XP required per level and a decreasing reward for a given CR as the level increases. One of these curves should be flattened (and I vote the XP by CR curve)... but doing so is non-trivial since the XP costs for item crafting are also tied to this mechanism.

 

[greywulf]

Nicely done. That looks like a close relative to the Microlite20 way:

Add up the Encounter Levels (ELs) of every encounter you take part in. When the total = 10 x your current level, you’ve advanced to the next level. Reset the total to 0 after advancing.

And that's it!

 

[cmanos]

I figure out XP for each encounter before the game session even starts. I have a general idea of what is going to happen in the session. I make a list of those, and figure out the individual XP awards, especially of there is something weird like a character of lower (or higher) level than the others.

This way, all I have to do is check off the encounters they have conquered, add up the XP, add in some RP XP and give them their rewards.

 

[FireLance]

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?

For my group, treasure. This ties in with our general approach of ignoring XP and simply levelling up after every adventure. Every time a PC gains a level, he "loses" his "old" equipment and gets "new" equipment equal to the standard wealth for a PC of his new level.

The player gets a great deal of flexibility in describing how the PC gets his new equipment. He could say that he found it on the last adventure, or that he bought it with the gold that he found, or that a grateful wizard improved an existing item for him, or that an item mysteriously gained a new power (a +1 longsword that dealt the fatal blow to a demon might become a +1 evil outsider bane longsword, for example). If he has the relevant item creation feat, he is assumed to have made it or improved it himself (and he gets a 25% discount off the market price). Another common handwave is that he belongs to an organization that keeps him supplied with equipment appropriate to his level (and sends him on missions, too).

This makes less work for the DM because he no longer has to worry about placing and balancing treasure and magic items. The players also have greater control over their PCs' gear.

 

[Gwaihir]

Of course, I don't use XP at all in the games that I run, using a system with Action Points similar to that which PirateCat uses.

Silver, can you (or Piratecat) elaborate on how this works, specifically in terms of item creation?

Thanks

 

[DaveMage]

I like the current XP system, but I have to admit, there's a big appeal in shilsen's method. I may try that in my next campaign....

 

[Psion]

Silver, can you (or Piratecat) elaborate on how this works, specifically in terms of item creation?

See this thread:
Calculating XP drives me crazy

 

[amethal]

For my group, treasure. This ties in with our general approach of ignoring XP and simply levelling up after every adventure. Every time a PC gains a level, he "loses" his "old" equipment and gets "new" equipment equal to the standard wealth for a PC of his new level.

The player gets a great deal of flexibility in describing how the PC gets his new equipment. He could say that he found it on the last adventure, or that he bought it with the gold that he found, or that a grateful wizard improved an existing item for him, or that an item mysteriously gained a new power (a +1 longsword that dealt the fatal blow to a demon might become a +1 evil outsider bane longsword, for example). If he has the relevant item creation feat, he is assumed to have made it or improved it himself (and he gets a 25% discount off the market price). Another common handwave is that he belongs to an organization that keeps him supplied with equipment appropriate to his level (and sends him on missions, too).

This makes less work for the DM because he no longer has to worry about placing and balancing treasure and magic items. The players also have greater control over their PCs' gear.

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?

 

[Rel]

The only problem I have with Erik's system is that you have to mess with other aspects of the game to fit it in (chiefly Item Creation). But I fully agree that calculating XP is one of the things that I had to scrap and tinker with.

I've posted the system I came up with here a couple times but the last one was in my Story Hour that got completely wiped out in the board crash. In essence you divide the session into "scenes" and assign a "significance level" to each one that gives a set amount of XP based on the party average level. The whole thing takes about 30 seconds.

I can post it again if anybody is interested.

 

[shilsen]

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 don't know how foundational it is, but I removed out-of-combat healing as something to track. The PCs don't even have to track healing wands, cost-wise or charge-wise. I assume they have them, and if they have a few minutes after a fight, I assume they're at full health.

I'm effectively ignoring the wealth guidelines too. My 11th lvl PCs now have well over 200,000 gp of wealth and equipment each.

And we only have 1 combat in the majority of given game days, maybe 2 at best. So the PCs get to go into most fights with full resources, and are almost never challenged by attritional factors.

None of the above three have caused any trouble, and I've been using them for a while. When the PCs hit 11th a couple of sessions ago, I used the same approach as Firelance, just giving the PCs a budget and letting them get the items they wanted within that total.