Experience Points and D&D Economy - What I'd Like To See

[bruceparis]

Here are a couple of things I'd like to see in D&D 4th Edition:

CHANGES TO EXPERIENCE POINTS

Can we make the gaining of these simpler and less cumbersome? Ie. Every level you get a total of 25 XP to aim for in order to "level".

Mook or role-play encounters earn you 1 XP. Combat Encounters that challenge you at your level get you 2 XP. Combat Encounters that push you to your limit and expend lots of resources award you 3 XP. There might even be some complex role-playing encounters that award you more than 1 XP.

When you reach "25" you go up a level. At the start of the next level you "reset" to zero and start again. If the DM wants players to level faster, then he/she just awards 2 or 3 points per challenging encounter. If he/she wants players to level slower, then he/she only awards 1 or 2 points per challenge encounter.

You can still "spend" XP to craft items. But you can never spend XP that puts you below your current level.

What do other people think of this methodology?

D&D ECONOMY

I'd like to see Gold Pieces go away. I'd like to see "D&D Accounting" go away. I'd like to see 4th Edition move to a simple economy based around d20 Modern.

Have a skill called "Wealth". Wealth is [half level] + [CHA bonus] + [Trained] + Misc.

If you want to buy something, you make a Wealth check vs. Item DC.

Inexpensive items would be DC 5 or 10 (ie. PHB items). Items normally costing 1000 gp would be DC 15. Items between 1000 gp and 5000 gp would range from DC 16 to DC 20. Items worth more would range from DC 25 to DC 50 (for artefacts, etc).

Availability (number) of items would depend on where you were buying. Village marketplaces just aren't going to have DC 20+ items for sale.

You sell items by making a Wealth check at -3 their buy DC. You can't sell items DC 15 or under (as they are considered minor items and/or minor consumables). You can sell items DC 16 or higher. For every item you sell, you get +1 Misc (reserve) bonus to add to a possible future purchase roll. If you find gold pieces down a dungeon, these can still be written down and when you get to 1000 you add +1 to your Misc (reserve) bounus.

What do people think of this?

Cheers,

Bruce

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

I like both of these concepts for a new system, especially the much reduced XP totals. There's no difference between needing 100 XP to level up and getting 10 XP per encounter and needing 10,000 XP to level up and getting 1,000 XP per encounter, except that the former is faster and easier to do on the fly.

With that said, I would up it to a 100 XP scale; people tend to find multiples of 10 easiest to deal with, and it gives room for a bit more granularity. Also, it would remind me of Shining Force and Final Fantasy Tactics, which would be a Good Thing.

I'm a bit more torn on Wealth checks. They're simpler to use in play, more complicated to explain. In a pure skill-based system (insert shameless plug in sig here), I'd go with them in a heartbeat just for their lovely symmetry. In a game like D&D, however, they seem more like 'odd men out' than 'intuitive parts of the system,' and they are not at ALL intuitive to new players, who are likely to be used to a gp or gil standard, or at least Monopoly money.

My personal preference is for purely narrative equipment and wealth; describe your PC's gear however you like, and let his class/level/XP expenditure/etc. determine how effective he is. However, this seems to be VERY unpopular amongst the existing playerbase, and sadly I think it probably appeals to a smaller NEW playerbase than a gp/gil standard.

With that said, both ideas - especially the latter - are probably too far to go for D&D. The XP thing might actually be possible, though I'm sure it won't happen. The Wealth system? I'm thinking that's a big no.

 

[kerbarian]

Smaller numbers for XP would be fine, but I wouldn't like that wealth system at all. The problem is that once you have a monetary system, wealth is inherently quantifiable. Not only that, it's something that players understand extremely well, because it's essentially the same system they use every day in real life. That means that if you're going to model wealth, you need to model it very realistically in order for it to be believable.

It's okay to gloss over it and turn it into a pure roleplaying or DM-adjudicated thing, like MoogleEmpMog suggested. Then the rules just aren't governing that part of the world, like there aren't rules for when characters need to use the bathroom.

Another option could be to say that there is no monetary system in place, and the world only uses a barter system (i.e. there are no gold coins). In that case, you could get away with a more abstract system, because what you're modeling wouldn't be so ingrained into the players' real life experiences.

 

[Mouseferatu]

You can still "spend" XP to craft items. But you can never spend XP that puts you below your current level.

4E won't involve "spending" XP on anything at all, ever. And I for one am grateful for it.

As Andy Collins said at the GenCon seminar, and as I've always felt: "XP are a measure of advancement, not a resource to be spent."

 

[Warbringer]

As the mouse said, xp is no longer a resource.

Out of curiosity, is 'xp' a sacred cow?

How about just simply you gain a level after 10 encounters of equal or greater level of the party? If lower, no benefit....

 

[FireLance]

Out of curiosity, is 'xp' a sacred cow?

How about just simply you gain a level after 10 encounters of equal or greater level of the party? If lower, no benefit....

Yes, it is. Even in 3e, some groups have done away with xp entirely, simply levelling after an agreed number of sessions (one, two, three, etc. according to group preference) or whenever the DM feels it is appropriate, and substituting "power components", additional gp costs, or action points for xp costs.

 

[WyzardWhately]

Dude, if that's how you want XP to work, you just wrote your house rule. I'm serious, it looks entirely functional, run with it. Especially since, as mentioned, you don't have to spend XP for anything.

As to wealth...Not sure. I might have to import an abstract overlay, like what I've heard the do with wealth feats/wealth points in Iron Heroes. See, I hate to just handwave money, because you still have to carry it and thousands of GP get heavy. But I don't want to deal with the accounting that much, either. So, I'd like to have, ideally, a way to both track how much coinage a character is schlepping around, and a way for the PC to convert that into abstract 'resources.'

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

As to wealth...Not sure. I might have to import an abstract overlay, like what I've heard the do with wealth feats/wealth points in Iron Heroes. See, I hate to just handwave money, because you still have to carry it and thousands of GP get heavy. But I don't want to deal with the accounting that much, either. So, I'd like to have, ideally, a way to both track how much coinage a character is schlepping around, and a way for the PC to convert that into abstract 'resources.'

Just out of curiosity... why?

Money is a common MOTIVE for Conan, Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, but none of them ever seem to be able to keep/do much with it prior to Conan becoming King of Aquilonia (and even then, he started his reign by cutting taxes, so he must not have been exactly lining the coffers ). There's no need to track the wealth of such characters because, first, they spend their petty cash on the oft-cited ale and whores and second, the always manage to lose or misspend the fantastic treasures they find, on those rare occasions they don't manage to lose it during the course of the adventure.

It's never an issue at all in Lord of the Rings. Offhand, I can't think of an example where money comes up in more than passing, but I'll admit to being more familiar with the Sword and Sorcery side of classic fantasy.

It comes up in Final Fantasy only when it comes to equipment - which is usually 1-2 items (and the best are never purchasable) - and consumable items - which become trivially cheap almost immediately; in some of the games, even this is dispensed with. Characters are sometimes extremely independently wealthy (e.g. Edgar), yet their wealth is rarely if ever a 'resource' in game.

Even in D&D's own licensed fiction, I can't actually think of an example where character wealth is an issue! Neither the Dragonlance heroes nor Drizzt and company, certainly the biggest names in D&D fiction, ever seem to either worry about money or have much of it, save in the form of land and title for some characters.

In fact, outside D&D itself, and World of Warcraft - which, btw, still doesn't have as many subscribers as the best-selling FF game sold new copies, regardless of the secondary market; it's no good citing this as a 'knockout punch' for the popularity of the 'massive amounts of bling' model of RPG rewards, especially when all the other major pay MMORPGs sell less by a factor of ten -, I can't think of a SINGLE EXAMPLE of any fantasy media that would need character wealth modelled. :\

 

[TwinBahamut]

I think the "you need 100xp/1000xp to advance a level" system is far more elegent than what we have right now in 3E. It works both in theory and in practice in the various videogames (FFT, Suikoden, .hack) that implement it.

As for wealth... I think wealth checks and wealth scores worked well enough in D20 Modern, and a simplified system of such that was easier to determine would also work. I don't see any need to track money with gold pieces in an RPG. However, I would be fine if they stick with a standard "big bad of gold pieces" system.

 

[WyzardWhately]

Just out of curiosity... why?

Money is a common MOTIVE for Conan, Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, but none of them ever seem to be able to keep/do much with it prior to Conan becoming King of Aquilonia (and even then, he started his reign by cutting taxes, so he must not have been exactly lining the coffers ). There's no need to track the wealth of such characters because, first, they spend their petty cash on the oft-cited ale and whores and second, the always manage to lose or misspend the fantastic treasures they find, on those rare occasions they don't manage to lose it during the course of the adventure.

It's never an issue at all in Lord of the Rings. Offhand, I can't think of an example where money comes up in more than passing, but I'll admit to being more familiar with the Sword and Sorcery side of classic fantasy.

It comes up in Final Fantasy only when it comes to equipment - which is usually 1-2 items (and the best are never purchasable) - and consumable items - which become trivially cheap almost immediately; in some of the games, even this is dispensed with. Characters are sometimes extremely independently wealthy (e.g. Edgar), yet their wealth is rarely if ever a 'resource' in game.

Even in D&D's own licensed fiction, I can't actually think of an example where character wealth is an issue! Neither the Dragonlance heroes nor Drizzt and company, certainly the biggest names in D&D fiction, ever seem to either worry about money or have much of it, save in the form of land and title for some characters.

In fact, outside D&D itself, and World of Warcraft - which, btw, still doesn't have as many subscribers as the best-selling FF game sold new copies, regardless of the secondary market; it's no good citing this as a 'knockout punch' for the popularity of the 'massive amounts of bling' model of RPG rewards, especially when all the other major pay MMORPGs sell less by a factor of ten -, I can't think of a SINGLE EXAMPLE of any fantasy media that would need character wealth modelled. :\

Don't get me wrong, I love original Conan. And those rules are a great place to start if you want to emulate the fiction. The stuff I'm talking about is for building keeps/raising armies...big stuff like that. A lot of people aren't too big a fan of that, but I hired a score of mercenaries recently in the campaign I'm playing in, and they were invaluable in siezing an enemy keep.

I'm actually fairly anti-buying-magic-items, but there are still hugely expensive things I'd like PCs to be able to do. Build ships and buy patents of nobility, for example, things which I believe are at least mentioned in Conan, if they never happen on-screen.