Experience Points & Level Advancement Rate

[nnms]

In pre 1989 D&D, you got the majority of your XP from finding treasure and not from killing monsters.

This is actually a really well thought out piece of game design.

Combine it with fast combat, lethal monsters and wandering monsters and the play becomes a whole lot more goal oriented. If monsters are deadly, dangerous and have a poor risk:reward ratio, you start concentrating on getting your job done rather than killing monsters.

So I definitely support XP coming from monsters being only 10-20% of total XP gained at most.

1 Gold = 1 XP or Quest XP being the greatest source of XP means that you end up prioritizing non-combat things as the player.

One change I'd suggest is having it equal 1 Xp for each GP you spend rather than find. And then encourage players to deal with castle building, temple building, political bribery, and other things that might interest them.

They don't get XPs for the GPs until they spend them and then they get to spend them on things that are important to them. A new set of armour. A horse. A small fort. A castle. Hiring mercenaries. Bribing officials. Making tribute to a temple. All sorts of neat stuff.

 

[OnlineDM]

I'm another person who has long since ditched tracking XP, instead leveling characters when appropriate (usually every 2-3 sessions in my games). However, if WotC wants to appeal to players of all editions with the new iteration, I'd be surprised if they ditched XP or radically re-worked it. Pity.

 

[Kaodi]

I kind of think that XP is too much of a sacred cow to take out of D&D. Not using it can always be presented as an option.

But one thing I absolutely agree with: If you gain even just 1 XP it should feel like you gained something worth having. Maybe the right amount of XP for 2nd level would be 20, and after that it increases so as XP to Next Level = Next Level x 5 + 10. Thus even at Level 19 (if levels go up that high, and I am not so sure they should) 1 XP would be worthwhile progress towards 110 XP to Level 20.

 

[Fanaelialae]

I say give people two dozen or so leveling systems (including at least one non-xp option). That way, everyone should be able to find something to suit their tastes.

 

[Hassassin]

One thing I've noticed that the last number in my XP column is almost always a 0. If every XP award is going to be a multiple of ten you should just divide everything by ten.*

Another is that XP inflation serves no real purpose. If facing a "level appropriate" threat will always give you about 1/15 the XP to level up, why must the XP cost to level from 1st to 2nd be less than the XP cost to level from 11th to 12th?

Something like "divide XP by 100**, round down, that's your level" would be better than 3e or 4e tables. Calculate the scaling into DM tables instead.

* People who play poker with the lowest chips called "hundreds" or "thousands" when that has nothing to do with their real value also annoy me.
** 10 is IMO not granular enough, though it would otherwise be nice.

 

[LurkAway]

For me, it goes back to the very interesting question of "What exactly is a level?". What does it mean if Bob the Fighter becomes harder to kill (ie., more hit points) because he got lots of gold? What does it mean if Bob the Fighter is better at killing (ie., higher attack bonus) because Jim (the player of Bob) did some good roleplaying at persuading the gate guard to let them through? For me, these situations only highlight the awkardness of levels and xp.

In a simulationist/story sense, I think XP is awarded by overcoming obstacles, ie., what doesn't kill you, makes you stronger. It doesn't have to be always combat obstacles, but any lessons learned on the path of heroism.

So I think XP might be earned by overcoming Obstacles (capital O) as defined in the adventure or by the DM or whatever. (In order to prevent metagaming, for me, I'd like the DM to keep secret what the Obstacles are, but share at the end of the session).

 

[delericho]

They shouldn't change much.

They should probably use the 3e fixed XP table for all characters.

They should probably use 4e/PF style fixed XP rewards for monsters.

They should give out XP for "defeating challenges", not directly for "killing monsters". That is, the way it was meant to work in 3e, rather than the way it actually worked in practice.

They should not have any mechanism for spending XP for creating magic items, casting spells, or similar. Likewise, there probably shouldn't be any XP loss for resurrection, energy drain, or the like. (4e probably has this right, with the -3 penalty for resurrection, reducing by 1 per milestone.)

Doing this keeps the game as close to the 'classic' flavour as possible, while still leaving ample room for the DM to just have the group level arbitrarily, or give an arbitrary XP award per session, or whatever.

They should also probably tailor the default rate of XP gain such that an average party, playing 4 hours per week, gains 10 levels in 6 months - that is, they cover a tier in pretty much one academic year of almost consistent play. However, the Core Rulebook, when laying all this out, should also advise the DM on how to tweak this for faster or slower levelling.

 

[Dice4Hire]

** 10 is IMO not granular enough, though it would otherwise be nice.

Well, how granular 10 is depends entirely on how many xp you need to go up a level. If 200, yes, not granular, if 10,000 it is just fine for granular awards.

I think xp should be smaller numbers. I think the high numbers were just to sound impressive, especially the 1E levels.

I need how many hundred thousand xp to level??!?!?!??!

 

[Hassassin]

Well, how granular 10 is depends entirely on how many xp you need to go up a level.

No, I'm afraid you misunderstood.

I was saying that 10 XP to gain a level isn't granular enough. The smallest possible award would be 1/10th a level, which is in my opinion too much.

 

[Fanaelialae]

<snip>

The one significant consequence of a system that rewards individual xp (as opposed to group xp), is that it (IMO) necessitates smaller jumps in power each level than a group system does. That isn't necessarily a bad thing, just something to keep in mind, as I don't think there's room for a variety of options if you decide to design the system via the opposite route (large leaps in power every level).

Individual xp doesn't work if characters with disparate levels can't be reasonably expected to adventure together (and I don't think it's reasonable to assume that they have a good DM who can work around the problem). I don't want to see level 1 characters in a level 5 party hanging back and effectively doing nothing because they're 5 points of BA behind the rest of the party and have a quarter of their hp.

I expect they'll want to accommodate groups that wish to use individual xp, so I expect we'll see relatively slow power progression from levels.