Experience Used for Purchasing Class Abilities

[dreaded_beast]

Has anyone ever attempted to create a system where experience is used to buy class abilities?

For example, after a gaming session, a Fighter PC gains 200 XP. The PC can use the XP to increase his FOR save to the next level for 100 XP or increase his BAB to the next level for 200 XP.

This is just a very preliminary idea.

I've recently started to play the RPG Legend of the Five Rings, and I like how experience points are used to purchase skills and increase attributes.

Any suggestions?

 

[Spatzimaus]

Yes, it's been suggested before.

In general, there are a few major drawbacks to allowing characters to purchase abilities with XP (most people ask for Feats), and they all come back to the same thing in the end: you can have two characters with the same level, but vastly different amounts of power. This is a pain for the DM to balance (what CR enemies do you use?), and is an open invitation to metagaming/rules abuse.

There are two ways to interpret what you're suggesting, and I'm not sure which you meant:
1> The character can buy some of their next level's abilities in advance, using a fraction of the XP needed (which then is reduced as well).
2> The character can buy boosts in general; if he wanted to buy ten points of BAB without ever raising his saves, he could do that.

If #1, it's actually not very unbalanced, although the costs will need to scale with level (i.e., the Fighter's BAB boost would cost 100*level XP, or 10% of the level's total cost). Also, it forces a multiclasser to announce a level in advance which class they're taking next.
If #2, then I don't think there's any way it can stay balanced, sorry.

 

[dreaded_beast]

1> The character can buy some of their next level's abilities in advance, using a fraction of the XP needed (which then is reduced as well).

If #1, it's actually not very unbalanced, although the costs will need to scale with level (i.e., the Fighter's BAB boost would cost 100*level XP, or 10% of the level's total cost). Also, it forces a multiclasser to announce a level in advance which class they're taking next.

Number 1 is more along the lines of what I was thinking of.

 

[Spatzimaus]

Number 1 is more along the lines of what I was thinking of.

In that case, I think you'll have problems breaking it down, since D&D classes don't get a smooth increase in ability as they level up. The jump from Ftr4 to Ftr5 (BAB+1, HP/skill increase, nothing else) is MUCH smaller than the jump from Ftr5 to Ftr6 (BAB+1, a second attack at -5, HP/skill increase, +1 Fort, +1 Ref, +1 Will, a Fighter Bonus Feat, and if it's also character level 6 you get a general Feat). So how much XP would the BAB boost alone be worth in that situation?

And the cost would have to scale; 200 XP for 1 BAB might seem fine at level 1, but at level 20, when it's taking you ~20k XP to level, it's pocket change.

The simplest way I'd say to do this is to break it down into four chunks:
At 25% of the way to the next level, you get half the skill points (round down)
At 50% of the way to the next level, you get the HP
At 75% of the way to the next level, you get the other half of the skill points
And at 100%, you get the rest (BAB, saves, spells, class abilities). Trying to break it down any further than that skews the balance towards certain classes; the only things every class gets at every level are HP and skills. (Even BAB and saves are level-specific.)

 

[Nel]

If #2, then I don't think there's any way it can stay balanced, sorry.

Of course it can stay balanced, but not with pure rules only.

For example put the all BAB/no save fighter in front of things that render his bab useless and make him do lots of save, like a poisoned-traps dungeon.
Make it big and deep and lengthy with an excruciatingly slow exploration, and after something like 2 hours then put a monster in front of him.
He would be overjoyed to have a play buddy, if it was not for the fact that the monster will be a medusa that will petrify him on the spot.
Talking about having a bad day, ne ?

With a well-crafted system, if a player choose to optimize one side of his character then the other sides will be pretty weak.
Use it, after all you don't have to always make your players happy, it's a good thing to make you happy from time to time too.

 

[Ulorian - Agent of Chaos]

A poster named MarauderX has created this:

MXPB

Best attempt I've seen at this sort of thing.

 

[Spatzimaus]

Of course it can stay balanced, but not with pure rules only.

For example put the all BAB/no save fighter in front of things that render his bab useless and make him do lots of save, like a poisoned-traps dungeon.

You really missed the point on this one. I'm not saying that a competent DM can't deal with a character created under such a system. As you've said, he could easily stack the encounters towards whatever aspect of the character the player chose not to increase. (Of course, if he does this, he's going to alienate his players quickly. Encounters shouldn't be designed with the specifics of the party in mind, that's the worst kind of metagaming.)

It's that the system itself cannot remain internally balanced. A +1 BAB helps a Fighter much more than it does a Wizard, for instance, so if the cost of increasing BAB by 1 is the same for both, the Wizard might just blow it off and spend those XP on something more valuable to him. So how do you price it?

And if there's no cap on exactly how high each ability (like BAB) can be raised, characters will specialize far more than they can under the current system. You could easily see a Fighter with a +50 BAB, ten iterative attacks, a huge HP total, horrible saves, and a permanent protection from evil guarding him from the worst mind-control spells; who cares if the fireball always does full damage, if his huge HP can soak it all anyway? Likewise, you'd have a Wizard or Cleric with no BAB but tons of high-level spell slots, and so on.
At that point, any encounter NOT designed by the DM to specifically make use of each character's vulnerabilities becomes irrelevant. This is already bad enough at high levels, where characters naturally specialize, but now you'd see this at much lower levels, and far worse at high ones.

 

[Nel]

You really missed the point on this one.

I'm not the only one.

I was not talking about a normal game but about showing to a player why it is a bad idea to have so large holes in his character's abilities.
Of course using relentlessly the characters' weakness against them is a bad idea, even worse it's boring for them and for you.
But remember a thing: what a character can do, then the ennemies can do it too, and if they are not too stupid then they should know how to use their capacities to obtain the greater effect available.

And even a "classic" encounter can become a slaughtering party if the characters have to deal with something that use those kind of flaws, even moderately.
Your fighter (who is kind of a living joke with his +50 BAB and all the other things, I don't think that saves are that pricey) is a killing-machine but has no save you said ?
And what will he do when he will encounter a -Con poison or something of this kind ?
He will step aside to let the wizard tank ?
The more characters specialize the more they are flawed in other areas, so of course they will not always encounter monsters that make good use of these flaws but it happens to encounter some.

About the balance of any game, to think that a system can run itself without the DM having to step in at some point or another is an utopy, there will always be the need for a DM whatever the game mechanics are.