Forked thread: Treasure & Advancement Rates

[billd91]

You know, I feel like I get vilified and hounded by some based on what the data in that thread showed. Some seem to think it was my original intention to prove a point, and that I collected the data, calculated it, and published it to support that point. I guess so many people are so cynical that they can’t consider that someone might put forward data in a neutral manner, for discussion, even if that data didn’t prove the point of view of the presenter.

You're not being vilified by what the data show, nor have you ever been. So it's time for you to stop taking offense and stop playing the victim because people disagree with your conclusions (or the conclusions other people arrive at from your analysis).

Your analysis included certain assumptions that people have taken issue with over the years since you posted. Two very big assumptions are that nearly all the XPs in the offing have actually been retrieved and that all of the PCs have been able to advance as soon as their XP total says they can. How well those two assumptions hold true have an impact on how much error your analysis (and all analyses have some kind of error value) entails. I, for example, don't recall very many 1e campaigns where either of those assumptions played out, particularly in ones where paying for level training was not house-ruled away.

 

[ExploderWizard]

Oh, yes it does. Systems matter.

On the gaining of XPs:
For a 3e party to gain pretty much all the XPs in the offering, they have to overcome all of the encounter challenges. In 1e, they must do that and then find all of the loot as well. More of a chance to miss stuff for the 1e group because hidden treasure is less likely to draw attention than live monsters or active traps.

On the finding of loot:
3e parties, given enough time, can take 20 on their searches. With a good search score and time, nearly all treasure should be findable. The DCs would have to be very high for a group of PCs not to find it with taking 20. 1e had been criticized here for requiring a 'pixel-bitching' style of searching to find everything.

So yes, I totally understand why you can reasonably expect a 3e party to have a higher rate of potential XP gain in an adventure compared to a 1e party. It's not that the different editions encourage one group to deliberately skip over content more than the other so much as it's a likelihood that group in 1e misses XP-generating content at a higher rate than the 3e group.

This precisely. Gotta spread some around somebody cover me please.


This post also brings up another fundamental difference between editions.

What is referred to as 'pixel bitching' today used to be known as playing the game. I don't see how a major part of play can be reduced to a die roll and still be touted as being the same game. This would be like 5E featuring combat as rocks/paper/scissors contest and claiming to be the same game as 4E.

 

[Raven Crowking]

some people had a visceral reaction to fight the data and calculations

But with the comparison, some can’t accept the data and calculations, and must find some reason why it can’t be.

But if I removed the comparison, then I would be guilty of the intellectual dishonesty that I’m accused of by presenting the information. I would not be presenting the info neutral and fair, I would be editing to avoid having my own personal point of view contradicted.

Once more, this idea that the reaction is "visceral" or that some "can't accept the data and calculations" or "must find some reason" is all just so much "My opinion is objective fact, and those you cannot accept it are simply deluding themselves." I find it offensive; others might not.

Again, no one to my knowledge has now or ever suggested that Bullgrit could not add, that his XP or GP values were wrong, that there was any problem with his data or calculations. Either Bullgrit fails to understand the objection to his work, or he fails to acknowledge it. I'm not sure which is the case.

But, even without the comparison to 3e, the conclusion about average rates of levelling in 1e would fly in the face of the statements of the game's designer, including the statements about levels of characters in Greyhawk and Blackmoor. It would also fail to take into account many variables in the 1e system that easily make the discrepency understandable.

It is in accepting that those variables exist, while simultaneously drawing conclusions that fail to take them into account, and then mistaking those conclusions for facts, where Bullgrit errs.

The claim that those who then disagree with those conclusion are reacting in a "viceral" (with the gut rather than the mind) way, and are simply unable to accept the "data" (facts) that he has supplied is icing on the cake.

No. Just, no.


RC

 

[Stoat]

If the issue is how difficult/easy it is to find the treasure in the modules, why doesn't somebody do a thread going through the modules on a room by room basis pointing out where the treasure is and speculating on how likely a party would be to find it?

 

[Raven Crowking]

This precisely. Gotta spread some around somebody cover me please.

I would if I could, to both of you (and I will when I can), but I am currently in the same boat.

What is referred to as 'pixel bitching' today used to be known as playing the game.

Very true.


RC

 

[pemerton]

Your analysis included certain assumptions that people have taken issue with over the years since you posted. Two very big assumptions are that nearly all the XPs in the offing have actually been retrieved and that all of the PCs have been able to advance as soon as their XP total says they can. How well those two assumptions hold true have an impact on how much error your analysis (and all analyses have some kind of error value) entails. I, for example, don't recall very many 1e campaigns where either of those assumptions played out, particularly in ones where paying for level training was not house-ruled away.

I suspect, though, that a lot of groups who played through (for example) G1-3 may have waived level-training requirements - that seems to have been a fairly common houserule.

And even those who used the level-training rules would have had mostly name level PCs in the G modules, who can self train. So the training may not be much of a speedbump in any event.

Yes, D&D was used for many things back in the day, but were I to use 4e other than the way it was intended, and then make claims about what 4e is on that basis, would you support those claims?

Not if you were trying to tell me how 4e is best conceived of as a game. But they would be relevant to trying to understand the range of play experience that has occurred under 4e. I'm not entirely sure which of these [MENTION=31216]Bullgrit[/MENTION] is trying to address - but I'm not sure actual play experience is completely irrelevant.

A further complexity is that, at least on these boards, it seems that few of those who like 4e as a system regard the 4e modules very favourably. Whereas modules like the G-series seem to be widely regarded as classics by fans of AD&D. (These are my impressions. Obviously, therefore, they are subject to rebuttal by more accurately collected data.)

And I personally have encountered far more such players for whom the classic AD&D play experience was the G-series, and/or some of the other classic modules, than the traditionafemega-dungeon. At least for those players, features of mega-dungeon/open campaign style play of the sort that Ariosto describes aren't going to have informed their play experience - including their levelling rates - very much.

For what it's worth, most of my own AD&D play was with GM-written scenarios rather than modules, basing treasure on the MM treasure tables and basing monster XP on the DMG tables and then, once I discovered it, Turnbull's Monstermark. It's a long time ago, but I would say that the rate of level gain may have been slower per unit of play than 4e. I don't think it was a hell of a lot slower, but so much was different about the way I played 25+ years ago that even if I could remember comparisons would be hard to draw.

I do seem to recall that levelling slowed down a lot around name level - a fighter needs 125,000 (I think) to get from 8 to 9, but twice that to get any further level. But a 9th or higher level figther doesn't gain the capacity to earn XP at twice the rate. I think the biggest difference in 3E/4e levelling rates is in this respect - there is no name-level speed bump on levelling.

 

[pemerton]

I totally understand why you can reasonably expect a 3e party to have a higher rate of potential XP gain in an adventure compared to a 1e party. It's not that the different editions encourage one group to deliberately skip over content more than the other so much as it's a likelihood that group in 1e misses XP-generating content at a higher rate than the 3e group.

My memory - and it's a very old memory, so may be flawed - is that in the G modules the money is not hard to find, and that rather it's some of the magic (like the hammer of thunderbolts) that's hard to find. (My players found the money but not the hammer.) But it's the money rather than the items that make the major contribution to XP.

 

[Gentlegamer]

Once more, this idea that the reaction is "visceral" or that some "can't accept the data and calculations" or "must find some reason" is all just so much "My opinion is objective fact, and those you cannot accept it are simply deluding themselves." I find it offensive; others might not.

Again, no one to my knowledge has now or ever suggested that Bullgrit could not add, that his XP or GP values were wrong, that there was any problem with his data or calculations. Either Bullgrit fails to understand the objection to his work, or he fails to acknowledge it. I'm not sure which is the case.

But, even without the comparison to 3e, the conclusion about average rates of levelling in 1e would fly in the face of the statements of the game's designer, including the statements about levels of characters in Greyhawk and Blackmoor. It would also fail to take into account many variables in the 1e system that easily make the discrepency understandable.

It is in accepting that those variables exist, while simultaneously drawing conclusions that fail to take them into account, and then mistaking those conclusions for facts, where Bullgrit errs.

The claim that those who then disagree with those conclusion are reacting in a "viceral" (with the gut rather than the mind) way, and are simply unable to accept the "data" (facts) that he has supplied is icing on the cake.

No. Just, no.


RC

Pretty much this.

Bullgrit-Quasqueton acts as if he is Galileo and those who dispute his findings are Catholics attempting to censor the 'objective scientific' facts of his research. His posts characterize the objections stemming from fear of 'losing our religion' about AD&D and the terror that potentially implies in the human psyche.

It's more like he published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal along with his theories drawn from the data, and his peers pointed out the flaws in the methodology used to reach those conclusions.

That he wishes to cast himself as a 'martyr' to the FACTS doesn't help his case.

The foregoing is my OPINION on the matter.

 

[Raven Crowking]

If the issue is how difficult/easy it is to find the treasure in the modules, why doesn't somebody do a thread going through the modules on a room by room basis pointing out where the treasure is and speculating on how likely a party would be to find it?

It's been done (T1 Moathouse); but that's not the only issue. And, even when it was done, arguments erupted over how easy it was to find various treasures. In fact, if I can locate that thread I will, for it will throw some light on recent claims re: Bullgrit's assumptions about how much treasure is found.

In 1e, by the RAW, you cannot simply gain a level by gaining the required XP. If you take a look at the 1e DMG, page 86, there is a section entitled "GAINING EXPERIENCE LEVELS" that might be of interest to you. Gygax all caps the following:

UPWARD PROGRESS IS NEVER AUTOMATIC.

....

ONCE A CHARACTER HAS POINTS WHICH ARE EQUAL TO OR GREATER THAN THE MINIMUM NUMBER NECESSARY TO MOVE UPWARDS IN EXPERIENCE LEVEL, NO FURTHER EXPERIENCE POINTS CAN BE GAINED UNTIL THE CHARACTER ACTUALLY GAINS THE NEW LEVEL.​

There is also a lot about training times and gold that must be spent -- things that cannot usually be done in the middle of an adventure. Gygax also writes "Just because Neil Nimblefingers. Rogue of the Thieves' Guild, has managed to aqquire 1,251 experience points does NOT mean that she suddenly becomes Neil Nimblefingers the Footpad. The gaining of sufficient experience points is necessary to indicate that a character is eligible to gain a level of experience, but the actual award is a matter for you, the DM, to decide."

In the case of level draining monsters and effects, not only was there no saving throw (!), but the effect was permanent. An encounter with a wight, a vampire, a wraith, etc., could remove quite a few levels from unlucky PCs. Simply gaining the XP once is no guarantee that you keep them!

So, one of the most obvious faults with B/Q's assumptions is that the characters, finding all of the treasure, and defeating all of the monsters, do not need to take regular breaks, find a trainer, and then spend weeks to become the next level before returning. Because, if they do, then they should not find the place in the state they left it, and if they do not, any XP over that needed to gain the first level they acquire is lost. And the level has yet to be gained.

The tournament structure was such that it was desireable to test players over a range of PC levels. For this reason, so long as a player team met the criteria to move on to the next round, that team would use the next round's pregens, regardless of what the actual XP calculations would have been, and also regardless of the training rules in the DMG.

Using the pregen character's advancement to determine what would be expected in campaign play is comparing apples to winnebagos.


RC

 

[Bullgrit]

Is 50% an acceptable number? Let’s look at the leveling rate for the AD&D1 party if they only got half the potential XP available in the adventures.

End of Temple of Elemental Evil:
AD&D1 party finishes at: (161,968 xp each)
Fighter 8
Paladin 7
Cleric 8
Magic-User 9
Illusionist 9
Thief 10
Average: 8.5

Gaining only half (50%) xp = 80,984 xp
(using the OSRIC document because I don’t have the PH with me)
Fighter 7
Paladin 6
Cleric 7
Magic-User 8
Illusionist 7
Thief 8
Average: 7.2 (1.3 levels lower)

Assuming only 50% of the potential xp is gained, (50% is lost for whatever reason):
the Fighter, Paladin, Cleric, and M-U each are one level lower
the Illusionist and Thief are two levels lower.


End of Against the Giants:
AD&D1 party finishes at: (653,268 xp each)
Fighter 10
Paladin 9
Cleric 10
Magic-User 11
Illusionist 11
Thief 12
Average: 10.5

Gaining only half (50%) xp = 326,634 xp
(using the OSRIC document because I don’t have the PH with me)
Fighter 9
Paladin 9
Cleric 9
Magic-User 10
Illusionist 10
Thief 11
Average: 9.7 (.8 level difference)

Assuming only 50% of the potential xp is gained, (50% is lost for whatever reason):
the Paladin is the same level
the Fighter, Cleric, M-U, Illusionist, and Thief each are one level lower

MAJOR EDIT: Note that none of the above xp includes anything from magic items -- no xp from owning and using, no xp from selling and getting the gold value.

Bullgrit