Level Up!

[Traveon Wyvernspur]

I'm curious about this "cashing in" houserule. How does it work?

 

[aurance]

I've not tracked XP since 2e, and I've been playing more or less continuously since BECMI days. Between the rewards in-story, and more tangible things like magic, XP always seemed sort of redundant as another dimension of reward.

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

I'm curious about this "cashing in" houserule. How does it work?

[sblock=houserules]Action PointsThe system of action points in 4th edition works on the assumption of having 3-4 encounters per day. Games in Myrth are typically less encounter-intensive, having at most one or less encounter per day, with encounter frequency in dungeon environments at around 1-2 per day. This provides much less opportunity to earn additional action points through milestones and generally encourages the spending of action points in every encounter. Modification: Action points do not reset to 1 after an extended rest. You may accumulate action points indefinitely and without limit, however you no longer receive an action point after an extended rest, even when you have none left. Instead, you gain new action points each time you gain a level, at a rate of one per tier. You still earn an action point for achieving a milestone.
In order to compensate for the likely stockpiling of action points, there are two new ways to spend them which do not count against the limit of spending one action point per encounter. You may spend an action point to recharge an item daily power as though you’d achieved a milestone. You may not spend an action point in this way if you have already achieved a milestone since your last extended rest.
You may spend action points in lieu of healing surges when a power, ritual (including alchemy and martial practices), or situation allows you to do so. You can only spend action points in this way if you have no healing surges remaining, or if the power, ritual, or situation requires you to spend more surges than you currently have left. You must spend all remaining surges first, before making up the difference in action points.[/sblock]
and
[sblock=more houserules]

Healing Surges

Modification: Players may use healing surges for things other than healing. Additional uses for healing surges as follows:

• Recharge Encounter Power – 2 surges
• Recharge Daily Power – 4 surges
• Recharge Magic Item Power (Encounter) – 1 surge
• Recharge Magic Item Power (Daily) – 3 surges
• Recover Action Point – 3 surges
• Gain +2 bonus to any roll – 1 surge per bonus

There are a few restrictions and exceptions. In order to use the Recover Action Point option, you must be completely out of action points. The point is recovered immediately but must be used before the end of your next turn or it is lost. You still cannot spend more than one action point per round, though this exception does allow you to break the “one action point per encounter” rule.
The option to activate Gain +2 to Any Roll must be declared before the roll is made, but any number of surges may be spent in this way, even after finding out the result of the roll. For example, a player could declare their intent to use the Gain +2 option on an attack roll. They are at this point committed to spending at least one healing surge on the attack, even if they roll well enough to hit without modifiers, but if they roll horribly, at that point can declare that they are spending more surges to ensure a hit. Consider allowing the bonus to count towards a Natural 20 so that it doesn’t feel wasted, even if the roll hits without modifiers.
Using healing surges to Recharge Encounter or Daily powers that recover Encounter or Daily powers is not allowed. Recharging Powers 5 or more levels lower than your character level cost one surge less. You can only recharge powers once per round in this manner.
Stolen shamelessly (then modified) from The Fine Art of TPK.[/sblock]
I clipped those from my houserules site, so there may be some non-relevant bits in there or references to other rules, but that's the gist of it.

 

[OnlineDM]

Just chiming in to say that I, too, am a DM who has done away with XP, and it's been great for my games. With one campaign I had started as a new DM with level 1 characters, I originally awarded experience points by the rules. It was always fiddly to deal with, and it involved math that didn't add anything to anyone's experience. We also ended up having situations where the characters were leveling up in weird spots story-wise.

At some point, I just sort of stopped keeping track and said, "Oh, and you guys all have leveled up after this session! Let me know what choices you're making for the next level." And I received nary a peep. We're now at level 9.

In my other two games, I never tracked XP at all, and I've never heard a complaint.

 

[Reaper Steve]

4E already makes awarding XP superficial, extraneous, vestigal, and completely necessary.

The real purpose of XP is to be able to design balanced encounters, and encounter design in 4E is very well done. It then takes 8-10 encounters to level... no matter what level you currently are.

So, if encounters are designed properly, there's no point in tracking XP (except to give players a progress meter.) The real thing to track is encounters... you earn a level after every 9 (on average) encounters.

Taking that a step further, the DM can design his campaign encounter flow to provide level breaks in a manner that also fits the story.

I switched to this methodology last fall. I told the players not to worry about tracking XP because I would tell them when they levelled, which would be after the appropriate number of encounters.

Less bookkeeping, same result!

 

[Jhaelen]

That makes sense to me, because now the players have no control over when they gain levels. You could change that by listing what sorts of things would give them a level increase, but guess what - that's an XP system!

That's not quite correct. Their actions will control when they gain levels. What it really does is eliminating the micro-management of getting xp for every single action in favour of looking at their actions at the macro-level.

What I wanted to get away from was their 3e behaviour: "Guys, I only need 200xp to level up, let's try to find some random encounter before we continue with the adventure."

It also eliminates one of the problems of the official modules from WotC and adventure paths:
No matter how many encounters they missed or evaded, they will have an appropriate level to continue with the next stage of the adventure (path). There need be no 'filler' encounters, nor having to clean up the whole dungeon. Imho, it also encourages and rewards careful exploration and looking for alternatives to combat, since it's only reaching the 'goal' that counts.

As I mentioned this may not be for everyone, particularly for the hardcore-sandboxers who don't care about 'storylines' and are happy to do whatever strikes their whim without any particular goal. But for us it's perfect.

 

[SabreCat]

I use the XP system as written, with the exception of some bonus XP when players use twist cards. I love it. It's one of the two "minigames" I get a kick out of when DMing, the other being treasure parcel distribution. There's something I find very satisfying about the interaction of the macro-scale pacing of encounters/level and the micro-scale budgeting of XP/encounter. But I'm a gearhead, I guess. This is what I get to do as DM while the players get to tinker with character builds. ^.^

I've never encountered the "come on, let's hunt down a quasit to push us over the line" phenomenon. Good 4e battles take too much thought for random encounters to be all that fun, in my experience. And my players, while they do watch the climbing XP total with some satisfaction and occasionally try to game the twist cards for the bigger payouts, are much more interested in the broader question of "what will happen next?" than "when are we gonna level up?" I've actually run into the latter more often with "you level up when I tell you to, based on story milestones" setups, because the process is opaque to the players, and sometimes a story arc takes a while to come to a moment of great enough importance. The by-the-book XP system has my group leveling up a little less than once a month playing weekly, which feels like the sweet spot.

 

[DNH]

One thing this type of thread always teaches us is that it's horses for courses.

 

[LostSoul]

That's not quite correct. Their actions will control when they gain levels. What it really does is eliminating the micro-management of getting xp for every single action in favour of looking at their actions at the macro-level.

True; the decisions the players make will still control level gain. From the player's point of view, though, they don't know which actions will control when they gain levels. They'll have to guess. It's an uninformed decision, so you face the same problem as you do in a dungeon when you come to a T-junction and there's no sound or wind or smell or markings leading down one way or the other: you might as well flip a coin. There's no real choice to be made there.

(It's not that bad since the DM is a human, you probably know him well, you've probably talked about the game beforehand, etc. I exaggerate to illuminate my point.)

What I wanted to get away from was their 3e behaviour: "Guys, I only need 200xp to level up, let's try to find some random encounter before we continue with the adventure."

My point of view is that is exactly what the XP system is trying to get you to do. It's providing a frame of reference upon which the players can assign meaning to their choices. (Since XP is tied to the game world in the way that stronger and more menacing monsters are worth more XP, there's another layer of depth there.)

If you find "let's get a random encounter to get XP" doesn't work for your goals of play, then you change the XP system to reward what you want. Take all those actions that you'd normally level up the PCs for and make a list. Present that list to the players so they have information upon which they can base their decisions in the game.

The more closely those XP-rewarding actions are to what the players want to do, the more you reinforce what you've all come to the table to do. If the character growth phase of XP (i.e. when you get enough XP to level up) deepens the experience, you have a positive feedback loop. Do what you enjoy to enhance and deepen the experience of what you enjoy!

(Having different "tiers" of XP awards for different actions is a good way to do this; once you hit a certain point, a new facet of game play opens up - more complex and more compelling, but along the same lines. This would look something like an XP system where you get XP by defeating threats to the town, making personal connections in the town, climbing to a position of leadership; at a certain point, you start getting XP for leading armies, forging treaties, and massive engineering projects. At level one you talk to the innkeeper, take out the nearby goblins, and train the militia; at level 15 you talk to the duke in the next kingdom over, lead a scouting patrol to find the dragon's secret lair, and build castles along the borderlands.)

For example: in my hack, one of the easiest ways to get a boatload of XP is to take an exploration Quest. You, as a player, set your PC's Quest to explore a dangerous location; when you explore it, you get Minor Quest XP equal to the location's level. (One PC in a recent game decided to explore the Moon - in general, level 10 - and decided to check out some level 14 ruins. Lots of XP, nearly died. Very cool.)

I wanted to emphasize exploration of the game world and reward risk. That Quest rule pushes that sort of game play. I also want to challenge the players, so I didn't force it; the players decide what they want to do. "Smart" players, in these terms, are going to be encountering new and exciting things about the game world, and they will reap the rewards; more cautious players will not, and see their more adventurous peers outpace them.

edit: Obviously I think that XP work well, but this thread is illuminating because most people say that no XP works better for them. I (obviously) don't get why that works out, but I recognize that it does. I'm not trying to say that XP is always better for everyone. (Though it probably sounds like that!) I'm trying to give my point of view in order to see why it doesn't work.

The biggest feature I can see is that it leads to more DM-driven play. Am I wrong there?

 

[SSquirrel]

In the Dark Sun game I just joined, the DM prefers to keep everyone's XP together to make things simpler. Players who are absent even get splits on XP and loot. Our first combat, everyone got about 700XP, but to get caught up, my wife and I got a bonus 2k. So we started w/10k and ended at 12702. Tomorrow's session should let us hit L8