Looking for ways to houserule exp expenditures for skills and feats.

[Storyteller01]

I'm wondering what has worked and what hasn't. What have your experiences been?

 

[Crothian]

Are you asking about using experience points to buy skills and feats?

 

[Storyteller01]

Yessir! There are several good social or flavor based feats out there that my players would usually love to take. Problem is the long feat chains for those abilities that they need to stay competitive with the BBEG's.

 

[Crothian]

There is a PDf called Buy the Numbers that takes d20 and makes it a classless and levelless game. THe players Buy all the abilities and feats, etc with experience points. It is set up to replace the classes and levels but you might have some luck adapting it to do what you want. it cost 5 bucks at RPGNow

http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?products_id=2909&

that's trhe closet that I've ever come to what you are talking about.

 

[dvvega]

Allowing players to buy skills/feats with experience points above and beyond their normal gain is dangerous and needs a lot of balancing.

I tried something similar to this in an early d20 campaign and it wreaked havoc.

Some players, lets call them munchies, ended up with 2 bonus feats early on and qualified for feat chains much too early. I had most combat characters running around with Power Attack and Cleave at 1st level.

Your idea may slow it down a bit, however what may happen is the following:

- players decide to start spending XP as they get it.
- you design your adventures around the party level which is low due to their XP spending.
- they make light work for most combats because of feats.

You might want to limit the number of feat that may be bought per level or perhaps the amount of XP that can be spent per level. For example you might state that a feat costs 100xp (just a number for an example) and state that you gain a "bank" of XP to spend at a rate of 10 per level.

This would mean that a 4th level character would be allowed to purchase a bonus feat with 100xp and would have to wait 2 more levels to get another. This would hold until 10th level where they could get a new feat every level from then on.

So you might need this to be limted to once every 4 levels or something.

Just ideas.

D

 

[drnuncheon]

You could use double the cost for an appropriate magic item (basically, the cost for a 'slotless' item). I would strongly suggest also adding the appropriate value to the PC's gear when figuring out how much equipment they should have for their level.

J

 

[Sammael]

I'll repost my house rule here for further discussion:

It is possible to gain additional feats by spending experience points. You must declare at least one session in advance that you are planning on taking an additional feat. “First-tier” feats (with no prerequisites) can be obtained by expending 3,000 experience points. To acquire the more powerful feats, you must satisfy their prerequisites normally, and their cost is increased by +1,500 xp for each feat listed as their prerequisite. Thus, you could obtain Mobility (provided you have Dodge) for 4,500 xp, or Whirlwind Attack (Combat Expertise, Dodge, Mobility, Spring Attack) for 9,000 xp. Level, class ability, and attribute minimum requirements impose no additional cost. You can never gain more than one feat per character level in this fashion, nor can you expend so many experience points so as to lose a character level.

The base feat cost was derived from the following formula: a magic item that grants the effects of a first-tier feat costs 5,000 gp. A purchased feat has no space limitation (x2) and cannot be dispelled, disjoined, suppressed in an anti-magic field, or stolen (ad hoc x1.5); this puts the final price at 15,000 gp. The ratio of experience points to gold is 5 gp per 1 xp (as mentioned in the Dungeon Master’s Guide), which results in the final cost of 3,000 xp.

 

[Imret]

Sammael, that's a pretty good system. I may make that available to players, possibly with a training requirement...but that's just me, YMMV.

My question for further discussion by anybody is on dvvega's point - altered level-vs-CR mechanics. My thought is consider say, 25-40% (depending on what is purchased) of the expended XP towards the group's ECL, I guess you'd call it. Is that too much? Too little?

 

[aco175]

To add more fire, you could always make a list of what feats can be bought with XP. There is lots and lots of feats out there in the books, and most of them can be placed on some sort of chart in terms of player needs or wants, mind you that I have not done this. It seems that lots of the feats that do with skills and social situations fall into the less desirable catargory and could be bought. I would be more careful with feats that have to do with combat, as if would make things other people posted happen.

I would also make them train for them, although not as long and cheaper than normal leveling.

 

[Planesdragon]

I'm wondering what has worked and what hasn't. What have your experiences been?

I use a system that's entirely based on XP purchasing. Instead of characters having ever-increasing XP pools, they have ever-increasing costs to level up.

Buying a new class level (or template!) costs 1,000 XP per your effective character level, and increases your base level by 1.

Characters that want to buy an additional feat may do so for 250 XP per ECL, which increases their ECL by 0.25. Those who want to buy skill ranks may do so on a sliding scale, and each skill ranks adds ~ 0.1 to ECL.