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Message: <blockquote data-quote="2WS-Steve" data-source="post: 287740" data-attributes="member: 3289">Just a reply to Wil here...While I agree that levels aren't the only resource that go into making a character I think it's dangerous to rely too heavily on XP as a way to balance out other benefits. The core rules use gold for that.For example, it costs 1440 xp to generate a +6 enhancement bonus to a stat. Even doubling that to account for no gold cost allows a 10th level character to sacrifice a bit less than their 11th level to get a +6 to three attributes and +18 in stats is definitely worth more than a fighter level and possibly even more than the 11th wizard level. The XP sacrifice gets even less significant as you go up further in level.By using XP as the cost you also fiddle with the CR system since you can have a 10th level character who's as tough as a 12th level character and this gets you into a spiral where the players can consistently defeat higher CR creatures and get better rewards than they would if their character level actually reflected their power level. You can get around this problem by including guidleines for how to award XP to characters who've spent a large amount of XP on special abilities but so far I haven't seen that included in books that use XP for special bennies.I think the real alternative resource is gold since D&D characters are built on XP (personal training) and GP (magical power). One thing I liked about Four Colors to Fantasy is that Nat 20 used this approach as well for special powers (at least as an alternative).Even the wizard doesn't eliminate gp cost when crafting items, just reduces it, and this just means that they can sacrifice personal growth for slightly faster magical growth.If you are going with a pure XP cost for the benefits it can be difficult to assign a balanced cost to the benefit. I figure a character level is roughly equal to +6 to +8 in stat bonuses. So let's say you have an ability that provides something roughly equivalent to a +2 stat bonus; how then do you figure the XP cost? If you go one fourth of a level is that one fourth of 5th level (1000 xp) or one fourth of 13th level (3000 xp)? You can just take some sort of average and that probably will work for the majority of players but the special ability grows more and more appealing as the character gets to higher and higher levels until your 20th level characters scarf up all the special XP cost powers they can.Perhaps that far enough outside the standard range of play that it's not too important to worry about but frankly I'd rather just go with a gold, or some kind of surrogate, for the cost. The surrogate idea appeals to me the most since it doesn't feel like you're always spending tuition money to get the special training but I won't blather on about all the different types of surrogates one might use for gp.</blockquote>

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