D&D 5E My D&D Next Wishlist: Bring back XP for GP!

[F700]

It wasn't even that so much. You simply gank every single thing in the dungeon and then strip mine it at your leisure.

People talk about avoiding combats but, I never quite understood that. You meet 10 orcs. IIRC, that's 150 xp total for kills. Piddling. But, it's not. The orcs all have swords - 7 gp each (1/2 value), and chainmail at 22 gp each. Now, we're looking at 440 xp for a very easy encounter. You can generally gank 10 orcs in a single round if you play your cards right.

So, you kill the orcs, and pile the bodies up in the corner. Wash, rinse, repeat with every single encounter in the dungeon, continuing to add to the pile of corpses. Drop a Detect Magic on the whole mess to pick out the good stuff and you have now strip mined a dungeon.

Since everything's dead, you can take a fair bit of time getting everything back to town. And, half a dozen hirelings can carry a whole pile of loot. Never mind horses, donkeys and the like. You can likely get the whole lot in a single trip. "Jury rigging litters"? Dude, amateur. Who doesn't bring a wagon?

Tracking minutia? Dude, we tracked it down the COPPER piece. When we cleared a dungeon, that sucker was BARE.

I find it hilarious that people talk about smart play being the rule of the day, but, apparently, the goal of smart play isn't to maximize profits and minimize risk. Whodathunk?

Good luck with that in, say, Temple of Elemental Evil. Or did you have a DM that would actually allow you a small army of hirelings that would would be willing to even go on a protracted delve and magically disappear when combat started so they'd be safely out of harms way? Or did you not bother with encumbrance and somehow have all those mundane sellables not count until they were conveniently being carried by your small army of henchmen? Henchmen who would never think of turning on the guys who hired them for a lifetime of riches?

Who doesn't bring a wagon? Have you ever tried taking a wagon through the bush, much less a jungle with no roads? Or a volcano lair? Or into a desert? Did your DM skip the rules for trying to get a beast of burden into an actual dungeon? Where are these dungeons you've been crawling - 2 blocks down from the tavern? Maybe conveniently located next door to Smilin' Sam's Second Hand shop?

I never said anything about tracking minutia. I said some groups skip the post crawl loot recovery, and I said that there's fun to be had in those sorts of operations.

 

[Doug McCrae]

Though, honestly, it is sometimes hard to see how gold isn't its own reward.

That's a good point. Before 3e's magic items for sale, there wasn't much to spend it on. A PC could save up to buy a stronghold, such as a castle. In OD&D and 1e, I believe this is intended to herald a new phase of play, in which the game becomes much more like Chainmail, with armies and siege warfare. The last year or so of Arneson's First Fantasy Campaign is essentially a wargame featuring the invasion of Blackmoor by the forces of evil.

Gary introduced training costs in 1e, I think also to siphon off the huge amounts of gold characters were recovering. This actually removes the need for xp for gold as PCs will now have to find huge amounts of treasure to level up anyway. Combining 3e's magic for sale with 1e's training costs could result in interesting tradeoffs having to be made between D&D's two great reward mechanisms – magic items and level ups.

Xp reward systems are, imo, extremely important in determining what sort of people the PCs appear to be. Xp for gold makes them look like money grubbing bastards, because that's how they'll probably act. Xp for rescuing princesses makes them look like knights in shining armour. This makes it a useful tool for controlling the type of game the DM wants to run.

 

[LostSoul]

You don't need a special subsystem, do you? Just give the GM a good set of guidelines for determining XP for an adventure, and advice on how the GM can parcel it out for achieving specific goals as he or she sees fit.

If getting gold is really-o-truly-o the thing you want to give XP for, then you carve a chunk off the adventure award, and hand it out only if the PCs recover the treasure. Another GM can carve off a chunk for solving puzzles. Yet another can carve it off for entertaining characterization.

I like that, good thoughts. Two of my own:

1) XP for GP is a player-driven system; the DM determining what you get XP for is not, unless clearly stated up-front.
2) XP for GP is very transparent and it's easy to make the numbers work.

 

[Umbran]

1) XP for GP is a player-driven system;

I disagree, based on two things:

1) The GM decides where GP are, and how much there is to get. I don't see how that is player driven at all.

2) As I note above, XP for GP is really just a subset of XP for <foo>. Pick your <foo>, and your players can drive towards <foo>. The less the GM has control of <foo>, the more player-driven this is. If, for example, you give XP for in-character puns, that is not GM-driven at all.

 

[LostSoul]

I disagree, based on two things:

1) The GM decides where GP are, and how much there is to get. I don't see how that is player driven at all.

Yep, good call. I was thinking about typical treasure rewards generated by the system - treasure types, dungeon-creation tables, treasure by CR, (a certain usage of) treasure parcels, whatever - instead of assigned by the DM. If the DM allocates GP based on the system, and allows the players a wide choice of places to go (and people to kill), then you might have a player-driven system. If the DM decides where GP are, as you note, then the DM is driving the game.

2) As I note above, XP for GP is really just a subset of XP for <foo>. Pick your <foo>, and your players can drive towards <foo>. The less the GM has control of <foo>, the more player-driven this is. If, for example, you give XP for in-character puns, that is not GM-driven at all.

Yup. I hope they have a breadth of modules for XP in Next, along with advice on how or why you'd use a certain one.

 

[Doug McCrae]

If the DM allocates GP based on the system, and allows the players a wide choice of places to go (and people to kill), then you might have a player-driven system. If the DM decides where GP are, as you note, then the DM is driving the game.

The xp system I'm considering for my next game is very restrictive, to the extent that, although the game is supposedly a sandbox in terms of there being lots of ruins and the like, it arguably isn't really.

PCs only get xp for treasure they acquire beyond the frontier, and only if it's returned to 'civilized' lands.
If the treasure was acquired beyond the frontier from NPCs who are members of the PC's culture, ie other adventuring parties, then it isn't worth any xp.

This pretty much forces the PCs to go down dungeons, and shuts down other kinds of activity that I deem to be undesirable, such as attacking other adventuring parties, or stealing in town. There probably won't be urban adventures at all, unless they're in drow town.

 

[Hussar]

Even in major cities you can't sell everything just because you want to.

And yet another DM screwing over the PC's because it doesn't fit with his view of how the game should go. There's nothing there saying that I CAN'T sell a used sword. It's perfectly reasonable that I CAN sell a used sword - swords aren't exactly a hard sell. But, I wander into a decent sized town and suddenly every shop keeper and tinker refuses my business so that the DM can keep his iron grip on the game.

And people wonder why I characterize DM's as bad.

 

[Hussar]

Good luck with that in, say, Temple of Elemental Evil. Or did you have a DM that would actually allow you a small army of hirelings that would would be willing to even go on a protracted delve and magically disappear when combat started so they'd be safely out of harms way? Or did you not bother with encumbrance and somehow have all those mundane sellables not count until they were conveniently being carried by your small army of henchmen? Henchmen who would never think of turning on the guys who hired them for a lifetime of riches?

Umm, the Temple is what, a couple of days travel across open land from Hommlet? How is it hard to get mules there?

Who doesn't bring a wagon? Have you ever tried taking a wagon through the bush, much less a jungle with no roads? Or a volcano lair? Or into a desert? Did your DM skip the rules for trying to get a beast of burden into an actual dungeon? Where are these dungeons you've been crawling - 2 blocks down from the tavern? Maybe conveniently located next door to Smilin' Sam's Second Hand shop?

Well, the Keep on the Borderlands is a day's trip from the dungeon. And, you can take wagon's apart for transport. And why on earth would you take the animals into the dungeon? That would be stupid. You set up a camp two to five miles away from the dungeon and have your guards set up a nice little defensive area. Far enough away that not a whole lot is going to stumble on them.

I never said anything about tracking minutia. I said some groups skip the post crawl loot recovery, and I said that there's fun to be had in those sorts of operations.

Yup, we had a blast doing it. We tracked the minutia and it was HUGELY profitable. That's why we did it. And, once you get up a few more levels and magic starts making an appearance, it gets that much easier.

But, apparently, some DM's would go out of their way to simply stack the deck against the players in some insane arms race to make sure that they kept that iron grip on the game. Some of us though, actually played fairly realistically and rewarded our players for being creative and pro-active.

 

[F700]

Umm, the Temple is what, a couple of days travel across open land from Hommlet? How is it hard to get mules there?



Well, the Keep on the Borderlands is a day's trip from the dungeon. And, you can take wagon's apart for transport. And why on earth would you take the animals into the dungeon? That would be stupid. You set up a camp two to five miles away from the dungeon and have your guards set up a nice little defensive area. Far enough away that not a whole lot is going to stumble on them.



Yup, we had a blast doing it. We tracked the minutia and it was HUGELY profitable. That's why we did it. And, once you get up a few more levels and magic starts making an appearance, it gets that much easier.

But, apparently, some DM's would go out of their way to simply stack the deck against the players in some insane arms race to make sure that they kept that iron grip on the game. Some of us though, actually played fairly realistically and rewarded our players for being creative and pro-active.

Sounds more to me like the DM not bothering to think things through and make the scenario realistic or challenging. If you can't see the flaws in your statements you need to go back and re-read your AD&D DMG.

 

[billd91]

And yet another DM screwing over the PC's because it doesn't fit with his view of how the game should go. There's nothing there saying that I CAN'T sell a used sword. It's perfectly reasonable that I CAN sell a used sword - swords aren't exactly a hard sell. But, I wander into a decent sized town and suddenly every shop keeper and tinker refuses my business so that the DM can keep his iron grip on the game.

And people wonder why I characterize DM's as bad.

Read your statement and maybe you should stop wondering why a lot of DMs think players have an overdeveloped sense of entitlement.