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

[Zaukrie]

A smaller scale reward system is needed, to measure progress towards the next level.

Not really. That's just a truism, isn't it. You need it, because you need it. Why does anyone need to track progress to the next level at all?

It doesn't really matter to me, I can't see using it ever again in campaigns I run. I just hope whatever they comes up makes those of you that will use it happy.

 

[Obryn]

XP for gold as the primary experience driver works pretty well for certain styles of play, such as dungeon crawls. It is terrible for other common styles of play.

Righto. I would never want to run a skill-heavy city-based game with the rule.

For a big, blazing sandboxy world of lost dungeons, forgotten temples, sinister ruins, and a group of adventurers looking to loot them? It's awesome.

-O

 

[WheresMyD20]

Wasn't it XP for non-magical treasure only?

Anyway, judging by the XP scale of the playtest, it looks like it'll have to be 2 XP per CP or so.

IIRC, 1e gives XP for magical and non-magical treasure, while BECMI only gives XP for non-magical treasure.

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

1e gives XP for magical treasure, only it is less than the value of the item in gold. The XP value is listed on the treasure charts.

The treasure types in the MM were too random, too. Isn't getting lucky and having lots of gold its own reward?

Looking back at it, I can see how it could work quite well in the steady hands of an experienced DM who knows to keep an eye out for certain wrinkles. But it was so confusing and random in the hands of inexperienced DMs that many just threw in the towel on trying to use that system.

 

[Doug McCrae]

For a big, blazing sandboxy world of lost dungeons, forgotten temples, sinister ruins, and a group of adventurers looking to loot them? It's awesome.

I think xp for gold does support sandbox play better than, say, xp for adventure goals, such as rescuing the princess. Assuming the world is a place as you describe, where there are lots of means to acquire gold, lots of dungeons and so forth. Xp for gold absolutely does exert a strong pressure on the players, but provided there are lots of ways the PCs can get gold, then they still have a lot of freedom.

For adventure path play however, it's not desirable for the players to have a lot of freedom. Only granting xp for reaching points along the path can help keep the PCs on track, I think.

Xp for gold goes hand in hand with sword and sorcery-style Conan or Gray Mouser-esque PCs, and Gygaxian sandbox play.
Xp for adventure goals goes better with epic fantasy-style heroes, and Dragonlance adventure path play.

Grim-n-gritty games otoh probably should use a third type of xp system, something more realistic.

 

[Doug McCrae]

"Smart and cautious" sounds all lovely until you have to sit through 3 hours of Samwise Gamgee and Frodo Baggins tallying every last rusty dagger in Caer Ungol, so they can level up before getting around to saving the world.

How about this system? Instead of giving 1xp for each gold piece, treasure hoards are divided into broad categories. Recovering a small hoard grants you 500xp, say, and a large hoard is 2000. Treasure less than a small hoard gives no xp at all, so you don't get anything for piddling about.

This system could be modified a bit more as one no longer needs xp to be measured in the thousands. Maybe a character only needs 4xp to go up to 2nd level, a small hoard grants 1xp, and a large hoard gives 4. That keeps the numbers a bit smaller.

This means that gold is still a motivator, but it makes the game play a bit more like a Conan story. Conan doesn't care about taking everything that isn't nailed down, he's only interested in big treasures, such as the Teeth of Gwahlur.

 

[Hussar]

I've been in groups where after a good long hard crawl an entire session could be spent working out the logistics of getting some valuable piece of not easily transportable treasure out of the dungeon. While I can see why some groups would decide to let the post bbeg portion play out off camera, there's fun to be had in having the heroes make their way out of a defeated dungeon with their loot - jury rigging litters, running into surviving dungeon inhabitants and either rping themselves as conquerors or having combats where they are now the defenders of their loot as opposed to raiders.

It depends how much time you care to spend on what might be considered by some to be minutia.

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?

 

[imurphy943]

Arguing that Frodo and Sam would spend their time counting spoons makes no more sense than arguing that Frodo and Sam would try to gank a few of those orcs before ascending Cirith Ungol.

 

[Umbran]

How about this system? Instead of giving 1xp for each gold piece, treasure hoards are divided into broad categories. Recovering a small hoard grants you 500xp, say, and a large hoard is 2000. Treasure less than a small hoard gives no xp at all, so you don't get anything for piddling about.

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.

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

 

[Herschel]

Nope; magic items also gave you XP in 1e, and often quite a lot of it. You also had the option to sell those magic items for GP that earned you even more XP.

-O

And this was the problem with the system that sounded good in theory. The fighter/rogue items weren't wrth nearly as much as the mage's items generally, especially at higher levels when the fighter's advancement rate slowed considerably while the mage's accelerated. Take the slightly better bludgeoning weapon for the next time you face the ever rarer skeletal beasties or take that wand and sell it for half a level? Screw the wizard, he's already dominating the game, I'm getting half a level.