other uses for experience points?

[Particle_Man]

Spellcasters can use experience points to cast certain spells and make magic items.

If you get rid of your favourite critter, sometimes there is an experience point loss.

Non-spellcasters can spend some experience points (I'm not sure how much) to help a spellcaster create a magic item (I think this is in Tome and Blood).

What else can one do with one's experience points, besides going up levels?

 

[Crothian]

There are optional rules in Guildcraft and there are the elite races rules from Oathbound as well as one of the Dragon Magazines. The Path of series by FFG has different things geared to different classes to spend experioence on. Quint Fighter has fighting styles with XP costs, but you need to get the revised version as the cost were not in the first version.

 

[Nifft]

Originally posted by Particle_Man What else can one do with one's experience points, besides going up levels?

You can come back from the dead. Front-line tanks need that service every now and then.

-- Nifft

 

[Taurren]

This is truly a poor design decision

High lv casters need to spend experience points to cast some of the spells that they gain by reaching those levels.

Non casters do not need to spend anything.

Both types of can lose XP's when they die, and use them to help craft items ... but only casters are further penalized and forced to use xp's if they want to use their high level abilities.

I have never liked that double standard.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

It's far from poor design. Not every spell has an XP cost. Far from it. Even 8th or 9th-level spells don't necessarily have an xp cost.

It's just those spells that don't want people cast all the time. You can meteor swarm away just fine all the time. You can use wail of the banshee as often as you want. You can imprison dozens of people. But you won't take limited wish to get all the (lower-level) spells you want and cast them without second thought.

 

[hong]

I made up some rules, based on various sources, to let characters "imbue" magic items using XP.

http://www.zipworld.com.au/~hong/dnd/imbued_magic.htm


GENERIC RAMBLE ABOUT PREVALENCE OF MAGIC ITEMS IN D&D FOLLOWS ---->

The problem with D&D is that, to use HERO parlance, at high levels it's trying to produce a superheroic game using heroic mechanics. HERO characters in a heroic game pay money to get their powers, which is an in-game mechanic. Characters in a superheroic game pay character points instead, which is a metagame mechanic. In D&D you end up mixing the two, with characters paying money to get powers which would be more appropriate for a supers game.

The exception is spells. Spellcasters in D&D have always been able to gain super powers without having to spend money (except to buy new spells, which is a fairly trivial cost, relatively speaking). Prior to 3E, which laid down concrete guidelines for how much money high-level characters were supposed to have, you effectively had superheroes wandering around with a bunch of heroes in tow. It's no wonder that wizzes tended to overshadow everyone.

When the creeping HEROization of D&D is complete, you will hopefully see characters no longer paying money to gain super powers. Feats will have appropriately superheroic effects, skills can be used to achieve the same, etc.