Silly RAW Question: Spending XP now for XP-cost events in character's history?

[The Souljourner]

I'm totally behind you on this, Amy. Magic items created in the past and since expended have no bearing on the XP total you should be at when starting a high level campaign.

However, if your DM is going to be a pain in the butt, then do this - pay the 1 XP. Heck, pay a bunch of XP and make sure you *have* the items on your current character. They should only cost 1/2 normal GP, so make sure to only deduct that much from your starting gold. Now, you're 14th level (almost 15th) when everyone else is 15th. Make sure your DM knows how gaining XP in 3.5 works... and then laugh at your DM when you pass the rest of the party in XP total because you gain so much more XP for being lower level, and now you're ahead on XP and have more magic items than everyone else.

-The Souljourner

 

[Timeboxer]

One of the people involved is 'the creator'; it is 'the creator' who pays the XP cost.

So if you've never paid the XP cost, you've never created a magic item; you've merely supplied prerequisites for someone who has created an item.

Right -- hence why it wouldn't fit a strict interpretation of creating a magic item. You've created a magic item, but you haven't Created a Magic Item, in the sense of being able to fulfill a prerequisite (or whatever).

 

[Timeboxer]

The xp total is the total earned ever by the character to be created.

I'm willing to say that XP and Wealth work differently, but I see no indication that XP given necessarily is the total XP earned by the character ever: "If you tell players to create characters of higher than 1st level, assign an experience point total for them to use." Which is pretty much all that it has to say about it. The GM assigns an arbitrary XP total, but this XP total has no actual meaning in the context of the game -- it's just the amount of XP you get to make your character right now. To assign a meaning to it takes you into the murky waters of the RAI (Rules As Interpreted).

And see above on the "So I can never create a character who has lost and regained a level or twenty as a backstory device?" situation. To insist that this is so is, I think, exceptionally rigid, and doesn't accomplish very much besides frustrating the player who has an interesting idea of what she wants to do. And if you'd let this slide if it fulfilled a prerequisite but wouldn't if it did -- consistency.

Disallowing or invoking a penalty for a background involving item creation is not a path that I would recommend, either.

However, it would be beyond cumbersome to redo the gp table values to reflect total earned in an adventuring career and then have the players account for all the upkeep, and gear iterations, and losses to resale value, etc. etc.

But it's not cumbersome to have to account for the uncountable scrolls a wizard scribed and cast in battle over the course of however many levels? All right, so XP is liquid -- but that doesn't mean that this isn't still a silly idea.

Furthermore, there is no mechanic for non-crafters to spend their xp for benefit.

Spells with XP components. Backstory: "A horrible thing happened, I cast Wish, and the horrible thing became an even more horrible thing the second time around, and now I lament the abuse of spellcasting." Is it really worth it, or even accurate, to deduct 5,000 XP (the minimum for Wish) from the character's XP?

 

[Timeboxer]

I'm totally behind you on this, Amy. Magic items created in the past and since expended have no bearing on the XP total you should be at when starting a high level campaign.

I really see no reason why this should be so. "If I were GM, you'd have to pay for all of your worthless created magic items in XP" is one thing, but I don't see anything that actually substantiates that this is the rule.

Make sure your DM knows how gaining XP in 3.5 works... and then laugh at your DM when you pass the rest of the party in XP total because you gain so much more XP for being lower level, and now you're ahead on XP and have more magic items than everyone else.

Well, this would work if I weren't the only person in the party. But hey, I'm arguing this for moral reasons. ^.^

The overarching question is whether it's correct, reasonable, and worthwhile to require a character to deduct from their given XP or Wealth for a character's back history -- in other words, what relationship one's backstory has with the game mechanics, if any. I contend that the point of backstory is to explain the mechanics, not to affect them.

 

[Korak]

"If you tell players to create characters of higher than 1st level, assign an experience point total for them to use." Which is pretty much all that it has to say about it. The GM assigns an arbitrary XP total, but this XP total has no actual meaning in the context of the game -- it's just the amount of XP you get to make your character right now. To assign a meaning to it takes you into the murky waters of the RAI (Rules As Interpreted).

Exactly... a total "to use" not "to have." You USE that xp in the process of creating your character by alloting some of it to your current total and some of it to item crafting, spellcasting, and random_activities_XX that cost xp.

 

[Timeboxer]

Exactly... a total "to use" not "to have." You USE that xp in the process of creating your character by alloting some of it to your current total and some of it to item crafting, spellcasting, and random_activities_XX that cost xp.

Except that, as explained, this past item creation is not actually a part of creating the character, mechanically speaking. You use the XP to create your character now, in quantifiable terms -- apportioning classes and creating items and so forth -- but there's no reason to think that that expenditure has anything to do with an extramechanical concept (backstory). Backstory is abstracted and distilled into XP and Wealth, so that the actual backstory, i.e. the unquantifiable literary aspect, is ignored.

Essentially what you're doing is transplanting all of the historical item creation/spellcasting/other into the present, so that you are penalized now for a past event. But again, I don't see how this is explicitly the "correct" way to do things, and to do so would be inconsistent with a "real" understanding of the actual result of XP expenditure at a lower level (see the Souljourner's posts).

Based on the RAW, it seems to me, you can either take the abstraction interpretation, in which case backstory (undefined and unimportant) distills into XP and Wealth which you use to create your character through specified XP and gp equivalencies (and referring to an item as a "self-created item" is merely a backstory issue); or you can focus on the minutiae of XP and gp expenditure, in which case you could have your backstory reflect the fact that you created an item at a pivotal point that resulted in your having more XP than the rest of the party. I find it unfathomable that having your past expenditures of any sort affect your current total in the way you describe should categorically be the standard.

But hey, if you want to make a Backstory to XP Deduction Conversion Table, I'm sure a lot of people would appreciate it.

Try this: You're running Eberron and an Artificer decides to put in his history that he found an exotic magic item and drained it of its power. Would you then be obligated to allocate more XP into his Craft Reserve as a result of this historical incident?

 

[Lord Pendragon]

Except that, as explained, this past item creation is not actually a part of creating the character, mechanically speaking. You use the XP to create your character now, in quantifiable terms -- apportioning classes and creating items and so forth -- but there's no reason to think that that expenditure has anything to do with an extramechanical concept (backstory). Backstory is abstracted and distilled into XP and Wealth, so that the actual backstory, i.e. the unquantifiable literary aspect, is ignored.

So let's take it to its ridiculous extreme. Say I create a 15th-level character, and in his backstory I write that he's scribed five scrolls of Wish, which he then gave to five Great Wyrm dragons as gifts. Does that have no bearing on his character sheet? What if he'd crafted fifty such scrolls, and given them as tokens of appreciation to every same-aligned king on the continent?

Based on the RAW, it seems to me, you can either take the abstraction interpretation, in which case backstory (undefined and unimportant) distills into XP and Wealth which you use to create your character through specified XP and gp equivalencies (and referring to an item as a "self-created item" is merely a backstory issue); or you can focus on the minutiae of XP and gp expenditure, in which case you could have your backstory reflect the fact that you created an item at a pivotal point that resulted in your having more XP than the rest of the party. I find it unfathomable that having your past expenditures of any sort affect your current total in the way you describe should categorically be the standard.

The "self-created item" ceases to be "merely a backstory issue" once you gain tangible benefit from that item in the here and now. In this case, that's by gaining entrance into the prestige class. The "abstraction" ceases to be abstract once you start naming off specific items you crafted.

Try this: You're running Eberron and an Artificer decides to put in his history that he found an exotic magic item and drained it of its power. Would you then be obligated to allocate more XP into his Craft Reserve as a result of this historical incident?

I believe this example works against you. In this case, no I wouldn't. Because I don't allow players to write advantages into their backstories to get them for free. It's the same as your character getting free scrolls to qualify for a PrC.

Still, since your DM has already solved the problem for you, and I'm not your DM, (and already mentioned that I would have just given everyone +1xp to solve the problem,) I guess the point is moot and I can agree to disagree.