Spend gold to gain XP house rule

[Sir Robilar]

Hi,
I'm working on a house rule for a sword and sorcery type game, a rule converted from Bararians of Lemuria (if I remember correctly). Instead of gaining XP the usual way, PCs get XP by spending gold in spectacular ways. Examples would be:

- Throwing memorable parties
- Visiting the local brothel
- Using rituals (to encourage their use)
- ? (your suggestions?)

Things the PCs would NOT get XP for:

- Killing monsters, solving challenges, finishing quests, good roleplay
- Using saved money to buy a fancy cottage
- Buying your adventuring equipment (who needs a new sword? Just use the dirty one you pulled out of the dead goblin's claws)


So now I'm thinking about the ratio by which the PC's would gain XP for spending gold. One on one wouldn't work of course. Any ideas?

 

[DanmarLOK]

Take the treasure value per level / exp per level and that should give you a rough chart of how much gold each level the players need to spend in this fashion?

 

[the Jester]

So now I'm thinking about the ratio by which the PC's would gain XP for spending gold. One on one wouldn't work of course. Any ideas?

Ahh, the "Ale and Whores" xp system. I've thought about using this myself.

No reason why 1:1 won't work, as long as you pace your treasure awards appropriately.

 

[Shea]

Amusing

Dinner Parties and Dilettantes?

I am suddenly reminded of 2nd ed when Rouges got 1 XP for every gold, and Wizards got XP when they cast spells!

As far as a ratio - there is a rule I use when I am running a particular world. I don't allow players to "spend XP" on spells or item creation and instead charge them a gold cost based on the XP cost. At one point I decided that XP was worth more than Gold and basically set the value at 10 (or a Platinum, but Platinum didn't exist in that world). I could see setting it as high as 100, but I def think that XP should be worth more than one gold.

Comparing the charts like that is not a bad idea.. then again a 5th level character facing a fifth level challenge gets 1500 XP and 1600 Gold. Not that much difference, but again leaning toward XP being more valuable.

 

[Starfox]

While the idea is nice, it might not mesh with 4E rules, that rely very heavily on PCs having the expected magic items for their level. This effectively gives your PCs an additional axle to build their characters on: the item - xp axle. Some will hoard their gold and get the best possible gear. Others will spend their gold for xp. Which means you might get a party with a lvl 2 character with +3 items and a lvl 5 character with +1 items. How do you balance threats against such a party?

I think you can avoid this by handing out items as past of the loot and not encouraging players to sell them.

As for the ratio, I'd set that fairly low. Decide how much variance you want in the magic items in the party. Assume one player will spend 20% of loot on xp and another 80% of loot on xp. Compare the two at different points in their careers, and see what level/gear each ends up with. Find a balance point you like. My guess is that an xp will be worth about a silver piece when done this way, but I've not done the math.

 

[DanmarLOK]

You can alleviate this situation somewhat by making bonuses inherent either through your own system or the proposed inherent values from the DMG2. I'm doing a house rule to assign bonuses and stripping +'s out of armour, weapons, neck items thus magic items or enchantments just add 'gimmicks', a base character will always have appropriate +'s to hit and defenses regardless of gear quality.

While the idea is nice, it might not mesh with 4E rules, that rely very heavily on PCs having the expected magic items for their level. This effectively gives your PCs an additional axle to build their characters on: the item - xp axle. Some will hoard their gold and get the best possible gear. Others will spend their gold for xp. Which means you might get a party with a lvl 2 character with +3 items and a lvl 5 character with +1 items. How do you balance threats against such a party?

 

[Elric]

So now I'm thinking about the ratio by which the PC's would gain XP for spending gold. One on one wouldn't work of course. Any ideas?

No set ratio can work across different levels. Roughly speaking, every 5 levels the amount of XP required to go up a level increases by a factor of 2.5. By comparison, every 5 levels, the value of a magic item of your level goes up by roughly a factor of 5.

 

[the Jester]

No set ratio can work across different levels. Roughly speaking, every 5 levels the amount of XP required to go up a level increases by a factor of 2.5. By comparison, every 5 levels, the value of a magic item of your level goes up by roughly a factor of 5.

Sure, but a good dm can simply choose how much monetary loot to award, and set it up so that the pcs are strongly encouraged to not sell their magic items. (The 1/5 value sell price goes a long way; so does ruling that the richest guy in town has about 250 gp of cash, the richest guy in the city outside of the king has about 2000 gp in cash, and the king will confiscate your items if you can't show a receipt for having paid taxes on them.)

 

[Elric]

Ahh, the "Ale and Whores" xp system. I've thought about using this myself.

No reason why 1:1 won't work, as long as you pace your treasure awards appropriately.

Sure, but a good dm can simply choose how much monetary loot to award, and set it up so that the pcs are strongly encouraged to not sell their magic items. (The 1/5 value sell price goes a long way; so does ruling that the richest guy in town has about 250 gp of cash, the richest guy in the city outside of the king has about 2000 gp in cash, and the king will confiscate your items if you can't show a receipt for having paid taxes on them.)

This is an extremely not-compelling approach. If you allow a 1:1 gold: XP ratio; once you get to level 11 (21) the gold value of a single item of your character's level will give you enough XP (more than five times as much XP) to gain a level.

So you're going to drastically limit the gold PCs have available, adding things like taxes and limiting treasure given as gold, just so they can't spend it to gain levels?

A better idea: don't let players trade XP for gold at a set ratio, and certainly don't use a 1:1 ratio if you plan to play past level 6!