It’s off, but it works better than most other systems. I add on the need to spend the gold to get XP. Helps evoke the old pulp fantasy stories a lot better. Why else would anyone bother going out and risking their lives once they had a fortune big enough to live a dozen comfortable lifetimes? Because they blew it all on bribes, donations, gifts, and carousing.
In the Before Times the rules about money and training ran directly counter to the concepts of a couple of classes that could only have as much in riches as they could carry.
Do they also insist upon individual XP advancement for each character? Maybe each party member could beat up one of the others, take their gold, then they heal up and trade targets.
You got as much brain as a dead ant,
By god I took proform exotic dance and I'm gonna use it!
Well, it's a more focused version of XP by beating encounters, by explicitly making "robbing the dragon blind while it slept" as a version of "defeating." But that narrow focus precludes getting XP for beating encounters in other ways.
