Trading XP for feats/skills: Rate for balance

[Iron_Chef]

Found this on Emerald Night's site: http://www.gigs-bytes.com/emeraldnight/

Please rate this system for balance.


EXPERIENCE POINT EXCHANGE SYSTEM
Tried of waiting for three levels before your next feat? Need a few more skill ranks to get that
prestige class? Want your magic items to be built in? Well, now you can with the Experience
Exchange System.

Feats
You can purchase additional feats starting a 1000 xps for the first feat and increasing by 1000
xps for each additional feat.
code:

Additional
Feats Experience Accumulated
Purchased Cost Total
1 1000 1000
2 2000 3000
3 3000 6000
4 4000 10000
5 5000 15000
and so on...


Skills
You can purchase additional skill ranks for each skill starting at 100 xps for one rank and
increasing by 100 xps for each additional rank.
code:

Additional
Skill Ranks
per Skill Experience Accumulated
Purchased Cost Total
1 100 100
2 200 300
3 300 600
4 400 1000
5 500 1500
and so on...


Powers
You can have your magical items built in. The item in essence becomes a power that only you
can access. The power is subject to dispels, disjunctions, and anti-magic shells. Figure the
base cost in gold as per a normal magic item. It costs xps equal to 1/5 of the base cost to
incorporate the power within yourself.

Note: the base cost is doubled for a slot less item but is compensated by a 50% reduction
because only you can use it. Therefore, the modifiers cancel each other out and the net base
cost is simply the base cost. Also, I don't include the normal xps for building the item in the
final xp cost.

 

[Derrick Reeves]

Looks pretty lousy.

It's inconsistent with itself - you can either take a feat as an "inbuilt" magic item for 800XP, or on the scaled system. Hmm... tough call

Skill points seem rather too dear, as well - you can pick them up at 100XP, or take "inbuilt" magic item bonuses for the square of the bonus times 4XP. (Ok, 3.5 will multiply that by 5, but who's counting?)

I'd suggest that the Prestige Race rules from Dragon 304 be used instead. Essentially, this follows the same process as for "inbuilt" items under the rules quoted, except that the cost is doubled (net), and the abilities can't be dispelled, disjoined, etc. Spells function as Supernatural abilities, just about everything else as Extraordinary.

The Prestige Race article also adds flavour, and requires the use of a feat - Sculpt Self - in order to take the abilities. This isn't really necessary, though.

Finally, skill points are probably a little too dear under this system. I'd suggest that they cost only 50XP per point, given that they're generally less useful than skill bonuses.

Edit: Can't spell.

 

[Iron_Chef]

My idea:

What about trading in 5,000 XP for any of the following

+1 inherent bonus to any one ability score (same score cannot be selected more than once by spending XP to improve it)

any one feat for which you meet the prerequisites

10 skill points to be distributed however you wish (max skill rank still applies)

3 cross class skills of your choice become class skills for you regardless of class and you get 1 free rank in each.

 

[kreynolds]

I love the feat idea. As a general rule, feats aren't that powerful in and of themselves. It's only when they're combined that they get really useful, such as when you work your way down a chain of feats. The rising cost of the feats will help keep player's from accumulating too many too fast, as XP is precious.

Not sure about the skill point idea. Like Derrick mentioned, the powers idea is just a rip of the OGL Prestige Race article from Dragon. I used to like it, but I ended up just converting my prestige races into "true" prestige races, i.e. they use a class setup.

 

[Coredump]

One of the problems that deveops is that you end up having a party of 5th level characters, that are significantly more powerful than the 'should' be.

While it may take more record keeping, to do this, I would track "total XP" and "Class XP. Total XP would be used to determine your character class, while the Class XP would be used to determine your class level.

So a fighter has accumulated 23,000 XP, but has spent 10,000 on various feats, skills, etc. Their Class XP of 13,000 means they are treated as a 5th level fighter for BAB, HP, class abilities, etc. But their Total XP of 23,000 means they are treated as 7th level for EL, gaining XP, etc.

Sort of the same way that ECL is handled, but this allows degrees of less than one complete level.

.

 

[Derrick Reeves]

Don't bother fiddling with the XP. Just have NPCs use it as well.



Well, ok, escalation isn't the best way to deal with this. Better might be to keep track of their add-ons as equipment, and don't hand out so much treasure to compensate.

Also good would be not handing out that much treasure in the first place, and using this system to compensate.

 

[Kemrain]

What about trading in 5,000 XP for any of the following

+1 inherent bonus to any one ability score (same score cannot be selected more than once by spending XP to improve it)

any one feat for which you meet the prerequisites

10 skill points to be distributed however you wish (max skill rank still applies)

3 cross class skills of your choice become class skills for you regardless of class and you get 1 free rank in each.

I think this is a better way of handling the general idea, but I have 2 problems with it.

First, it should be easier to raise low ability scored than high ones. To me, at least, that's just intuative. Making it a fixed rate means that a 17 + 1 is the same as a 7 +1, when, IMO, it really shouldn't be.
And Second:

3 cross class skills of your choice become class skills for you regardless of class and you get 1 free rank in each.

Could this be changed to "skills" instead of "Cross class skills," and some sort of bonus, instead of a free rank? This benefits classes with short class skill lists and few class skills a great deal more than the Skill-Based classes, though I suspect that was the intent.

- Kemrain the Skill-Based