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Message: <blockquote data-quote="howandwhy99" data-source="post: 2882489" data-attributes="member: 3192">That pretty roughly covers ability scores, classes, prestige classes, and races.  Monster races like those from Savage Species can be approximated too.  And I think often were.  If you want to play a Silver Dragon at 1st level, your Ref determines the feasibility (should it be weaker? how does it fit in the world? what are dragons in my world?, etc.) and then determines the XP charts based upon HD, Attack rolls, base AC, etc.  I tihnk this was a real needed area of expansion for early D&D that 3E (and especially 3.5) took up.  Experience Points & Charts - to my knowledge Gold Pieces equaling XP is an AD&D 1E add on.  But I know awarding XP for anything other than combat is really rather simple.  I'm guessing most Refs did so even back 30 years ago.  My own thinking for Class Specific XP is that each player was playing a different game.  They are awarded XP for doing things that personify their character & class.  So Thieves gain XP for stealing, Magic-Users for casting spells, Fighting Men for killing monsters (while everyone gets the last, F-M kill things better than pretty much any other class until high level).The XP charts are not unified, but they do have a method to their madness.  To illustrate, the lowest needed XP to achieve 2nd level for any class is 1,250 (for Thieves).  The highest needed is 2,500 (for Magic-Users).  All other classes and PrCs fall somewhere between this range.   See the similarity?  It's not that 2nd level thieves are as good as 1st level M-Us (far from it), but that the XP ranges themselves balance out the play.  I think it's far from perfect, but the Chainmail combat system allows for a lot of leeway without breaking.As you follow the XP charts upward in level, you can see that Thieves and M-U's level requirements never overlap.  In other words, no character will ever be more than 1 level above another if they all have the same Total XP.  I'm not saying this standard could not be changed for very powerful races/PrCs like the silver dragon above, but it does hold true for all core classes and the PrCs.  This unique balancing feature was lost in following editions.Also important to notice: XP requirements DOUBLE each level for each class (or rounded thereabouts).  This is very much like the rule giving higher XP awards to lower level classes in 3.5.  Think about it.  It takes just as much XP to get to the next level (say 7) as it did to get every level your PC currently has.  This means lower level characters (which are given the same XP award as every other PC) advance far more quickly.   In fact, if you ignore class chart differences, a 1st level character will advance to 1 level behind the primary party in the time it takes for that party to advance only 1 level.  To be a little more clear: We start ALL new characters at 0 XP and 1st level.  Death is pretty permanent.  If the PC's XP total represents the achievements of the player with that PC, than beginning with anything more than zero is like a handicap in bowling - purposefully unbalanced to be fair.  Some Refs will probably allow this, I know ours doesn't.  It all depends on the group.[another example for XP levelling above.  For simplicity, say all PCs are Magic-Users.  The whole party has the same XP Total for their character too.  The party just reached 4th level exactly (10,001 xp) and now a new player starts at 1st level with another M-U (0xp).  In the time it takes the entire party to gain an additional 10,000xp, the 4th level party will achieve  5th level (20,001 xp).  During that time though, the 1st level M-U became 2nd, 3rd, and finally reached 4th level (10,001).  At higher levels the difference between the characters will be even less remarkable.]</blockquote>

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