Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="James Gasik" data-source="post: 9332538" data-attributes="member: 6877472">XP as a cost is badly handled.&nbsp; Pathfinder almost got it right, by having you make skill checks for magic item creation, but forgot that the d20 engine is built to give players tons of ways to&nbsp; optimize the heck out of skill checks (including magic items that grant large bonuses to skills!).As for xp to cast certain spells, outside of things like Permanency, where you were at least assumed to be getting a different kind of power out of the deal than levels, it generally fell flat and people rarely cast those spells (in my experience).Like, having other ways to &quot;spend&quot; xp is a neat concept, but it probably belongs in a more free form system than a level-based game, because then everything has to be balanced against the benefits of simply going up levels.I once had a friend who used a custom xp system with his Spycraft game, which he kept trying to push on his players, who felt class levels were the way to go.&nbsp; Then a new player came in, said &quot;wait, it's how much xp for a Feat?&quot; and loaded up on a ton of Feats that gave him higher bonuses than what he would have gotten out of leveling up and (by all accounts) broke the game in half (since it's a game where combat is usually a fail state).</blockquote>

[QUOTE="James Gasik, post: 9332538, member: 6877472"] XP as a cost is badly handled. Pathfinder almost got it right, by having you make skill checks for magic item creation, but forgot that the d20 engine is built to give players tons of ways to optimize the heck out of skill checks (including magic items that grant large bonuses to skills!). As for xp to cast certain spells, outside of things like Permanency, where you were at least assumed to be getting a different kind of power out of the deal than levels, it generally fell flat and people rarely cast those spells (in my experience). Like, having other ways to "spend" xp is a neat concept, but it probably belongs in a more free form system than a level-based game, because then everything has to be balanced against the benefits of simply going up levels. I once had a friend who used a custom xp system with his Spycraft game, which he kept trying to push on his players, who felt class levels were the way to go. Then a new player came in, said "wait, it's how much xp for a Feat?" and loaded up on a ton of Feats that gave him higher bonuses than what he would have gotten out of leveling up and (by all accounts) broke the game in half (since it's a game where combat is usually a fail state). [/QUOTE]

Verification