I can imagine some 10th level Rogue sneaking out at night and killing 50 chickens and taking a level.
But, then he'd "
...just be picking on the chickens."
It has to be some kind of a challenge to be worth exp, so unless he's
eating 50 chickens to win a contest, no. And a contest is a social interaction, so the NPC judging the contest, probably a local with influence only in the town where it's held, determines the exp. For a 10th level character, seems like that'd be 5.
Not every creature. Every monster. Unless the chickens are cocktrices or breathe fire...
*swipe*
Legend has it, that when the egg of a ... what? seriously? fine... of a
rooster is incubated by a red dragon or pyrohydra, the resulting
pyrotrice....
Anyway, the system is desultory, but it's just a UA alternative so, whatever. The xp for gold reference is unnecessary, with the more reasonable scale of 'importance to...' right there and equally applicable to items as locations, but, yeah, nostalgia, check. The system does throw away the varied pace of leveling that the default system has, which is too bad, as it speeds play to the 'sweet spot,' helps it hover there a while longer, and also allows low-level PCs adventuring with higher level ones to 'catch up.'
I guess it's more 'simplification by arbitrarily smaller numbers.'
Even so, any recognition of the other two pillars is a plus. A stronger system might keep the current charts and peg the exp award for the location or social objective to the directly to the level of challenge it represents - non-combat CR of some sort.