XP costs - use them or lose them?

[Sagan Darkside]

I don't want to hijack this thread, but I think this is a great idea. Have you tried it out, and if so, how has it worked out in-game?

I have been doing it for sometime and it works great. The players appreciate being able to make a character that can make items for the group, but still have feats to be useful outside of item creation.

My players tend to be magic-phobic- so it was a push that got them to try spellcasters.

As a dm, I have not found it causes any problems.

SD

 

[Sagan Darkside]

Don't like XP spending....and when I start a new D&D run I won't use them...."course I got to figure out what to use in it's place.

Love. Items are crafted on the power of love.

Ok, a serious answer- iirc, the BoVD had an option of using souls to make magic items. That was a neat idea for a dark campeign.

SD

 

[haiiro]

I have been doing it for sometime and it works great. The players appreciate being able to make a character that can make items for the group, but still have feats to be useful outside of item creation.

Would you be amenable to posting your IC feats in full over in the House Rules forum?

I'd like to see how you handled prerequisites (since all of the PHB IC feats have spellcaster level X+ prereqs) and how your variant feat chain takes weapons and armor creation into account (since these items don't have spell level equivalencies in all cases).

 

[I'm A Banana]

Blah!

I can't *stand* XP costs, in general. They just make things hard to balance.

You can have wizards and some sorcs more powerful than the CR system is supposed to handle, really. With magic items, it's a little mitigated because the 'easter egg' for leveling up is so grand. You can make a million wands of magic missle now, but if you use that XP to level instead, you can make a million wands of wish in a few days. So it means that spending XP on magic items is usually limited to an 'essential' basis. They may make a wand of a spell they would use every day, or a ring if they'd like a certain power to compliment their own, or if the other members of the party are paying, but they won't do it much, because they'd almost always rather raise a level than make a magic item.

With classes without spell progression, or when the spells are effectively bupkis (rangers, paladins, etc.), the lure of XP-based abilities is even more so, because their future levels don't contain much that their previous levels didn't give 'em. Instead of a new level of spells, they're closer to....what, a new feat? that they could've gotten a few levels ago? Whopee.

Instead, I offer the feats for magic item creation, but remove the XP penalty and use GP limits and power components alone. At first, I imposed a maximum number per level that they could manufacture (like, a scroll may be maxed out at 25 scrolls per level, while a wand may be closer to 5, etc), but it became largely useless since my PC's never really spend that much time or effort on magic item creation when they can buy it and move on with less hassle. Works just peachy for my group, and I don't open up the whole box o' problems that comes with the other XP-expendeture systems (such as the Path books, or Mongoose's class books, or Prestige Races form Oathbound) that could be done better, or just as easily, by using feats or PrC-like things, and that open up the can o' worms of not being balanced for the actual LEVEL of the character (which should be a shorthand for the character's power-level, but those heavily using XP-investment systems can't be garunteed that a character of X level can beat a challenge of X CR)....

So blah for them!

Of course, if you have fun, fine, but I personally very much dislike them.

 

[s/LaSH]

I, too, dislike XP costs. Not the idea behind them, but the way in which they're expressed. Especially for item creation. Spells, I can understand; after all, you're supposed to be able to blast yourself into oblivion with a misplaced word.

But item creation could be handled a lot better, I think. It just seems like a waste when you could be out hunting demons for their weapons instead. I've been toying with the idea of 'perk classes', which aren't really classes and weren't intended for an XP paradigm at all, but if I were to adapt those... hehe, that could definitely work.

Plus it gives an entirely new way to manage player resources. Which is what expensive material components are all about, really, and when combined in this manner... hm, i'm going to have to think about this. Just remember, you heard it here first.

 

[der_kluge]

The only reason XP costs are there, IMHO, is because WoTC couldn't find a more suitable balancing mechanism. So, they just slapped an XP cost on it and said, "good enough."

 

[MerricB]

One thing I'd like to know:

If you object to XP costs for magic items, do you also object to energy drain taking away levels?

Cheers!

 

[s/LaSH]

If you object to XP costs for magic items, do you also object to energy drain taking away levels?

Not really. That's a situation where you expect to lose something of yourself, and a situation where you don't want to be under any circumstances because it's detrimental.

Item drain, on the other hand, is clunky and looks like a penalty on the face of it. There's nothing a little cosmetic wouldn't fix, but right now it looks like something that sets out to hurt the caster. Turn the XP cost into a levelling thing rather than a drain, and I'm right behind it because it looks so much better (but is virtually unchanged).

 

[hong]

How much XP do you take away for casting and creating magic items? I think the wizards get robbed when they have to spend XP to create magic items and casting certain spells.

Suggestion: use the FRCS method of awarding XP.

 

[Bagpuss]

Re: Re: XP costs - use them or lose them?

Suggestion: use the FRCS method of awarding XP.

That still means the person creating items will eventually be about at least a level behind the person he makes the item for.

The FRCS method only awards extra XP once you have already fallen more than a whole level in XP behind the rest of the players.

Say a cleric creates a magic sword for the fighter, the fighter gets the benifit and the cleric takes the penalty, doesn't make much sense.