XP Costs?

[MarauderX]

Perhaps it's out there somewhere already, but are there XP costs within the 4E structure?

 

[hong]

Not as far as is known.

 

[FourthBear]

I believe there have been designers stating explicitly that there will be no spells or rituals that involve using XPs as fuel. Also, that magic item creation will be accomplished with the ritual system and will not involve XP cost.

 

[Revinor]

No explicit XP cost.
But I wonder if the item creation rule will not force players into endless quests trying to find 'breath of the stone', 'regret of villain', 'smell of the rose from grass dream' etc. By trying to solve such stupidities players won't be gaining good XP in meantime - thus items will still cost XP, in 'lost profits'

 

[hong]

No explicit XP cost.
But I wonder if the item creation rule will not force players into endless quests trying to find 'breath of the stone', 'regret of villain', 'smell of the rose from grass dream' etc. By trying to solve such stupidities players won't be gaining good XP in meantime - thus items will still cost XP, in 'lost profits'

... why wouldn't you gain XP from quests like that?

 

[Revinor]

... why wouldn't you gain XP from quests like that?

Of course you will gain something, but I doubt it will be reasonable amount of xp. I have gone on such trips only few times as a player and 'quest' mostly involved brainstorming on more and more idiotic ways of reinterpreting the component wording. I doubt that any DM will give the same amount of XP for 3 hours of heavy combat and for 3 hours of trying to lick/squeeze/powder/beg some random stone next to the road.

Unless DM just plants the answer by providing a ready adventure to retrieve the component. In such case, components are just a fluff and real components to rituals are adventures (from meta-game perspective) [1]. "You want sword +2? You will have to go to 2 special adventures for that". I can see a problem with such approach
a) most probably you will get 10 times more magic items by accident on such adventures (including maybe sword +3 )
b) you may advance in levels faster than create magic items, as magic item creation is tied to gaining XP - so whatever you will start to create will be bit outdated before you finish



[1] - probably I should explain it more. In 2nd edition, cost of magic item was mostly frustration/stretching your imagination. In 3rd edition, it was loss of character power. With ready adventures, cost would be session slots (if everybody wants an item and for each of them you require 2 adventures, for next 10 meetings you will do nothing except magic-item-related questing instead of save-the-world/rescue-damsel/get-rich). Obviously, such adventures can be fun few times, but is this game about gathering components? Especially about gathering components for something which will get outdated 4 adventures from now?

 

[FourthBear]

But I wonder if the item creation rule will not force players into endless quests trying to find 'breath of the stone', 'regret of villain', 'smell of the rose from grass dream' etc. By trying to solve such stupidities players won't be gaining good XP in meantime - thus items will still cost XP, in 'lost profits'

While gathering such components may not be appropriate for all D&D campaigns, I don't think that referring to such things as stupidities is appropriate. It is, after all, very much in the tradition of the suggestions for magic item creation in 1e and 2e. I believe that requiring such components can often lead to magical item creation feeling truly like fantasy, rather than the pseudo-technical engineering work that less clearly fantastic components can. There are advantages to the "you need this feat, so much mana, this many diamonds and you're good to go!", but I do think it loses a large amount of potential atmosphere.