XP Debt

[ARandomGod]

One thing I do not agree with that you stated was giving less treasure to LA race characters. And how do you do that anyway unless it is a solo game or everyone is an LA race and you just don't tell the players you're giving out less jink? That has the potential to get racist if the elves, dwarves and humans all get more cash (items, gems, etc.) than the aasimar, tieflings and drow, especially if they're doing the same job, killing the same monsters and sacking the same treasures. It seems like the LA races would eventually notice this and definitely not be happy about it. You cut back their rewards (in addition to standing penalties against their race), what incentive would they have to play those races or (if they played those races) to go out and 'save the princess', kill the BBEG or whatever? I can see you doing something like that for the roleplaying, but if you're already penalized by level/XP for your race, suffering a penalty to treasure on top of that seems too much.

Oh, well, I do that by specifically controlling what magic items are available. Sure, can't always be controlled, etc. And, for that matter, this was an "instead of" as opposed to "in addition to". IE I'd give an Aasimir a +4 ability boosting item when I would otherwise have given a human a +6 one, and I'd tell the player that this is in exchange for not giving him any actual adjustment to character level. You don't give them a LOT less treasure, just a specific amount.

And I can only do this since in my games access to "higher level" magic items is very controlled. You can order and buy a +1 sword easily. But to get that +3 holy flaming keen wounding rapier takes special events, there's noone to order it from, etc.

So I know that it's not really for general consumption, because it does take some complicated record keeping.

But it's definitely not in addition to. I let the guy play an Aasimir as a level one character, as is, and I give him treasure a little slower, up until he's "missing" treasure equal to his benifits... then I give them out the same from that point on. So in essence I'm treating the character as if he had a slotless magic item of value X, where X is the cost in gold and XP of an item (Sometimes several items, but slotless... because this is inherent) that would grant what he's got, and then I figure party treasure from that perspective.

And that definitely completely balances the character compared to an identical character of a bland, human style race. (You have to remember, of course, that humans get bennies too, so only charge the amount of extra that you feel is the difference... OK, so it is *feel*, which does prevent "perfect" balance. But I still say it works better than the current system.)