TaintedLight
2010-01-12, 03:35 AM
Pika's thread on static XP gain made me recall the idea I had for my next campaign.
If any of you ever played City of Heroes or City of Villains, you probably remember experience debt very well. It was that annoying red thing that would fill up your XP bar and slow the leveling process down without being too frustrating to deal with at all. I think this is a much fairer and less messy system than losing one level, so I decided that something along those lines should exist in D&D. Here's how it works:
When a character of level X dies, they're dead as per usual. Upon being resurrected, they incurr an amount of experience debt equal to 250*X. Experience debt must be paid off at the same time that a character gains XP. To determine how XP is distributed, you take the discrete chunk of XP that the character gains from overcoming a challenge or what have you and divide it in half. One half of that amount goes to paying off debt and the other half goes to leveling up as per normal. That way, you aren't totally out of the game but you are definitely paying a price for dying.
As an example, Beatstick the 8th level fighter dies and is resurrected by his good friend Healbot, a 9th level cleric. Beatstick now has 2000 points of XP debt to work off. When he gains 500 XP for overcoming another encounter, Beatstick reduces his debt to 1750 and increases his character's experience by 250. Once he reduces his XP to 0 this way, he resumes XP gain as per normal conditions.
Thoughts?
If any of you ever played City of Heroes or City of Villains, you probably remember experience debt very well. It was that annoying red thing that would fill up your XP bar and slow the leveling process down without being too frustrating to deal with at all. I think this is a much fairer and less messy system than losing one level, so I decided that something along those lines should exist in D&D. Here's how it works:
When a character of level X dies, they're dead as per usual. Upon being resurrected, they incurr an amount of experience debt equal to 250*X. Experience debt must be paid off at the same time that a character gains XP. To determine how XP is distributed, you take the discrete chunk of XP that the character gains from overcoming a challenge or what have you and divide it in half. One half of that amount goes to paying off debt and the other half goes to leveling up as per normal. That way, you aren't totally out of the game but you are definitely paying a price for dying.
As an example, Beatstick the 8th level fighter dies and is resurrected by his good friend Healbot, a 9th level cleric. Beatstick now has 2000 points of XP debt to work off. When he gains 500 XP for overcoming another encounter, Beatstick reduces his debt to 1750 and increases his character's experience by 250. Once he reduces his XP to 0 this way, he resumes XP gain as per normal conditions.
Thoughts?