Alternatives to experience points?

[qazzquimby]

I can't think of any foolproof ones myself, most lead to farming in some way. Do any alternatives already exist, or can anyone think of one?

[Con_Brio1993]

You could control leveling. At plot relevant moments all player characters gain a level.

[dascarletm]

I did that. I found it fun and easy. The only thing we needed was an XP pool for crafting/ XP spells. Maybe give each player at every level something akin the the one an artificer gets, then, allow non-magical users and such able to contribute XP towards items/ spells for them. Like Wish/Permanency/etc.

[qazzquimby]

That sounds like it would work, I'll try that.
To completely change the question, does anyone have suggestions on how to run a game in which players may control several characters each? I'm thinking they'll be split mostly into an adventuring group and a money farming and item crafting group back home, but the R&D has to move into the action sometimes to level up with the rest of the group.

[Laserlight]

the R&D has to move into the action sometimes to level up with the rest of the group.

If Team Finance is farming and crafting, why do they need to be player characters, rather than NPCs? NPCs administered by the players, if you like, but still.

And why do they need to level by adventuring? Particularly if you're not using XP.
"You've been a weaponsmith for a year now. You've served with a master, you've studied the lore, you've gone to weekend seminars, you've gotten 30 semester hour credits, congratulations, you're now Level 2!"
is at least as convincing as
"You're a weaponsmith, you helped steal a lot of gold from the Dread Tower and got in some bar brawls, ding, level 2 weaponsmith!"

[LadyLexi]

I've played in a couple of very fast leveling games that threw out a level at the completion of each storyline.

[Occasional Sage]

Check out the Ars Magica RPG. It dealt with first- and second-string characters for all players.

[hymer]

In Ars Magica you don't get as much XP for actually adventuring as you get out of staying home and studying. So the wizards that aren't around for the adventure aren't losing much/anything in the XP department.
And the mooks are, well, mooks.

[ericgrau]

Because experience points are mostly unrelated to the rest of the system, you can do just about anything you want and it won't ruin anything. One common example is to level every 3 sessions, or at major plot points or whenever you feel like it really.

[AlchemicalMyst]

If you are looking to forgo traditional experience based leveling I completely support Speed of Plot leveling.

As for exp dependent spells and the like convert it to a gold cost like Pathfinder did. I believe there may be an official optional table for that somewhere otherwise there are countless online. Otherwise it's going to become problematic as I've found.

[Slipperychicken]

Seconding the "level when the DM says so" option. I've played a few games which used it, and it works quite well (saves everyone headaches from calculating/tracking xp, level disparity, and you can keep everyone at a level where the enemies you want to use are still challenging). Combine it with replacing all xp costs with 5x that number in gp, and you have pretty much removed xp from the game entirely.