molten_dragon
2012-11-26, 05:23 PM
My wife and I have a weekly gaming group that's currently going through the Carrion Crown adventure path by Paizo. The AP is written for the pathfinder rules, but we're running it in 3.5, since everyone prefers that. It hasn't been too much of an issue since everything transfers over pretty easily.
The only thing we've been having some problems with is XP, since 3.5 and PF use different ways of calculating CR/XP and different XP charts for when you level. We've had to fudge XP quite a bit so people level roughly when they should and don't over or under level the module.
We've discussed the idea of just replacing the 3.5 XP/leveling system with the pathfinder system to make everything simpler, but we're a little worried about how it will affect magic item creation. The party includes an artificer who does a lot of crafting, and since the XP charts are different in pathfinder, I don't know how that will interact with crafting costs from D&D.
At the moment, what generally happens is he'll craft some stuff, end up not leveling with the rest of us, then get more xp from the next encounter since he's lower level and mostly catch up. Overall he averages being maybe 10% of a level behind the rest of us.
It looks like with pathfinder XP rules, he won't catch up, since monsters give a fixed amount of xp, but the amount of xp needed to go from one level to the next grows much faster than in D&D so it might work. But I don't want it to go too far in either direction, ending up either with him being too far below everyone else and unable to catch up, or with us getting so much xp that crafting costs are completely trivial.
I tried comparing with the pathfinder item creation rules, but it looks like you don't even have to spend XP to craft items in pathfinder.
So has anyone tried to mix the systems like this before? How did you do it, and did it end up working out? Do you think it would work out if we replaced the D&D XP/leveling system with the pathfinder one even though there's a crafter in the party?
The only thing we've been having some problems with is XP, since 3.5 and PF use different ways of calculating CR/XP and different XP charts for when you level. We've had to fudge XP quite a bit so people level roughly when they should and don't over or under level the module.
We've discussed the idea of just replacing the 3.5 XP/leveling system with the pathfinder system to make everything simpler, but we're a little worried about how it will affect magic item creation. The party includes an artificer who does a lot of crafting, and since the XP charts are different in pathfinder, I don't know how that will interact with crafting costs from D&D.
At the moment, what generally happens is he'll craft some stuff, end up not leveling with the rest of us, then get more xp from the next encounter since he's lower level and mostly catch up. Overall he averages being maybe 10% of a level behind the rest of us.
It looks like with pathfinder XP rules, he won't catch up, since monsters give a fixed amount of xp, but the amount of xp needed to go from one level to the next grows much faster than in D&D so it might work. But I don't want it to go too far in either direction, ending up either with him being too far below everyone else and unable to catch up, or with us getting so much xp that crafting costs are completely trivial.
I tried comparing with the pathfinder item creation rules, but it looks like you don't even have to spend XP to craft items in pathfinder.
So has anyone tried to mix the systems like this before? How did you do it, and did it end up working out? Do you think it would work out if we replaced the D&D XP/leveling system with the pathfinder one even though there's a crafter in the party?