Handling XP Expenditure

[PaintByBlood]

In the games I've played, I have actually only ever played melee characters so far. Rogues especially, recently a Warblade, but never any casters or manifesters. On top of that, while some other players in said games have played those characters, we've either been low enough level or they've been played casually enough that there has been no XP expenditure in item creation or spell/power use.
I'm DMing a game, and it has similarly not reached a level at which this has come up, and I don't actually expect it to later.

And now, I may start in on a campaign as a Psion. In particular, I'm pretty interested in a number of powers, like Psychic Reformation, and likely to want to perform research. But that leaves me wondering: how does one handle spending so much XP? Is there just the natural correction from differing XP gain by level to fix this thing, and otherwise one is stuck being lower level than the initiator who level spends XP, or are there other ways to handle this, mitigate the effect, or have everyone spend XP such that they stay equal levels?

Thanks!

[eggynack]

I'd go with the natural correction answer. You're pretty much never going to be more than one level behind your party, and at some points you're actually going to be ahead, due to increased gains from monster fighting. Things tend to work themselves out, hence the common saying, experience is a river (http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/19872242/Experience_is_a_River).

[Fiery Diamond]

Here's how I handle it as a DM:

I give out XP at the end or beginning of each session. When people are close to leveling, I try to make it so I dish out enough XP to bring the person with the lowest XP total to the next level (we're assuming no deaths and resurrections) - this means people who spend XP will have lower XP totals, but remain the same level. Granted, this requires they not spend XP willy-nilly, or the gap between XP totals can get big enough that I can't keep it up and they'll fall behind. If this does happen (due to lots of XP expenditure or death), then I try to keep them only a session or two behind the others in terms of when they level.

[Psyren]

Pathfinder abolishes xp-spending entirely, which I find to be the best approach. Instead of tracking XP, the DM can simply say "okay, you guys level up now" which in my experience is how most groups do it anyway.

[Crake]

Pathfinder abolishes xp-spending entirely, which I find to be the best approach. Instead of tracking XP, the DM can simply say "okay, you guys level up now" which in my experience is how most groups do it anyway.

this is pretty much how I would recommend running it. Keeping track of separate xp totals is a pain, and if one person is making everything for the party, then why should they fall behind to keep everyone else in top shape

[Nettlekid]

Pathfinder abolishes xp-spending entirely, which I find to be the best approach. Instead of tracking XP, the DM can simply say "okay, you guys level up now" which in my experience is how most groups do it anyway.

Seconded (or thirded), this is how all of my groups do it. Levelling up is story-based, like after a boss fight or completion of a mission, not by grinding. A lot of the time we handwave small XP costs in the realm of like 10-50 XP, and for higher values we use the pretty standard 5 GP=1 XP conversion, so that a Limited Wish spell costs the caster 1500 gold instead of 300 XP. It's been working out pretty well for us. It makes things like Artificers even more broken, because if you have the time then basically you're allowed to say that all your stuff costs 7/10 of the listed price (1/2 gold+1/25 XP=1/2+1/5 gold=7/10 gold). But it's also good for getting rid of tricks like the Thought Bottle trick and using level drain+Restoration for free XP.