[D&D 3.5] GM Policy: "Slow Burn" Pacing?

[Maginomicon]

I'm considering adopting a campaign pacing policy that I call "Slow Burn".

The policy, in a nutshell, means that the campaign still burns (is above lukewarm heat in terms of in-game excitement), but the leveling pace itself burns slowly.

This isn't a "people level up when the GM deems it plot-relevant" policy, it's a "people ideally level up appropriate to when they have all gained a firm grasp on their current ability set (and eachothers ability sets) and are now in need of an upgraded set of toys" policy ("toys" meaning class abilities and feats, but not items, as those are given out based on earned experience rate and wealth-by-level).

This goal is paramount. I've noticed that my players on a very regular basis seem to not really remember what all they have and what they can do. They are paying attention to the game and they do know how to play, they just forget what all that their character(s) can do. Each level-up that's paced experience-wise as RAW, they get upgraded "toys" too soon and so this problem is actually exacerbated (it's not "power creep" but "power rush" so-to-speak). They forget, for example, that they're all living breathing characters that can do any feat of strength (not "Strength"), dexterity (not "Dexterity"), etc. that a normal person could do in the real world, or that what buffs they have at their disposal. This forgetfulness isn't as much a player issue as an inter-player issue. If the rogue forgets to ask the sorcerer to be ready to cast an Energy Aegis before he goes up against a known lightning-based trap room, then that's a problem.

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The way I'd like to accomplish this is two-fold:

#1. Everyone (GM and players) must have easy access to a relatively-simple but comprehensive list of everyone's ability sets. This starts at level 1 with a set of all combat actions that any creature could take regardless of class (Bull Rushes, for example). The list expands at each level to include spells-known and spells commonly prepared among other class features and items. Each listing would say the name of the ability, the type of ability, how often it's available, who has it, when they got it, and what it does in a nutshell. This list would not include weak passive abilities of items, just the more notable stuff, especially abilities you have to activate. It would also include special uses of skills (such as sniping). This list would be constantly available to all players at all times, and would be color-coded and use other visual indicators for easier searching and comprehension.

#2. Experience given per encounter is on a sliding scale for the upper 50% of the typical experience listed for the encounter overall. Unimaginative, uninspired, rote-rehearsal battles and encounter resolutions result in less (or even minimum) experience, while awesome and clever battles/encounter resolutions result in maximum experience for the encounter. Additionally, people that are clever in a particular encounter regardless of how the party overall acted are rewarded as described in the "XP Bonus Pool" variant in Unearthed Arcana page 214. The end result is that battles give far less experience than normal, so they level up slower. This means, for example, that the go-to Rocket Tag solution is neat the first time, but gets more lame experience-wise every time after that. (It also gives me more in-universe and out-of-game time to figure out ways for monsters/NPC enemies to come up with defenses against those go-to methods.)

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The flip side of this (or downside, depending on how you look at it) is the GM must really dig into the ability set that a party has at a given level and create a campaign which uses encounters that heavily play to the party's strengths (while not being repetitive about the ultimate solutions to encounters in-general). If a GM doesn't do this, the party will likely become "stuck" or bored a lot easier than in a campaign which doesn't use slow burn.

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What I want to know is... (and feel free to only answer one of these if you don't have ideas for the others)

What should I add onto or change within my solution to the root problem? Do not respond you're primarily going to suggest is that I not slow down the experience gained. That's non-negotiable. They're leveling too fast using the by-RAW experience to gain a firm grasp of their ability sets, that's a fact.

I want to know how to build a methodology for distributing treasure based on how far the group is experience-wise in a level. Is "standard treasure" for an encounter -- in-fact -- effective for determining this under normal conditions? How would I have to change treasure calculations to accommodate for less experience per encounter?

I want to know how I should build and categorize the ability set list to best effect in-game. It's one thing to build a spreadsheet that works for my purposes as a GM, it's another thing entirely to build one that the players feel is a valuable resource they'll actually use in-game.

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P.S. My campaign is not an Epic6 game, but I understand how this could work well for an Epic6 game.

I may add clarifications to the concept here as this thread progresses. Please refer back to this OP on occasion to refocus your aim.

[Fyermind]

So NPCs will be really unbalancing if you fight them because they have a lot of wealth to make them appropriate challenges. If you cut their wealth, they stop being challenging. If you leave them as is, they will have WAY more wealth than most foes. With extra time at each level, the PCs try to pull other wealth shenanigans. Basically wealth stops being a good way to restrain the PCs use of items.

I really like combining this with a free Vow of Poverty bonus where the bonus feats are replaced with the ability work with magic items up to a certain power level.

This way the basic effects of magic items everyone gets for free, making wealth less important for keeping up and more about getting versatility. This means the PCs can do just fine if they don't try to accumulate a lot of gold.

They can also make or obtain all sorts of cool little magic trinkets and items of varying levels of meaningful. As a starting point, look at saying they cannot use items of value over 1/4 what WBL would be for their character but can select a single item to be valued 1/3 WBL that can be changed with a week of study or when they level up.

[erikun]

Well, the first concern is that different levels bring different amounts of materials to the table, and so player get "stuck" on some levels becoming familiar with all their abilities. This is particularly annoying because all players must be familiar with all abilities before the next level-up. Every person at the table must become familiar with every single first level Cleric spell in every single book available before the party is allowed to progress to 2nd level.

Conversely, some levels are rather dead to the party. At 2nd level, everyone needs to become familiar with the Rogue's evasion and the Fighter's new feat. That's it, at which point they'll be running through the standard 25-encounter system to allow their XP to hit 3rd level. (Cutting XP in half just means it takes twice as long to level up.)

Of course, the biggest problem is that everyone "needs" to become familiar with everyone else's character. Some people just want to play a Rogue or Barbarian, have a list of a few scaling abilities and not have to worry about anything else. But the entire party is held back and unable to progress until they become familiar with all the Cleric's 0th- and 1st-level spells, all the Druid's 0th- and 1st-level spells and abilities, and all the applications of all the skills thanks to the party Factotum. And possibly every low-level magic item if an Artificer is around.

Let's not forget that just because your players took the time to memorize entire spell lists at 1st level does not mean they'll remember it all come 15th level. Or even remember it all after 3rd level.


Overall, if you want to slow down the level-progression in the game, simply reducing XP rewards to 1/2 or 1/3 will work just fine. Make it a point, as the DM, to challenge different aspects of the characters, although you want to ensure that said characters have said resources to rely on when the encounter happens.

Also, I'm not sure how you plan on verify that everyone in the party is familiar with each character's abilities anyways, without some sort of pop quiz. :smallconfused:

[mattie_p]

I just help each player make a "cheat sheet" with all of their abilities spelled out on it. So for the rogue, I have the wording of sneak attack, evasion, whatever, for the ranger we have favored enemy, track, etc. We also do multiple character sheets in instances where it might matter - the barbarian has two sheets, one raging, one normal. The psywarrior has one normal sheet and one with expansion (we'll do another one when he can augment expansion to huge).

[nedz]

I like the idea of players getting mileage out of each level, that is they get to experience how the character works at a given level before they move on to the next level, so I try to do this.

I also give out XP in batches rather than after every fight since that allows me to balance things better — though this can occasionally cause issues due to things like character death/crafting, so some hand waving might be required at the ends of each sequence of encounters.

I'm not sure your idea would work in groups where there is a 'slow' player, or even just a few newbies. If the playing ability of your group is not consistent then you are going to be holding back you more capable players to the point where they may become bored.

[Fyermind]

As pointed out, there are a lot of dead levels. At level 5, a lot of characters who didn't just get 3rd level spells have had no change in their character worth noting. A lot of level 1 sneaky characters, and level 2 sneaky characters, can't wait until level 3 for weapon finesse. Level 1 totemists are waiting as patiently as they can for level 2 when they actually get to do what totemists are known for, attack things with natural weapons. Etc.

I would suggest working with players to make sure they all get new abilities every level and homebrewing things as necessary to make this possible. Of course, try to keep everything balanced against each other at least a little bit so nobody makes anyone else obsolete.

Also characters who rely on GP or XP to defeat foes (I'm thinking artificer here, but there may be others) just got a lot weaker. Consider decreasing the cost of consumables relative to multiple use items.

[molten_dragon]

What should I add onto or change within my solution to the root problem? Do not respond you're primarily going to suggest is that I not slow down the experience gained. That's non-negotiable. They're leveling too fast using the by-RAW experience to gain a firm grasp of their ability sets, that's a fact.

No, that's an opinion. Don't slow down experience gain. Yes, you said this isn't what you want to hear, but it's what you need to hear. Your players are going to get bored waiting forever to level up each time. The game is going to become stagnant because it's designed to give out level up rewards at a certain pace, and changing that makes serious changes to the game. It's quite difficult to maintain a fun and interesting game when everything is static. When you aren't getting new abilities, and are fighting the same kinds of enemies over and over and over (because there aren't that many different kinds appropriate at each level).

Seriously, don't do it, it's a bad idea. Just play a different game if you want something with a slower pace of advancement.

[zlefin]

I'd suggest using Pathfinder classes; because pathfinder really cuts down on dead levels. It'd be much easier than homebrewing changes so that everyone has new things at each level.

[Deophaun]

In addition to all the other problems mentioned, you're creating RP problems as well.

All the players get a look at all the other PC's abilities. What? So the player of the Paladin who has no ranks in Spellcraft knows that the Sorcerer picked a spell with the [Evil] descriptor and likes to spam it. That's a winning policy right there. I've had PCs that wouldn't have been half as interesting if the other players even figured out what class I was.

And how do you judge that the player's don't know each others' abilities? OK, your party rogue is entering a known lightning-based trap room and he doesn't ask the sorcerer for protection from energy. How do you know he actually wanted the spell cast and forgot to ask? His rogue can't follow the trope of the lone wolf? Maybe he just has supreme confidence in his abilities and doesn't want to waste the sorcerer's daily resources when his at-will abilities are sufficient. And heck, if the rogue needs to ask the magic men for help to deal with traps, well, then what's the use of the rogue to begin with?

[Rosstin]

No, that's an opinion. Don't slow down experience gain. Yes, you said this isn't what you want to hear, but it's what you need to hear. Your players are going to get bored waiting forever to level up each time. The game is going to become stagnant because it's designed to give out level up rewards at a certain pace, and changing that makes serious changes to the game. It's quite difficult to maintain a fun and interesting game when everything is static. When you aren't getting new abilities, and are fighting the same kinds of enemies over and over and over (because there aren't that many different kinds appropriate at each level).

Seriously, don't do it, it's a bad idea. Just play a different game if you want something with a slower pace of advancement.

This. Your core idea is terrible. Sorry. Players will hate it.

[RFLS]

What should I add onto or change within my solution to the root problem? Do not respond if you're primarily going to suggest is that I not slow down the experience gained. That's non-negotiable. They're leveling too fast using the by-RAW experience to gain a firm grasp of their ability sets, that's a fact.

Terrible idea. No experimenting with the rules or DMing in a manner differing from the norm. Sarcasm aside, would you expound on how they're having a hard time mastering their ability sets? Are they building simple characters, or are they jumping right in with, say, a Goliath Factotum 3/Barbarian 1/Warblade 1/Monk 2 designed to trip people and wail on them with a large number of abilities?


I want to know how to build a methodology for distributing treasure based on how far the group is experience-wise in a level. Is "standard treasure" for an encounter -- in-fact -- effective for determining this under normal conditions? How would I have to change treasure calculations to accommodate for less experience per encounter?

So, there are a few tricks here:

Give out rewards that aren't based in WBL. Castles, leadership positions, etc. Be very careful in what you let the players do within your world, but this is a set of rewards you should consider.
Burn through their excess gold on occasion. For instance, I had some players starting to get ahead of WBL recently, so I took advantage of a player induced situation to make them pay for something that gave them no mechanical benefit. Be wary of using this one, as it can go awry quite easily. However, once in a while, especially if it's for a good cause, can contribute to the game quite well.
String rewards out. It they're dungeon-diving, don't put a Rogue item, a Fighter item, a Cleric item, and a Wizard item at the end of the dungeon. Just put one. I did assume WotC's default party, but I am very aware that such a party is almost never played. However, you get the point.



I want to know how I should build and categorize the ability set list to best effect in-game. It's one thing to build a spreadsheet that works for my purposes as a GM, it's another thing entirely to build one that the players feel is a valuable resource they'll actually use in-game.

I'm not quite sure what you mean here. Would you please expand so that I can give a solid and reasoned answer?


P.S. My campaign is not an Epic6 game, but I understand how this could work well for an Epic6 game.

Out of curiosity, what level are the PCs, how long has the game been going, and what is the established setting? You might actually try E8 or E10 if they're low enough, although I'm 90% you don't want to cap their level from what you've said thus far.

[Maginomicon]

No, that's an opinion. Don't slow down experience gain. Yes, you said this isn't what you want to hear, but it's what you need to hear.
This. Your core idea is terrible. Sorry. Players will hate it.
I refer you to the last line of my sig.

[Maginomicon]

would you expound on how they're having a hard time mastering their ability sets?Every player has developed or started their TT-gaming careers knowingly or unknowingly with a self-centered approach to knowing about the rest of their team's capabilities. They know the most flashy parts each person can do, but not the comprehensive set at large by a long shot.

None of them are real "leader" material as players. If there was a party "leader", then this would be a lot easier because then you'd only need one guy to know what everyone can do.

Lets take the party rogue for example. He's more of an "oldschool-D&D" guy, 1st edition or 2nd edition were his bread and butter. He knows he can sneak attack, but doesn't how how (or care to learn how) to do it other than by flanking. It's not an active malicious behavior, he just doesn't have the knowledge and won't remember the knowledge if you tell him it.

Then let's take the paladin. This player's the regular 3.x GM and doesn't value things like "RAI" or "Fairness" or "Common Sense". If the RAW "says" that you can use a Synchronicity combo to take 15 standard actions in a turn, then according to him you should be allowed to do so. This is the kind of player where if you have an enemy fly 100 ft above his square, he'll insist on getting a melee attack of opportunity against it because the terminology for everything is in "squares" not "cubes".

Then let's talk about the psychic warrior. This guy's also a GM (although largely for 4e), and is generally more reasonable, except he's the guy that tried to get his 15-standard-action Synchronicity combo to work in the paladin's game.

Next we have a Dread Necromancer (a newbie GM for 4e, but no other GM experience) who still can't find his character sheet after three months of searching.

Finally, we come to the monk, who's never bothered to actually make a character sheet for anyone's game. (I'm kicking him out of the game actually, so he's not as important here)

To my knowledge, none of these people have ever put serious thought into putting their heads together as a team during character creation so that they don't have disparate fields of influence in-game... not that it would matter even if they had considered it, since only the psychic warrior and I know enough about 3.x to be able to gauge whether there's suitable overlap.

If I could start up an entirely fresh group that are smart people but new to D&D 3.x, I would in a heartbeat, but I don't have that option.

Are they building simple characters, or are they jumping right in with, say, a Goliath Factotum 3/Barbarian 1/Warblade 1/Monk 2 designed to trip people and wail on them with a large number of abilities?I will cop to the fact that my regular game uses a number of UA variants including gestalting. It's still shouldn't be that hard to learn and remember what abilities you and your teammates have and what they mean for the party's overall benefit. The fine details of those variants matter to the person playing with that particular option, but everyone should be able to learn which options are available team-wide.

So, there are a few tricks here: *snip*
Finally! Someone with constructive advice. Thank you.

I'm not quite sure what you mean here. Would you please expand so that I can give a solid and reasoned answer?Imagine that you as a player wanted to have a quick reference sheet containing a bare-bones list of of roughly every ability your party has at their disposal at-large. What would you want that reference sheet (or packet) to look like for it to be most effective to you, provided that everyone would be looking at the same packet?

Out of curiosity, what level are the PCs, how long has the game been going, and what is the established setting?They're ECL 5, although I'm strongly considering rebooting the campaign to ECL 1, especially if I'm going to be taking a "slow burn" approach. The game has spastic attendance, with several months between sessions (compounded by the running sessions of games everyone else is running with the group).

The setting is a "near-futuresque" D&D where the most advanced technology out there consists mostly of warforged (of course), spaceflight, a "Snowcrash"-like cyberspace as a means for fun and hacking, and neural implants. The PC's civilization has a optional heritage package (usually chosen by default) that makes them biologically incapable of casting spells (people of this civilization instead focus on psionics and other non-magic subsystems). Naturally, the "Psionics is Different" variant is in play. There are many people that live in the known civilized worlds are not biologically this non-magic demographic, so spellcasters do exist (although they're feared akin to how mutants are feared in the X-Men franchise). Those that use magic but don't actually cast spells (such as a factotum or warlock) are often shunned but usually are not actively feared or hated by the general public like spellcasters are.

Oh, and I use Real Alignments (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=283341).

[Scarce]

My two cents:

As of today, I've finished my first D&D campaign of 22 sessions. During this time, I faced a very similar problem among my players, who were by and large new to the game.

In the beginning, the basic mechanics of combat and movement, and the terminology of play were a challenge. As the players progressed, party cohesion began to take traction in combat and the group began to work as a team. Only in the last 4 sessions (of a campaign that met for 5 hours twice a week) did I see most of my players tactically use the different options available to their characters in the correct circumstances, while taking advantage of their ally's abilities.

As a DM, it's frustrating to see good characters go to waste, but ultimately it doesn't matter. If the basic party roles are filled (IE, glass cannon, tank, healer, etc.) then the extra depth need not be probed. The party will work, and people will have fun.

In my mind, the extra power options players neglect remembering can lie in wait for desperate situations or bored players who want variety. Either things will become so desperate that they will need the new options, or they will get bored and begin to take advantage of other options, be it within their character or among the party's abilities. If the players don't take advantage of their full power, don't sweat it. If they're already having fun they don't need to use other things; don't force them.

[Randomocity132]

Rather than cut down their characters, just give them more intricate scenarios that require character synergy and more complex problems than "kill these things"

When you try to solve a role-playing problem through magic, skills, and cleverness, that's fun and involved. When you drag the campaign through the mud by making it take twice as long, it stagnates, unless every last one of your encounters is going to be magnificent.

If you can fulfill your role as the DM as well as you're expecting the players to fill their roles as PC's, then that's fine.

[Warlawk]

Well, I think the first thing you really need to stop and give a good long bit of consideration would be... is this a change for you or your players? Will this change generate fun.



Lets take the party rogue for example. He's more of an "oldschool-D&D" guy, 1st edition or 2nd edition were his bread and butter. He knows he can sneak attack, but doesn't how how (or care to learn how) to do it other than by flanking. It's not an active malicious behavior, he just doesn't have the knowledge and won't remember the knowledge if you tell him it.


Just off the top of my head, this doesn't sound like a guy who will have fun being forced to memorize the abilities and interactions thereof for everyone in the party.



Then let's take the paladin. This player's the regular 3.x GM and doesn't value things like "RAI" or "Fairness" or "Common Sense". If the RAW "says" that you can use a Synchronicity combo to take 15 standard actions in a turn, then according to him you should be allowed to do so. This is the kind of player where if you have an enemy fly 100 ft above his square, he'll insist on getting a melee attack of opportunity against it because the terminology for everything is in "squares" not "cubes".


This guy probably already knows what the party can do, and will likely only get frustrated and bored by being slowed down in advancement.



Then let's talk about the psychic warrior. This guy's also a GM (although largely for 4e), and is generally more reasonable, except he's the guy that tried to get his 15-standard-action Synchronicity combo to work in the paladin's game.


Also probably has a solid idea of party capability, and likely to be bored at being slowed.



Next we have a Dread Necromancer (a newbie GM for 4e, but no other GM experience) who still can't find his character sheet after three months of searching.


Doesn't sound to me like the kind of player who will want to be forced to learn the abilities of the entire party and work around them.



Finally, we come to the monk, who's never bothered to actually make a character sheet for anyone's game. (I'm kicking him out of the game actually, so he's not as important here)


Not going to bother typing it out... again.


Honestly I really don't have much in the way of suggestions for making your approach work. Sorry for the lack of constructive advice to your thread here, but I really think you need to stop and ask yourself one question.

Will this change make the game more fun for everyone at the table?

[BWR]

No, that's an opinion. Don't slow down experience gain. Yes, you said this isn't what you want to hear, but it's what you need to hear. Your players are going to get bored waiting forever to level up each time. The game is going to become stagnant because it's designed to give out level up rewards at a certain pace, and changing that makes serious changes to the game. It's quite difficult to maintain a fun and interesting game when everything is static. When you aren't getting new abilities, and are fighting the same kinds of enemies over and over and over (because there aren't that many different kinds appropriate at each level).

Seriously, don't do it, it's a bad idea. Just play a different game if you want something with a slower pace of advancement.

Ignore this opinion.

There is nothing wrong with slower xp gain. Several campaigns I play in grant half xp and we're fine. There is nothing wrong with slower progression. There is nothing about the D&D system that requires the progression of xp/levels to be exactly the way the xp table suggests. Pathfinder for instance gave three different progressions depending on how fast you want people to advance. I run with the slow progression and everyone is fine.
The fun of the game is only partially leveling. The majority of it is the plot and fun of character interactions. And once we level it's that much sweeter.

If your players are getting a bit bored with a level it's easy enough to throw more encounters at them until they level. It's a lot harder to keep people at a level with sufficiently challenging encounters that they aren't bored while using the suggested 3.5 xp rewards.

BUT!
If you choose to grant reduced xp, keep it at a flat rate. One DM I play with doesn't like us advancing that quickly and started giving out with half-xp, which was fine. However, he also would also, after a large battle, look at the xp we got anyway and think we got too much even then and arbitrarily reduce it a ridiculous amount. After our vocal protestations at this upon several occasions he wisened up and just stuck with half xp. The problem is he wanted massive, epic combat that taxed us to the limit but didn't really want us to gain much from it. He also, in an attempt to reduce the amount of wealth we received, would have magic items be enchanted to disappear or disintegrate upon death of the wielder, or say things like "the gear looks so evil you don't even want to touch it". He has since learned his lesson.

[DuncanMacleod]

I like half xp, it just feels about right to me to be honest.

With regard to your group, it's possible that it may just be the wrong group for you. In my mind, the most fun part of the game is all the little synergies in the abilities of a group and I enjoy spending time reading about builds for all the different classes and thinking about what tactics different groups can employ in different situations. To me, that's the very essence of the game. You probably feel similarly and feel like your players are missing out and want to enlighten them so they have more fun... but some people play the game for different reasons.

It's a quirk of DnD that it's the sort of game that's equally attractive to the sort of people who mainly play strategy games like Civ, EU3 etc., and the sort of people who mainly play games like Skyrim. Neither camp is wrong.

It may be that the two GM's consider this their downtime and don't want to think about stuff too much. It may also be that they're not very good GM's, who knows. I would kind of expect one of them to at least try to assume a soft leadership role and suggest/explain tactics if there is a new guy at the table though...

I think the new guy is your best bet. He might genuinely enjoy thinking more tactically once he gets a firm grip on the mechanics. The others are probably pretty set in their ways. Do you get on with him socially? Could you offer to buy him a beer and go over the party abilities with him? Maybe mock up some scenarios where he gets to play the whole party?

The view of the guy above who suggested that players shouldn't know the abilities of each other's characters is also valid as it adds to roleplay, but it's a matter of taste. I like a certain amount of roleplay, but to me DnD is primarily about "fun with numbers and logic" and in combat I would much rather look at it as the group cooperatively playing the party rather than playing individual characters, but that's just my taste.

Another option is just make encounters tougher and don't be afraid of TPK's. Force them to cooperate. Worst case scenario is they die and you find a new group.:smallwink:

As to the RAW guy, I personally suggest that it's really your job to go through the RAW before hand and institute clear house rules on issues you consider broken at the start in a lot of cases. The thing about squares/cubes is just him being an arse though. I don't know why you put "says" in inverted commas, if the rules do literally say that. Whether the rules intended to say that is a separate issue. Rules lawyering is another perfectly valid way of gaining enjoyment from the game, at least it's an exercise in logic. Different strokes for different folks. If you want smart players, you're going to get rules lawyers. If someone has spent that long poring over the rules to find little loop holes, then that is someone with good system familiarity and probably someone you want at your table if you can come to an amicable compromise. But yeah, cubes, he might be a tool.

[DuncanMacleod]

#1. Everyone (GM and players) must have easy access to a relatively-simple but comprehensive list of everyone's ability sets. This starts at level 1 with a set of all combat actions that any creature could take regardless of class (Bull Rushes, for example). The list expands at each level to include spells-known and spells commonly prepared among other class features and items. Each listing would say the name of the ability, the type of ability, how often it's available, who has it, when they got it, and what it does in a nutshell. This list would not include weak passive abilities of items, just the more notable stuff, especially abilities you have to activate. It would also include special uses of skills (such as sniping). This list would be constantly available to all players at all times, and would be color-coded and use other visual indicators for easier searching and comprehension.

I like this.

[Fyermind]

I tend to run fairly high op gestalt games with three players. I've noticed that to make most encounters challenging I have to raise ECL by like 3 or 4, so if I don't 1/4 XP or more, they level in like five encounters. They end up leveling more than once in a day. I mean, that's more than a little crazy.

Especially if there is a strong power creep, slowing down advancement is really important.

[DuncanMacleod]

#2. Experience given per encounter is on a sliding scale for the upper 50% of the typical experience listed for the encounter overall. Unimaginative, uninspired, rote-rehearsal battles and encounter resolutions result in less (or even minimum) experience, while awesome and clever battles/encounter resolutions result in maximum experience for the encounter. Additionally, people that are clever in a particular encounter regardless of how the party overall acted are rewarded as described in the "XP Bonus Pool" suggestion in the books (not sure where it was suggested). The end result is that battles give far less experience than normal, so they level up slower. This means, for example, that the go-to Rocket Tag solution is neat the first time, but gets more lame experience-wise every time after that. (It also gives me more in-universe and out-of-game time to figure out ways for monsters/NPC enemies to come up with defenses against those go-to methods.)


I don't like this, I think it would annoy me. It's your job to force the party to be more tactical through your encounter/dungeon design. For example, make sure the party never know how many more encounters they may have to face before they get a chance to rest... this will make the Wizard (or equivalent) very nervous about playing rocket tag right from the get go and have to try to think about how he can efficiently use lower level spells. If defaulting to boring rocket tag works, then it is the clever thing to do, that's not their fault.

Chuck in opposing parties similar to the PC's party but a level or two lower and have them play intelligently. Hell, even have a plot reason for "evil" clones of the PC party as it was two levels ago to turn up.... then whoop them with it.

If the Synergist wants to argue 15 standard actions a turn, fine, but point out that logically that means guess what class the intelligent BBEG is going to start mass recruiting as minions... still want the rule to work that way?

[rot42]

I like to come at the problem from the opposite angle by regularly perusing my players' character sheets for nifty abilities that have not seen use lately. I have direct and primary control over my own actions, making it easier to change my own behavior than to attempt to nudge the players. A new class ability or occasionally spell or item often makes a good seed for encounter design - either to provide a ready opportunity for a player to feel clever or by showcasing it on a villain. The occasional helpful (or you could just slow fall down the chasm) or "helpful" (the mage has the fewest HP, so it makes sense to send her first) suggestion seems to work well with my group, but I could easily see the approach backfiring with a different group. Teamwork on team monster is a good way to show (not tell) your players the power of working together by creating deceptively difficult encounters; play it up in your narration. I try to tune the number and difficulty of encounters to provide a level every 4–6 sessions or so; I find that this tends to be enough time for everyone to become accustomed to the new abilities and start salivating for more. I can see the appeal to formally connecting XP to creative use of abilities, but I think a more ad hoc solution may do more to enhance fun at the table. I dislike judging and choosing among my friends, which handing out significant "you ran your character cleverly tonight" XP would feel like to me. An alternative might be to ask your players at the end of the session to vote on allocation of 10% or so of the XP; this has a secondary benefit of building in a feedback mechanism to give you data on what your players find most enjoyable.

For treasure, I keep a running total of how much loot has been doled out at this level compared to the WBL table (with a bump for consumables and a fudge factor for exciting new trinkets without overshadowing class abilities). I audit the character sheets every level (or two ... or three if I have a particularly long streak of feeling lazy) and throw out loot targeted at a particular character if one seems to be falling behind (wooho - free encounter idea). Whether the wealth ratio is ahead or behind the XP ratio for reaching the next level determines how many demonoids with SLAs vs. humanoids with useful gear the party encounters. I prefer never to roll on treasure tables, but this system can be adapted in general terms if you prefer that method.

I love a good well ordered and succinctly presented spreadsheet. If you figure a way to get people to read them when understanding the data is a part of their job description, much less for a simple hobby with irregular meeting times, please let the rest of us know.

[DuncanMacleod]

I love the phrase "showcasing" in the above post. That is kinda what I was driving at with the evil clones.

[Maginomicon]

I like half xp, it just feels about right to me to be honest.

If you choose to grant reduced xp, keep it at a flat rate. One DM I play with doesn't like us advancing that quickly and started giving out with half-xp, which was fine. However, he also would also, after a large battle, look at the xp we got anyway and think we got too much even then and arbitrarily reduce it a ridiculous amount.
Keep in mind, 1/2 XP is just the minimum for the group overall. Minimum group XP usually would only happen when the group's unimaginative and simply steamrolls the encounter (such as by using Wings of Flurry in the first turn). After determining the XP for the group overall, that value is affected by the "XP Bonus Pool" method, which skims 25% of that number off the top and gives it out proportionally to people that stood out in the encounter. Naturally, it's not likely for an encounter to warrant minimum group XP but grant any given character an XP boon (which is intentional).

As to the RAW guy, I personally suggest that it's really your job to go through the RAW before hand and institute clear house rules on issues you consider broken at the start in a lot of cases. The thing about squares/cubes is just him being an arse though. I don't know why you put "says" in inverted commas, if the rules do literally say that. Whether the rules intended to say that is a separate issue. Rules lawyering is another perfectly valid way of gaining enjoyment from the game, at least it's an exercise in logic. Different strokes for different folks. If you want smart players, you're going to get rules lawyers. If someone has spent that long poring over the rules to find little loop holes, then that is someone with good system familiarity and probably someone you want at your table if you can come to an amicable compromise. But yeah, cubes, he might be a tool.
My house rules document does exactly this, but is over ~100 pages long and counting (I can PM you a link to it if you like, as it's available online). As for amicable compromises, they don't happen. He takes situations in my games where he doesn't get his way personally, and it will affect the way he treats my characters in his games (although perhaps not severely).

I put "says" in quotes because as-written the psionic power in question could conceivably imply that it was meant to be interpreted that way, but I think that there's no way that's in the spirit of what they were really trying to do with the power (a.k.a. RAI). I can take a strong educated guess that this is the case because I'm a game designer for a living. It'd basically be haste on steroids, and haste is already extremely powerful. To put it another way, I have as a general guideline in my GM methodology: "thou shalt not f*** with the action economy for fun and profit, as it is sacrosanct".

I don't like this, I think it would annoy me. It's your job to force the party to be more tactical through your encounter/dungeon design. For example, make sure the party never know how many more encounters they may have to face before they get a chance to rest... this will make the Wizard (or equivalent) very nervous about playing rocket tag right from the get go and have to try to think about how he can efficiently use lower level spells. If defaulting to boring rocket tag works, then it is the clever thing to do, that's not their fault.In the first few levels, you'd be right, but after a certain level the caster-archetypes have sufficient spell slots to truck through all "day" long (especially if they're a spontaneous caster-archetype). Additionally, D&D 3.5 has degenerated to where if the caster-archetype characters run out of spell slots, the rest of the party doesn't tell them to suck it up. They instead near-immediately bed down for the night. That sucks, and it only reinforces the caster-archetype's already-absurd power over the group dynamic. Personally, I try to run my games as "fast paced" in-game time-wise, meaning that there is no 15-minute work day. (How exactly I do that is a topic for another thread, not this one.)

If the Synergist wants to argue 15 standard actions a turn, fine, but point out that logically that means guess what class the intelligent BBEG is going to start mass recruiting as minions... still want the rule to work that way?That encourages an arms race (based on rulings that didn't make sense in the first place to boot), and therefore is an absolutely god-awful idea. See "The Squirt Gun Wars (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnPM7I49fj8)" for more details on a similar arms race situation.

[Maginomicon]

Ignore this opinion. Pathfinder for instance gave three different progressions depending on how fast you want people to advance. I run with the slow progression and everyone is fine.That is the strongest "RAW" justification I've seen yet for having reduced XP. Thank you.

[Psyren]

I'd suggest using Pathfinder classes; because pathfinder really cuts down on dead levels. It'd be much easier than homebrewing changes so that everyone has new things at each level.

Not only this, but Pathfinder is designed from the ground up to accommodate a "you level up when I want you to level up" style. XP isn't used for anything but leveling, so there's absolutely no need for anyone to track it. Thus, you can do a slow burn campaign extremely easily, with as many sessions between levels as you want, and control intra-level advancement via treasure. Say, instead of giving the players gold, you give them valuable paintings, rare books or polished jewels instead, but when they head out to sell them, you control the price merchants are willing to pay.

You can even take the "slow" progression and cut it even further. It won't hurt anything at all.

[DuncanMacleod]

If amicable compromises don't happen and he takes things personally, why are you playing with this guy? You are right about my comment on tit-for-tat in that case. If I said something like that to one of the guys I play with he would laugh and agree to tone it down, but if this guy is going to try to start an unwinnable competition against a gm...

Anyway, I gave my thoughts on what you posted about and don't really want to have an argument, so I'll just say good luck with the game dude, hope it works out. I put aside 20 mins of my time to try and make suggestions that I thought would be helpful (and if you read what I wrote you'll notice I'm agreeing with you that I personally prefer the style of play you are trying to encourage). I wasn't in any way trying to attack you, but you feel the need to raise that you are a professional game designer all in shouty bold. OK, fine, it would seem my posts are coming across in a different manner than I intended, so I'll leave it there.

[JusticeZero]

First, PF has three advancement speeds, and you can plug them into encounter calculation to get treasure.

Second, this sounds more like a pacing and communication issue. After a particularly fast session, I once had to blatantly tell the players to stop and actually look over the treasure, because they had plowed through two high treasure rebalancing encounters without distribution, to the point where they were all carrying better armor and weapons than they were using in battle.

[Karoht]

I'm more or less experimenting with this exact concept right now. It is a Pathfinder campaign which will also be integrating Tome of Battle. Players will be playing in two parties, one mundane focused and one caster focused.

I've been writing a campaign for quite a while. For story and gameplay purposes, all spell casting is capped at 5th level and learned at a slower pace. The short version of the in-world reason is that the world was about to go tippyverse, and then a disaster caused a magical dark age for 1000 years.
Players will unlock the rest of their spell casting progression at a later time. They get the spell slots normally (for metamagic purposes) but they learn the spells much slower.

I still have a long way to go before the story and plot threads are fleshed out enough before players enter this world, and naturally I don't want the 'nerfs' to be too brutal.


Things I learned designing this:
1-You really need a good grasp of what your player's tools actually are, not what you assume them to be.
2-Every hard combat needs to be very carefully balanced out and considered.
3-Any time you think your players will steamroll something, you're probably wrong.
4-If you want players to learn how to best apply the tools they have, and use all the tools in the toolbox, you more or less need to present specific situations for specific tools.

[Maginomicon]

OK, fine, it would seem my posts are coming across in a different manner than I intended, so I'll leave it there.
Actually, I wasn't. You're mistaken. It was only for emphasis, not for shouting. (I catch a lot of **** from that guy that only cares about RAW, as he never stops to think that maaaaybe the guy who thinks about design concerns for a living would have picked up some skills that would enable a better educated guess than him.)

All of that was about Synchronicity, so let's not get too sidetracked and lose focus of the actual OP.

[Maginomicon]

Okay, so what about the following addition:

(This is entirely separate and unique from the UA Craft Points variant.)

Everyone that has an item creation feat gains Craft Points (that are separate and unique from the artificer's "craft reserve" feature, if the character has that feature). They can use their Craft Points as if they were XP, except that they can't be used for anything besides crafting (That is, they can't be used for spell XP costs and other effects that aren't part of the crafting process). The number of Craft Points you earn is determined as the difference between how much XP you actually earn and how much XP you would earn if the "Slow Burn" method wasn't being used. This way, slow burn doesn't hose the artificer and other crafters.

I've created a Google Drive calculator that demonstrates the math involved. You can edit the green-lit boxes to determine how much XP and Craft Points a given player would get.
CLICK HERE TO TRY IT OUT (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AojdoKCdOXqNdE1RQmNsOFRtb2s4MThDdzFwZEkxa 2c&usp=sharing)

The basic gist of the math is to treat everyone in the party as if they had an item creation feat for the purposes of distributing Craft Points. However, if you don't actually have an item creation feat, the craft points you would earn are wasted to no effect.