Spending XP on things besides Items?

[janusmaxwell]

Are there any rules for spending XP on things besides creating Magic Items? Things like Spells/Extra Spell Slots/Feats/Stat Point boosts.

I'm 90% sure that such a thing would be a DM Fiat or Rule 0 (are those the same thing? Anyway) and personally, if I put such a rule in, I'd throw in something to the tune of "Only one of those above choices, once per level, and you gotta actually Role-play that shiznit instead of 'Oh I suddenly picked this up from nowhere!' and whatever you choose will be denied if it would take the campaign difficulty and snap it over your knee!"

My overall reason for the question is below and actually brings up a related thing (Kingdoms of Kalamar has 'rankings' for clerics that aren't tied to ECL, which you have to spend XP on to go up a rank) but otherwise, everybody else's thoughts? Should players be able to spend XP to buy extra feats or other things besides creating Magic Items? Are there already Rules in place for such a thing?


So here's my reasoning for it: Playing a 3.5 campaign, everybody is level 5 and a few hundred shy from 6. I am using a priest that is from a defunct Kingdoms of Kalamar Campaign, using the rules/details for that setting about clerics and I am loving it because my role, both character-wise with motivations and as a team member, is really in sync with my personality in a lot of ways.

My cleric is a Halfling "Helper" of the "Lord of the Silver Linings" (AKA: Milamal) and my 2 domains are Mercy and Purification (mostly Mercy). While I am severely limited in regards to combat capability (Only blunt or non-lethal weapons, light armor, 1d6 hit dice, never allowed to coup de grace a living foe) I am such a healbot that it's not even funny (All conjuration healing spells count as 1 spell level lower for me. [Hello, Cure Light Wounds as an Orison!] and Mercy Domain gives me +2 on CL regarding healing, Lesser Restoration as a 1st level Domain spell and a crapload of other things)

At the suggestion of the other (more experienced) players I took the Range metamagic and Divine Metamagic feats, which couple with my class features to mean I can cast Ranged Cure spells at a Spell level that makes them "Worth it" as opposed to not (Along with using full round actions to use spontaneous metamagic unprepared? WHY DID I NOT HEAR ABOUT THIS SOONER!?!) But aside from their suggestions at optimization, I've done my own...by getting my Heal skill and Profession (Herbalist) ranks as high as possible.......Yes. Yes that means my version of Munchkining involves optimizing the freaking Heal skill.:smallbiggrin: Should tell you something about me as a player, eh?

Anyway, I'm having a lot of fun with it, and then the other day I had this weird character concept idea involving a "Sundering Samurai" wielding an Ironwood Bokuto who destroys the weapons/armor of his enemies. Now this concept would take some work, it'd need to be for another campaign down the road, and I'd need to fluff it out and yaddayaddayadda.

But then I thought (Wait...smashing weapons instead of the enemy? Wouldn't that kind of fit with my Halfling Mercy Cleric?)

So, I'm wanting to find a way/buy a few feats so that I don't sacrifice some badly needed optimization (Well, sorta...Brother Rathbone suits my purposes and the others ATM but I don't want to find I accidentally kneecapped his usefulness on a whim) in order to get STR 13 (Current is 11 cause of small size's -2), which will lead to Power Attack and then the Sundering feats.

All I'm looking for is a way to make an effective halfling Cleric of Mercy who sits mostly in back of the party tossing heals unless Undead are involved (In which case "HEALING LASER SPAM!!!") but whenever somebody manages to get up on me, the result ends up being:
*SMASH*
Orc Barbarian staring at the haft of a broken +1 Greatsword: O_O
Halfing with Adamantine warhammer: "Are you gonna surrender now?"

That amuses me greatly, and I want it to happen SOOO badly!

[Jack_Simth]

There's a fair number of spells, and a handful of feats, that cost XP to use.

However, unless you're playing e6 or some such, there's no real mechanism for spending XP on purchasing such things directly.

[ExLibrisMortis]

There are rules for creating slotless magic items, and they can be tattoos, or something else always on your body. So if you are a (VoP?*) Illumian with loads of xp to spend, scribe the magic runes for a continuous and [insert magic item ability] into your bones, skin, gut lining or whatever. You can spend XP to replace gold costs at a ratio of 1 xp:5 gp.

Note: this gets [I]very expensive very quickly. Adding, say, a ring of wizardry IV effect to your appendix would cost 100.000 gp and 8000 xp normally, and that's expensive enough, but you can also just buy one for 200k gp and swallow it, if your DM allows. That's 50000/333333/25000 gp per 4th-level spell slot for wizard/sorcerer/duskblade. With the 1:5 exchange, though, it costs 28000 xp, for 7000/4667/3500 xp per spell slot for a wizard/sorcerer/duskblade. Even with that price tag, these spell slots can still be surpressed. And on top of that, if you want to add more effects, you may also need to rule that the body is one 'item', and that further magic effects cost extra.

tl;dr Using slotless magic item creation rules makes it far more efficient to level up, or rely on staves and wands, than to buy extra spell slots.




*Because you're clearly crazy about always-available +numbers already :smalltongue:.

[NecessaryWeevil]

Adding, say, a ring of wizardry IV effect to your appendix would cost 50.000 gp and 4000 xp normally...

And suddenly "I'll wear yer guts fer garters!" becomes a reasonable plan instead of an over-the-top threat.

[janusmaxwell]

There's a fair number of spells, and a handful of feats, that cost XP to use.

However, unless you're playing e6 or some such, there's no real mechanism for spending XP on purchasing such things directly.

Really? Damn, you'd think that would have been picked up on pretty quickly...but then again there's a lot about these games that are supposed to be up to the GM, and getting feats beyond the established levels would be a fast way to twist the system towards "WINNING" rather than "playing".


There are rules for creating slotless magic items, and they can be tattoos, or something else always on your body. So if you are a (VoP?*) Illumian with loads of xp to spend, scribe the magic runes for a continuous and [insert magic item ability] into your bones, skin, gut lining or whatever. You can spend XP to replace gold costs at a ratio of 1 xp:5 gp.

Note: this gets [I]very expensive very quickly. Adding, say, a ring of wizardry IV effect to your appendix would cost 100.000 gp and 8000 xp normally, and that's expensive enough, but you can also just buy one for 200k gp and swallow it, if your DM allows. That's 50000/333333/25000 gp per 4th-level spell slot for wizard/sorcerer/duskblade. With the 1:5 exchange, though, it costs 28000 xp, for 7000/4667/3500 xp per spell slot for a wizard/sorcerer/duskblade. Even with that price tag, these spell slots can still be surpressed. And on top of that, if you want to add more effects, you may also need to rule that the body is one 'item', and that further magic effects cost extra.

tl;dr Using slotless magic item creation rules makes it far more efficient to level up, or rely on staves and wands, than to buy extra spell slots.




*Because you're clearly crazy about always-available +numbers already :smalltongue:.
O_O...kay there's no limits to the human imagination, and sometimes I don't know what to make of that. Plus the spell slots idea was way down on my list, I just threw it into the pot because "Things a player might want to spend XP on instead of just waiting to level up"

And not so much crazy as excited. I favor getting into building stories and fluff and this is a character I can Roleplay without sacrificing the Roll-play, so everybody wins!

[Coidzor]

I've seen people houserule XP to be able to buy additional feats(generally with an increased cost per feat purchased in this way and some cap on the number of feats purchasable, such as half as many feats bought this way as all other feats possessed by the character) or raise a character's base ability scores up to a higher pointbuy equivalent.

[Necroticplague]

Sculpt Self lets you blow XP on Prestige Races.

[Telonius]

All I'm looking for is a way to make an effective halfling Cleric of Mercy who sits mostly in back of the party tossing heals unless Undead are involved (In which case "HEALING LASER SPAM!!!") but whenever somebody manages to get up on me, the result ends up being:
*SMASH*
Orc Barbarian staring at the haft of a broken +1 Greatsword: O_O
Halfing with Adamantine warhammer: "Are you gonna surrender now?"

That amuses me greatly, and I want it to happen SOOO badly!

If it weren't for the "+1" of +1 Greatsword, that scenario would be perfect for a Craft Contingent Spell: Shatter - which does cost XP to do. It's from Complete Arcane, but it doesn't actually require you to be an arcane caster. You could craft any offensive spell you know as a Contingent one, with the trigger being, "Cast this spell on any weapon that strikes me." The big problem is it requires a pretty high level (CL 11).

[Jack_Simth]

Really? Damn, you'd think that would have been picked up on pretty quickly...but then again there's a lot about these games that are supposed to be up to the GM, and getting feats beyond the established levels would be a fast way to twist the system towards "WINNING" rather than "playing".
More because the game is built on the framework of packaged classes (for good reason, even), and breaking out of that paradigm causes what balance 3.5 has to slip away even further.

But yes, such a system of purchasing feats / spell slots / spells known / etcetera for XP would lend itself towards optimization.

[janusmaxwell]

Okay I have a thought, and this is just out loud, but I have an idea regarding the "Buying Stats"

For the baseline Average of 10, any stat that is under 10 can be bought for 500XP per point away from the average So, someone with 9 in a stat would have to pay 500XP for it to become 10, while a person at 8 would have to pay 1000XP to become a 9, and so on. (reflecting how hard it is for somebody to build up/train themselves from a handicap).

For increasing Stats however, the scale becomes exponential (or at least something similar) for increasing a stat beyond 10. I wonder...would it be worth it or effective to use Half-Character level XP for this?
Example: 10 to 11 would cost 500 XP (half the cost of going from level 1 to level 2) while going from 11 to 12 would be 1500xp (Half of level 2 to 3) and so on.

2 thoughts, one of which would HAVE to be put in place for this:
A: Only able to buy 1 Stat Point per level, except for levels 4, 8, etc.
B: Possibly make price based on Modifier Rather than point score (8 to 9 to 10 to 11 would cost 500XP cause you're going from -1 to 0, while 6 to 7 or 7 to 8 would cost 1000XP and 11 to 12 or 12 to 13 would cost 1500 XP.)

[Coidzor]

Sculpt Self lets you blow XP on Prestige Races.

Wait, what?

[Necroticplague]

Wait, what?

Dragon 304. Basically, you blow some XP, then medidate 8 hours every day, and you get a permanent modification to yourself.