Paying for levels

[Backseatgamer]

Hypothetically, what would happen if you could pay gold for XP? Brainstorm!

[Amphetryon]

Hypothetically, what would happen if you could pay gold for XP? Brainstorm!

You'd have 1e D&D all over again.

[marphod]

Pay whom?

Where did you get the money?

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You'd run into a dysfunctional economic system, with little upward mobility, stagnation of the middle class, accelerated power growth for the wealthy, increased importance of the guild system as the individual journeyman is effectively powerless, , a strong management v worker mentality, polarization of social opinions, and wait. What were we talking about again?

[ComaVision]

Seeing how gold acquisition picks up really fast compared to xp after level 10, this is a silly idea.

[Uncle Pine]

There would be 2 kind of characters: the 1st level characters and the nighly infinite level characters (NIth level). As soon as infinite wealth is accessible, there is no reason for any person in his right mind to go in a dungeon: you just stay home and farm levels. If infinite wealth is not (yet) accessible to you, you roll Profession or Craft until you have access to infinite wealth.

Now, would the opposite be more feasible? Paying levels and equipment with exp? Of course you wouldn't be able to trade experience point (or store them short of liquid pain/joy) and you would resort to bartering or murder if person A had an item you wanted. And thought bottles shouldn't be available.

[Strormer]

You'd run into a dysfunctional economic system, with little upward mobility, stagnation of the middle class, accelerated power growth for the wealthy, increased importance of the guild system as the individual journeyman is effectively powerless, , a strong management v worker mentality, polarization of social opinions, and wait. What were we talking about again?

Ah ha ha ha ha ha! Well done. That's such an on point observation that I'm sad now. :( lol

[Xervous]

Any class that can get by with minimal investment for equipment will have a jump start to their progression which could end up snowballing out of control. Would this favor wizards and co. ? Quite likely indeed.

An even more amusing look into this: since experience is directly related to money, if the ratio is favorable magic users could just craft stuff for cheaper than it would be to purchase the headband of intellect, yet another way they get ahead.

[Deadline]

Assuming no one tries abusing infinite wealth, you'll wind up with casters being higher leveled than their martial counterparts, because casters don't need as much wealth. So the casters will spend more of their wealth on levels, and leave the martial characters even further behind (because now they need lots of gear to compete, AND they need to burn the cash they would spend on that to keep pace with the casters).

[Venger]

Hypothetically, what would happen if you could pay gold for XP? Brainstorm!

1) use literally any of the options in the game to generate infinite money (sell clubs for wood, break down ladders into 10 foot poles, sell walls of iron, etc)
2) buy all the levels in whatever and get to 20th
3) congratulations, you won D&D. now that that's out of the way, wanna actually like, play D&D?

winning D&D is easy, there are many handbooks and posts detailing how to do it. playing it is what most of us enjoy.

I have no idea what the point of this would be. You go adventuring so you can gain xp and get more superpowers so you can play the game with your friends, xp itself isn't the goal.

but in seriousness, money is not a finite resource in D&D whereas xp is. if you change that, then the experience and leveling system no longer functions and the game becomes impossible to play.

[atemu1234]

Pay whom?

Where did you get the money?

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You'd run into a dysfunctional economic system, with little upward mobility, stagnation of the middle class, accelerated power growth for the wealthy, increased importance of the guild system as the individual journeyman is effectively powerless, , a strong management v worker mentality, polarization of social opinions, and wait. What were we talking about again?

...Is it too late for me to switch Majors?

[paranoidbox]

DLC's are creeping into everything these days.

[SowZ]

If this was fluffed as paying a trainer who was higher level than you, there would be some stagnation but still a lot more high leveled characters. Presumably, the system would get streamlined where lvl 2s train the 1s, 3s train 2s, etc. etc. There would likely be a bottleneck as I assume the training time for each level would increase per level and the highest level trainers have limited time. And the highest level character in the setting would have to have earned the levels legitimately. Assuming there is a magic machine that turns gold into XP? Sky's the limit.

As far as gameplay is concerned, it would break the game. At higher levels you are expected to have proportionate gear. This system kills that assumption.

[Twurps]

maybe I'm missing something, but why would I ever want to pay to level up.

Isn't the normal trick (artificers like this one) to just do the opposite: stay a level behind and ride the XP river?
If I spend my wealth on leveling up, my DM has to 'up' the encounter difficulty and I find myself lacking the gear to deal with the encounter.