Bullet06320
2015-09-24, 03:41 AM
as originally posted on the WOTC boards by loneknife on Sept 1 2006
http://community.wizards.com/forum/previous-editions-character-optimization/threads/1077406
Experience is a River
CO is about exerting any numerical advantage possible. Often this is expressed by selection of classes, races, feats, skills and weapons among other things. How to maximize PA damage and take more attacks or actions per round. I see plenty of threads that deal with exploits of these mechanics, however I have yet to see one about exploiting raw experience one of the most fundamental and important mechanics of the game, and by the way a set of rules that is easily exploited.
Experience Rules DMG 37
Experience Table DMG 38
All other things being equal a character of lower level gains more experience than a higher level character for any given encounter. The assumtion is that the lower level character is weaker and needs more experience - the encounter was harder for him and he expended a greater number of resources. This lower level character's level will be adjusted over time to help him catch up to the higher level character. I call this Free Experience or the Experience River. Both characters were subjected to the same encounter but the lower level character got extra experience, Free Experience.
Suppose we can craft a character that although lower level is numerically superiour? Then the lower level character really is getting free experience, and the CO Gods smile upon us.
AH - a clear numerical advantage! How do we exploit it?
(NOTE the Experience River is dependent on your DM giving experience based on your actual level, not fixed experience or average party level (as mine does))
But Wait you have to be lower level to get that experience! That can't be worth it! (This is the CO boards... anything is possible. We shall at least consider the idea.) Fear not gentle reader! Read on.
Let us consider a Pc, Mildred the unfortunate, who through her adventuring career (levels 1-19) stays one level behind her companions
(1-20) and collects extra experience. How much extra does she gain over the party average?
For simplicity sake we are going to make the following assumption: all encounters are at the normal party level.
well here is my handy spread sheet
P level P_Exp 1 Factor M_Exp Free_Exp Tot_Exp Running_Exp
1 1000 1 1000 0 1000 1000
2 2000 1 2000 0 1000 2000
3 3000 1 3000 0 1000 3000
4 4000 1.13 4500 500 1500 4500
5 5000 1.07 5333.33 333.33 1333.33 5833.33
6 6000 1.25 7500 1500 2500 8333.33
7 7000 1.29 9000 2000 3000 11333.33
8 8000 1.31 10500 2500 3500 14833.33
9 9000 1.33 12000 3000 4000 18833.33
10 10000 1.35 13500 3500 4500 23333.33
11 11000 1.36 15000 4000 5000 28333.33
12 12000 1.38 16500 4500 5500 33833.33
13 13000 1.38 18000 5000 6000 39833.33
14 14000 1.39 19500 5500 6500 46333.33
15 15000 1.4 21000 6000 7000 53333.33
16 16000 1.41 22500 6500 7500 60833.33
17 17000 1.41 24000 7000 8000 68833.33
18 18000 1.42 25500 7500 8500 77333.33
19 19000 1.42 27000 8000 9000 86333.33
20 20000 1.43 28500 8500 9500 95833.33
Totals 210000 285833.33 75833.33 95833.33
Exp_Factor is how much more experience mildred earns on the experience gained. The extra experience a character earns for a Cr +1 encounter when her level is one lower than the party average.
M_Exp = P_Exp * Factor
Free_Exp = M_Exp - P_Exp (how much more exp you get than the party)
Tot_Exp = Free_Exp + 1000 (how much you have to spend to stay a whole level behind, note this is useless for levels 1-3 as there is no experience gain, might as well spend 4.5 exp at level 3 to stay there until the party advances to level 5 and you to level 4)
Running Exp = accumulation of Tot_Exp up to this level (like char wealth by level as opposed to expected wealth gain DMG 135 vs. DMG 54)
so by staying behind 1 level Mildred will earn ~ 75 k more experience than her companions. (she also needs to spend 20k to prevent premature leveling)
The Question then becomes: Is spending ~ 95k experience worth a level?
Or: Does spending the free Exp at any level justify the loss of the level?
Well it depends, on what you spend it on!!
Can you make up a caster level, HP, BAB, Saves, Class abilites, For one level with the given exp??
Well, gentle reader I beleive that you can.
As of now i see 2 ways to exploit the experience river - though CO regulars will no doubt find more.
1 Item Creation
2 Pcs with LA
I - Item Creation
P free gp Tot gp Running gp Char Wealth by level
1 0 12500 12500 0
2 0 12500 25000 900
3 0 12500 37500 2700
4 6250 18750 56250 5400
5 4166.67 16666.67 72916.67 9000
6 18750 31250 104166.67 13000
7 25000 37500 141666.67 19000
8 31250 43750 185416.67 27000
9 37500 50000 235416.67 36000
10 43750 56250 291666.67 49000
11 50000 62500 354166.67 66000
12 56250 68750 422916.67 88000
13 62500 75000 497916.67 110000
14 68750 81250 579166.67 150000
15 75000 87500 666666.67 200000
16 81250 93750 760416.67 260000
17 87500 100000 860416.67 340000
18 93750 106250 966666.67 440000
19 100000 112500 1079166.67 580000
20 106250 118750 1197916.67 760000
947916.67 1197916.67
Basically we are multiplying the table above by 12.5 to find out what the exp is worth
free gp = 12.5 * free
tot gp = 12.5 * tpt
Running gp = 12.5 * run
exp is worth 12.5 gp because you have to pay for materials, except for maybe the last time when you no longer need to seed the pot... but my mind is foggy if you figgure out what i mean and have a way of clearly saying it please feel free. oh, figgured it out basically char wealth by level is worth twice as much because you turn it into magic items, but any extra exp can be sold at 12.5 gp ...
So divide char wealth by level by 12.5 canabalize that much exp to make 2x char wealth by level stuff. then multiply the remaining gp by 12.5 for what you can create(unless you have an alternate $ source)
By level 19 you can gain 95k extra exp to spend. In order to burn all of this exp you can spend up to 2.4M gp and get 4.8 M gp worth of eq!
Of course you won't have 2.4 M to spend, but you can double your character wealth at any level by making magic items. I'll leave it to others to figgure out how far behind you would be if you only double your character wealth.
You can spend experience to make money as follows(depending on supply and demand):
let's say you have 1,200 exp to spend but only 10k gp. in order to spend the whole 1.2k exp you would need 30k gp and would get 60k gp worth of eq.
Turn your exp into cash:
take orders
spend 10k gp and 400 exp to make products
sell for 20000 gp
use 800 exp and 20k gp to make 40k worth of eq!
Perhaphs someone can recomend a money making thread or find a way to exploit hireling/henchmen/followers/nanobots so you don't have to expend exp, though you could do this with a simple craft feat and time(or a shop and employees).
mildred level 19 with 95k exp and 760k gp to spend goes to work and spends 760k on items for sale on the market. she spends 30.4k exp but gets 1.52 M to spend and still has 59.6 k exp to burn. spending the exp and money gets her ~ 1.49 M worth of eq and she has 30k yet to spend roughtly doubling her 20th level Char wealth. if however you can get 2.4M gp that's 4.8 M eq.
Now what about time frame? spending 96k exp at 40/day? 2396 days or 6.56 years of solid work. (great, a little bit closer to venerable!!)
Given: There is a bottle somewhere that stores EXP, so if you die after you are brough back to the same exp total(i think that's how it works)
Question: how many times to you have to kill yourself before you have enough $?
Now that you have unlimited wealth ...
II - Pcs with LA (or catching up)
UA has options to do a level buy out, trade out LA for EXP. Basically you are paying experience for even more free experience and taking some handy bonuses to boot.
Also you may want to catch up on experience and are wondering how long it will take.
The left column is the level at which you start catching up
The top row is over how many levels you catch up.
P 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
1 1 1 1 0.89 0.83 0.63 0.36 0.16 0.05 0.01
2 1 1 0.89 0.83 0.67 0.41 0.20 0.07 0.02 0
3 1 0.89 0.83 0.67 0.52 0.31 0.14 0.04 0.01 0
4 0.89 0.83 0.67 0.52 0.40 0.23 0.10 0.03 0.01 0
5 0.94 0.75 0.58 0.44 0.33 0.19 0.08 0.02 0 0
6 0.80 0.62 0.47 0.36 0.26 0.14 0.06 0.02 0 0
7 0.78 0.59 0.44 0.33 0.24 0.13 0.05 0.01 0 0
8 0.76 0.57 0.42 0.31 0.23 0.12 0.04 0.01 0 0
9 0.75 0.56 0.41 0.30 0.21 0.11 0.04 0.01 0 0
10 0.74 0.54 0.40 0.29 0.20 0.11 0.04 0.01 0 0
11 0.73 0.53 0.39 0.28 0.20 0.10 0.04 0.01 0 0
12 0.73 0.53 0.38 0.27 0.19 0.10 0.03 0.01 0
13 0.72 0.52 0.37 0.26 0.19 0.09 0.03 0.01
14 0.72 0.51 0.36 0.26 0.18 0.09 0.03
15 0.71 0.51 0.36 0.25 0.18 0.09
16 0.71 0.50 0.36 0.25 0.18
17 0.71 0.50 0.35 0.25
18 0.71 0.50 0.35
19 0.70 0.49
20 0.70
Say you are 3000 exp behind at level 4, how far behind will you be in 3 levels?
Go down to row 4 (4th level) intersect it with column 3 = .67
3000 * .67 ~ 2000 -- you'll be 2000 exp behind.
What about in 7 levels?
row 4, column 7 = .10 -- 3000 * .1 = about 300 exp behind at 10th level.
how about 3000 exp at level 3 and 6000 exp at level 6 what will things look like at level 10?
(3,7) .14*3000 = 420
(6,4) .36*6000 = 2160
= 2580
as above but level 12?
30 + 840 = 870
Observations on LA:
The more levels you take the closer you get to the party average.
The higher your level the faster you catch up.(which is interesting i think you need it more at lower levels)
CONCLUSION
Experience is a river. Now you have a paddle. Use it wisely! I believe that craft wonderous item is the best feat ever!
Know how long a LA will take you to pay off (great way to get free racial bonuses).
Tell your DM that instead of leveling to level 20 you want to have level to 19 and have infinite wealth. Except you can have infinte wealth before that and catch up to level 20, not that it will matter.
SO .. what can you do with double character wealth? How far behind does it really put you?
How many levels untill you get the +2 LA template for free?
ALSO
Experience MAY NOT BE a river in your campaign(if every one gets the same exp or it's not based on char level)
Showing this to your DM probably won't help. :P
You can sell your exp at market value for 12.5 gp/exp point with item creation feats, max 40 exp/day.
You can make 500 gp a day by spending 500 gp and 40 exp to make 1000 gp item taking out material costs leaves you with 500 gp.
You can by someone else's exp at 25 gp/exp on item creation (12.5 for their raw materials and 12.5 for experience)
Some may consider being more than 1 level behind, i am not going to address that, you have the tools to figgure it out.
If you know how to format tables easily let me know, that's a pain.
If my math is off(it may be in the gp tables or hard to read), but the concept is sound, that's fine with me.
If someone who is a better caretacker of a thread than i want's to take over that's fine with me.
Snow, I am taken so don't even ask. If there are any other brilliant women out there, same goes to you too. lol.
APPOLOGIES
My gramar, punctuation, spelling and even my math may be off.
Let me know and I will fix it at some point.
I may be breaking board rules by being too explicit with my numbers - i'll fix that immediately.
I am tired hope most of this makes sense.
It's my first post to the CO boards, please be gentle.
http://community.wizards.com/forum/previous-editions-character-optimization/threads/1077406
Experience is a River
CO is about exerting any numerical advantage possible. Often this is expressed by selection of classes, races, feats, skills and weapons among other things. How to maximize PA damage and take more attacks or actions per round. I see plenty of threads that deal with exploits of these mechanics, however I have yet to see one about exploiting raw experience one of the most fundamental and important mechanics of the game, and by the way a set of rules that is easily exploited.
Experience Rules DMG 37
Experience Table DMG 38
All other things being equal a character of lower level gains more experience than a higher level character for any given encounter. The assumtion is that the lower level character is weaker and needs more experience - the encounter was harder for him and he expended a greater number of resources. This lower level character's level will be adjusted over time to help him catch up to the higher level character. I call this Free Experience or the Experience River. Both characters were subjected to the same encounter but the lower level character got extra experience, Free Experience.
Suppose we can craft a character that although lower level is numerically superiour? Then the lower level character really is getting free experience, and the CO Gods smile upon us.
AH - a clear numerical advantage! How do we exploit it?
(NOTE the Experience River is dependent on your DM giving experience based on your actual level, not fixed experience or average party level (as mine does))
But Wait you have to be lower level to get that experience! That can't be worth it! (This is the CO boards... anything is possible. We shall at least consider the idea.) Fear not gentle reader! Read on.
Let us consider a Pc, Mildred the unfortunate, who through her adventuring career (levels 1-19) stays one level behind her companions
(1-20) and collects extra experience. How much extra does she gain over the party average?
For simplicity sake we are going to make the following assumption: all encounters are at the normal party level.
well here is my handy spread sheet
P level P_Exp 1 Factor M_Exp Free_Exp Tot_Exp Running_Exp
1 1000 1 1000 0 1000 1000
2 2000 1 2000 0 1000 2000
3 3000 1 3000 0 1000 3000
4 4000 1.13 4500 500 1500 4500
5 5000 1.07 5333.33 333.33 1333.33 5833.33
6 6000 1.25 7500 1500 2500 8333.33
7 7000 1.29 9000 2000 3000 11333.33
8 8000 1.31 10500 2500 3500 14833.33
9 9000 1.33 12000 3000 4000 18833.33
10 10000 1.35 13500 3500 4500 23333.33
11 11000 1.36 15000 4000 5000 28333.33
12 12000 1.38 16500 4500 5500 33833.33
13 13000 1.38 18000 5000 6000 39833.33
14 14000 1.39 19500 5500 6500 46333.33
15 15000 1.4 21000 6000 7000 53333.33
16 16000 1.41 22500 6500 7500 60833.33
17 17000 1.41 24000 7000 8000 68833.33
18 18000 1.42 25500 7500 8500 77333.33
19 19000 1.42 27000 8000 9000 86333.33
20 20000 1.43 28500 8500 9500 95833.33
Totals 210000 285833.33 75833.33 95833.33
Exp_Factor is how much more experience mildred earns on the experience gained. The extra experience a character earns for a Cr +1 encounter when her level is one lower than the party average.
M_Exp = P_Exp * Factor
Free_Exp = M_Exp - P_Exp (how much more exp you get than the party)
Tot_Exp = Free_Exp + 1000 (how much you have to spend to stay a whole level behind, note this is useless for levels 1-3 as there is no experience gain, might as well spend 4.5 exp at level 3 to stay there until the party advances to level 5 and you to level 4)
Running Exp = accumulation of Tot_Exp up to this level (like char wealth by level as opposed to expected wealth gain DMG 135 vs. DMG 54)
so by staying behind 1 level Mildred will earn ~ 75 k more experience than her companions. (she also needs to spend 20k to prevent premature leveling)
The Question then becomes: Is spending ~ 95k experience worth a level?
Or: Does spending the free Exp at any level justify the loss of the level?
Well it depends, on what you spend it on!!
Can you make up a caster level, HP, BAB, Saves, Class abilites, For one level with the given exp??
Well, gentle reader I beleive that you can.
As of now i see 2 ways to exploit the experience river - though CO regulars will no doubt find more.
1 Item Creation
2 Pcs with LA
I - Item Creation
P free gp Tot gp Running gp Char Wealth by level
1 0 12500 12500 0
2 0 12500 25000 900
3 0 12500 37500 2700
4 6250 18750 56250 5400
5 4166.67 16666.67 72916.67 9000
6 18750 31250 104166.67 13000
7 25000 37500 141666.67 19000
8 31250 43750 185416.67 27000
9 37500 50000 235416.67 36000
10 43750 56250 291666.67 49000
11 50000 62500 354166.67 66000
12 56250 68750 422916.67 88000
13 62500 75000 497916.67 110000
14 68750 81250 579166.67 150000
15 75000 87500 666666.67 200000
16 81250 93750 760416.67 260000
17 87500 100000 860416.67 340000
18 93750 106250 966666.67 440000
19 100000 112500 1079166.67 580000
20 106250 118750 1197916.67 760000
947916.67 1197916.67
Basically we are multiplying the table above by 12.5 to find out what the exp is worth
free gp = 12.5 * free
tot gp = 12.5 * tpt
Running gp = 12.5 * run
exp is worth 12.5 gp because you have to pay for materials, except for maybe the last time when you no longer need to seed the pot... but my mind is foggy if you figgure out what i mean and have a way of clearly saying it please feel free. oh, figgured it out basically char wealth by level is worth twice as much because you turn it into magic items, but any extra exp can be sold at 12.5 gp ...
So divide char wealth by level by 12.5 canabalize that much exp to make 2x char wealth by level stuff. then multiply the remaining gp by 12.5 for what you can create(unless you have an alternate $ source)
By level 19 you can gain 95k extra exp to spend. In order to burn all of this exp you can spend up to 2.4M gp and get 4.8 M gp worth of eq!
Of course you won't have 2.4 M to spend, but you can double your character wealth at any level by making magic items. I'll leave it to others to figgure out how far behind you would be if you only double your character wealth.
You can spend experience to make money as follows(depending on supply and demand):
let's say you have 1,200 exp to spend but only 10k gp. in order to spend the whole 1.2k exp you would need 30k gp and would get 60k gp worth of eq.
Turn your exp into cash:
take orders
spend 10k gp and 400 exp to make products
sell for 20000 gp
use 800 exp and 20k gp to make 40k worth of eq!
Perhaphs someone can recomend a money making thread or find a way to exploit hireling/henchmen/followers/nanobots so you don't have to expend exp, though you could do this with a simple craft feat and time(or a shop and employees).
mildred level 19 with 95k exp and 760k gp to spend goes to work and spends 760k on items for sale on the market. she spends 30.4k exp but gets 1.52 M to spend and still has 59.6 k exp to burn. spending the exp and money gets her ~ 1.49 M worth of eq and she has 30k yet to spend roughtly doubling her 20th level Char wealth. if however you can get 2.4M gp that's 4.8 M eq.
Now what about time frame? spending 96k exp at 40/day? 2396 days or 6.56 years of solid work. (great, a little bit closer to venerable!!)
Given: There is a bottle somewhere that stores EXP, so if you die after you are brough back to the same exp total(i think that's how it works)
Question: how many times to you have to kill yourself before you have enough $?
Now that you have unlimited wealth ...
II - Pcs with LA (or catching up)
UA has options to do a level buy out, trade out LA for EXP. Basically you are paying experience for even more free experience and taking some handy bonuses to boot.
Also you may want to catch up on experience and are wondering how long it will take.
The left column is the level at which you start catching up
The top row is over how many levels you catch up.
P 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
1 1 1 1 0.89 0.83 0.63 0.36 0.16 0.05 0.01
2 1 1 0.89 0.83 0.67 0.41 0.20 0.07 0.02 0
3 1 0.89 0.83 0.67 0.52 0.31 0.14 0.04 0.01 0
4 0.89 0.83 0.67 0.52 0.40 0.23 0.10 0.03 0.01 0
5 0.94 0.75 0.58 0.44 0.33 0.19 0.08 0.02 0 0
6 0.80 0.62 0.47 0.36 0.26 0.14 0.06 0.02 0 0
7 0.78 0.59 0.44 0.33 0.24 0.13 0.05 0.01 0 0
8 0.76 0.57 0.42 0.31 0.23 0.12 0.04 0.01 0 0
9 0.75 0.56 0.41 0.30 0.21 0.11 0.04 0.01 0 0
10 0.74 0.54 0.40 0.29 0.20 0.11 0.04 0.01 0 0
11 0.73 0.53 0.39 0.28 0.20 0.10 0.04 0.01 0 0
12 0.73 0.53 0.38 0.27 0.19 0.10 0.03 0.01 0
13 0.72 0.52 0.37 0.26 0.19 0.09 0.03 0.01
14 0.72 0.51 0.36 0.26 0.18 0.09 0.03
15 0.71 0.51 0.36 0.25 0.18 0.09
16 0.71 0.50 0.36 0.25 0.18
17 0.71 0.50 0.35 0.25
18 0.71 0.50 0.35
19 0.70 0.49
20 0.70
Say you are 3000 exp behind at level 4, how far behind will you be in 3 levels?
Go down to row 4 (4th level) intersect it with column 3 = .67
3000 * .67 ~ 2000 -- you'll be 2000 exp behind.
What about in 7 levels?
row 4, column 7 = .10 -- 3000 * .1 = about 300 exp behind at 10th level.
how about 3000 exp at level 3 and 6000 exp at level 6 what will things look like at level 10?
(3,7) .14*3000 = 420
(6,4) .36*6000 = 2160
= 2580
as above but level 12?
30 + 840 = 870
Observations on LA:
The more levels you take the closer you get to the party average.
The higher your level the faster you catch up.(which is interesting i think you need it more at lower levels)
CONCLUSION
Experience is a river. Now you have a paddle. Use it wisely! I believe that craft wonderous item is the best feat ever!
Know how long a LA will take you to pay off (great way to get free racial bonuses).
Tell your DM that instead of leveling to level 20 you want to have level to 19 and have infinite wealth. Except you can have infinte wealth before that and catch up to level 20, not that it will matter.
SO .. what can you do with double character wealth? How far behind does it really put you?
How many levels untill you get the +2 LA template for free?
ALSO
Experience MAY NOT BE a river in your campaign(if every one gets the same exp or it's not based on char level)
Showing this to your DM probably won't help. :P
You can sell your exp at market value for 12.5 gp/exp point with item creation feats, max 40 exp/day.
You can make 500 gp a day by spending 500 gp and 40 exp to make 1000 gp item taking out material costs leaves you with 500 gp.
You can by someone else's exp at 25 gp/exp on item creation (12.5 for their raw materials and 12.5 for experience)
Some may consider being more than 1 level behind, i am not going to address that, you have the tools to figgure it out.
If you know how to format tables easily let me know, that's a pain.
If my math is off(it may be in the gp tables or hard to read), but the concept is sound, that's fine with me.
If someone who is a better caretacker of a thread than i want's to take over that's fine with me.
Snow, I am taken so don't even ask. If there are any other brilliant women out there, same goes to you too. lol.
APPOLOGIES
My gramar, punctuation, spelling and even my math may be off.
Let me know and I will fix it at some point.
I may be breaking board rules by being too explicit with my numbers - i'll fix that immediately.
I am tired hope most of this makes sense.
It's my first post to the CO boards, please be gentle.