Another "What if?" thread: XP

[DanyBallon]

Disclaimer: the object of this thread is to have a discussion of an hypothetical scenario. It's not a thread looking to find a fix to a problem or to implement an houserule. It's just a thread to talk about the impact of the proposed scenario

This week in the "Another What if? thread" series, I'd like us to talk with XP. Again two independent scenarii that can work together.

1) What if xp chart were different from class to class, or from a group of classes to another (warrior, skill monkeys, divine and arcane)?

2) What if in addition to xp awarded for defeating a foe, classes could get xp for thing related to their classes (i.e. researching a spell, finding gold, etc.)


I'd like us to debate on the benefits and problems that could come from using each scenario.

[Unoriginal]

1) What if xp chart were different from class to class, or from a group of classes to another (warrior, skill monkeys, divine and arcane)?

Pretty sure in one of the early edition the spellcaster and the fighting man didn't have the same XP charts, with the Wizard requiring more XP to level up.


The problem with this approach is that it makes the concept of "level" nebulous at best, and make coordinating groups by power way harder.



2) What if in addition to xp awarded for defeating a foe, classes could get xp for thing related to their classes (i.e. researching a spell, finding gold, etc.)

Err... many DM already do that? Pretty sure the books suggest doing it, too. XP is for accomplishing things, not for defeating foes only.

Although, you don't get XP for downtime activities.

[DanyBallon]

As far as I'm concerned, scenario 1 would lead to more problem than benefits, as it will add unneeded complexity to the game. The only benefit I see is that if magic-users had a slower xp progression, then their high level spell would come up a bit later thus granting mundane more time to shine. But that's pretty much all the benefits and it won't be for many people.

scenario 2 on the other hand could help the other pillar to shine a bit more as XP won't be so focused on defeating enemies. It still add layers of complexity that may not be needed.

[DanyBallon]

Pretty sure in one of the early edition the spellcaster and the fighting man didn't have the same XP charts, with the Wizard requiring more XP to level up.


The problem with this approach is that it makes the concept of "level" nebulous at best, and make coordinating groups by power way harder.



Err... many DM already do that? Pretty sure the books suggest doing it, too. XP is for accomplishing things, not for defeating foes only.

Although, you don't get XP for downtime activities.

You're right, both scenario take inspiration from the way 2e XP worked.

As for scenario 2, warrior type were award 10 XP/HD for defeating foe, Rogues only 5. Wizard got 500xp/spell level for researching a new spell, cleric that were casting a spell that help promote their faith had bonusxp as well, etc.

All those bonus XP were in addition to XP awarded for defeating foe, and for roleplaying.

I don't think going into such detail would be for the best, but adding some other incentative to use your character features could help both the exploration and roleplaying aspect of the game.

[Mhl7]

Maybe it is a little offtopic, but I would add a third possibility:

3) what if we remove XP entirely and we let the player level up when the DM wants to? (for instance after a quest or a story arch)

That's already what I do.

PRO:
- less stuff to keep truck
- players don't try to overdo stuff just to gain more XP, for instance when they are beyond in XP (it happens)
- players don't complain that the XP reward seems unfair
- don't need to rescale encounters, because players leveled up faster/slower than expected
- DM cannot bully under the threat of giving less XP

CON:
- doesn't satisfy nostalgic people

Back on topic. The major impacts of your proposed scenario, IMO are:
- players doing stuff just to get more XP is no fun
- a less creative player or a shy one, or simply one with less system knowledge, may very well fall beyond in XP
- a lot of stuff to keep track of
- the need of appropriate guidelines to implement it. How much XP is the research of a new spell worth? How do you balance it against a non caster? ecc..

[Sirdar]

1. This would only make sense if you deliberately design classes that have different power curves or need to fix broken classes.

2. Wouldn't that just encourage you into playing your character in a stereotypical way?

[Naanomi]

Different EXP charts was a bit of a disaster when it existed; I remember the party rogue being almost double the level of the party wizard; it made the whole system rather meaningless. Splitting up classes into comparable 'chunks' was one of the most appreciated things on my move from 2e to 3e (along with standardizing the saving-throw system)

[DanyBallon]

Different EXP charts was a bit of a disaster when it existed; I remember the party rogue being almost double the level of the party wizard; it made the whole system rather meaningless.

You're absolutely right, but having wizard leveling more slowly had the advantage that the world changing spells came up much later. When transitioning from 2e to 3e, those spells kept the same spell level and somehow helped to enforce the God wizards problem.

[Corsair14]

Nowadays my group doesn't even use XP, levels go up based on where we are in the adventure. Back in 2nd ed when exp charts were different a rogue hit level 2 at 1200xp and a wizard I think at 3000. I believe the rogue would be almost level 3 at that point. I don't think any of us saw it badly, it just reflected wizardry being a harder field to master took longer than a rogue. It did level out after that from what I remember and they sort of came up even around 5 or 6 as the rogue began to slow down a lot. There was no imbalance as the whole encounter rating thing didn't exist.

[Naanomi]

You're absolutely right, but having wizard leveling more slowly had the advantage that the world changing spells came up much later. When transitioning from 2e to 3e, those spells kept the same spell level and somehow helped to enforce the God wizards problem.
To a degree; but the 'linear warrior, quadratic wizard' problem has always been at play

[sir_argo]

Maybe it is a little offtopic, but I would add a third possibility:

3) what if we remove XP entirely and we let the player level up when the DM wants to? (for instance after a quest or a story arch)

That's already what I do.

PRO:
- less stuff to keep truck
- players don't try to overdo stuff just to gain more XP, for instance when they are beyond in XP (it happens)
- players don't complain that the XP reward seems unfair
- don't need to rescale encounters, because players leveled up faster/slower than expected
- DM cannot bully under the threat of giving less XP

CON:
- doesn't satisfy nostalgic people

Back on topic. The major impacts of your proposed scenario, IMO are:
- players doing stuff just to get more XP is no fun
- a less creative player or a shy one, or simply one with less system knowledge, may very well fall beyond in XP
- a lot of stuff to keep track of
- the need of appropriate guidelines to implement it. How much XP is the research of a new spell worth? How do you balance it against a non caster? ecc..

I think that's called Milestone XP. That's what my group uses for all the reasons above, plus "- players who cannot make it to a session don't fall behind."

[Mhl7]

I think that's called Milestone XP. That's what my group uses for all the reasons above, plus "- players who cannot make it to a session don't fall behind."

Yeah, it is called like that.

Actually, once I had a player who missed the two sessions in which they where at 2nd level. When he came back they where already 3rd. Using this system, he was allowed to level up and catch up with the rest of the group, but he decided to play 2nd level just for that session. You never know what to expect from players.. :)

[DanyBallon]

Yeah, it is called like that.

Actually, once I had a player who missed the two sessions in which they where at 2nd level. When he came back they where already 3rd. Using this system, he was allowed to level up and catch up with the rest of the group, but he decided to play 2nd level just for that session. You never know what to expect from players.. :)

While not always using Milestone leveling, we try to keep all players xp the same even when the miss a session or two. We just pretend that the character was still with the party. It's easier to do it this way that to pretend the character being gone when in game time, he was there 5 minutes ago (a single day of adventuring often takes us many sessions as we can't gather IRL for more than an hour or two at a time...)

[Sir cryosin]

I really find 1. Off putting because balanced martial classes and caster's. Now caster's still get to play God at top tier levels. But martials are war machines and when you play a martial that's what you want to play. Another thing about 1. Is since 5e is leveled caped at 20 a fighter is sitting at 20 not gaining anything while waiting for the wizard to catch up. Also how would this effect mc builds. If you mc with a class the levels faster things like cantrips get a power boosted expecially Eldritch blast. Also we have a character level and not just fighter lv5 and wiz lv2.

Now as a DM I don't give my PC's XP. What I do is I let them know when they can level up. Then they must spend down time to train I use the level table in dmg to determine how long and how much more y it take to train to gain a level. I also allow them to do other downtime activities along with training. I'm trying this out because I never see party's​ take any down time. And training makes more sense to me then oh after killing that orc I know how to fly. This give a more realistic approached to haveing new abilities. That wizard spend days locked in his room pouring out books writing equations in enchantments then testing them out to perfect them. The fighter gets up early ever morning practicing this new move to profect it. Cleric spending time praying to her God preforming religious rituals. Ect.

[Steampunkette]

Problems:

It will encourage players to play characters with the smaller leveling curve. Most people enjoy leveling up and gaining more power, it's part of why D&D is built on power fantasy. By putting the carrot further out of reach, more players will give up on it.

Multiclassing will become a rock solid nightmare. When you're a 13th level fighter and take level 1 of Wizard do you have to wait for the XP total of a level 14 wizard for level 1 wizard power? Do you get enough XP to be a level 14 fighter before taking the first level of wizard? Or do you need a thousand or so points (enough to get from level 1 to level 2) and then you just jump on over to the Wizard ship? Regardless of the method you choose there are going to be severe issues, particularly in book-keeping.

Benefits:

Fighters feel better about themselves on the battlefield as their allies struggle to lug their homework around.



If you're worried about the Quadratic Wizard a far better idea is to remove or severely curtail the big spells that create the disparity. Yes, Wish is powerful. Make it impossible to cast outside of an hour long ritual with at least 10 participants and the main caster (The Wizard) has to sacrifice the 9th level spell slot at the start of the ritual. Force everyone involved to roll a group arcana check DC 15-18 to correctly perform the ritual.

Do similar things with Simulacrum and other spells that break the boundaries of the game by creating Wish-Loops or whatever.

[DanyBallon]

I completely forgot about the effects on multiclassing :smalleek:

I don't think reverting to multiclassing the way it was in 2e would be the best idea. Maybe just let the character need the experience needed for the next level in the class you want to level up with a hard cap on the total level you can reach.

As for people wanting to play faster leveling classes or sitting at 20th level waiting for the wizard, it wasn't really an issue back then so I never though it would be a problem, but thanks for pointing it out.

[Steampunkette]

Okay... So let's go with "XP needed to level into the second class"

Let's assume the XP curve is maintained for fighters at it's current level for the sake of argument and we call the XP requirement from level 1 to 2 to be the same as the XP requirement to get to level 1.

The XP to go from level 8 to level 9 is 8,000XP.

A party of 4 fighters gets to level 9. 3 of the fighters level up to 9th level.

The 4th fighter spends those 8,000XP getting one level of Rogue, Barbarian, Paladin, Sorcerer, Wizard, Druid, Cleric, and a level of Bard.

He now has 16 Hit Dice and spellcasting as a 6th level caster (Spell-slots, at least), 2 first level slots that recover on a short rest, rage, sneak attack, and a whole hell of a lot of 1st level spells and cantrips to upcast.

There's no way to do it without multiclassing feeling crappy.

[DanyBallon]

Okay... So let's go with "XP needed to level into the second class"

Let's assume the XP curve is maintained for fighters at it's current level for the sake of argument and we call the XP requirement from level 1 to 2 to be the same as the XP requirement to get to level 1.

The XP to go from level 8 to level 9 is 8,000XP.

A party of 4 fighters gets to level 9. 3 of the fighters level up to 9th level.

The 4th fighter spends those 8,000XP getting one level of Rogue, Barbarian, Paladin, Sorcerer, Wizard, Druid, Cleric, and a level of Bard.

He now has 16 Hit Dice and spellcasting as a 6th level caster (Spell-slots, at least), 2 first level slots that recover on a short rest, rage, sneak attack, and a whole hell of a lot of 1st level spells and cantrips to upcast.

There's no way to do it without multiclassing feeling crappy.

You have a point. In order to work multiclassing would need to be limited to a small number of classes (2 or 3 max) and 5e classes are too much front-loaded in the first few level to work well with multiclassing requiring only the XP needed for leveling up in the new class.

[Naanomi]

You have a point. In order to work multiclassing would need to be limited to a small number of classes (2 or 3 max) and 5e classes are too much front-loaded in the first few level to work well with multiclassing requiring only the XP needed for leveling up in the new class.
That is how dual-classing used to work in 2e, that most of the time you were just looking for a few key abilities in one class before switching to your 'real' class; especially with Kits when they were a thing

[DanyBallon]

That is how dual-classing used to work in 2e, that most of the time you were just looking for a few key abilities in one class before switching to your 'real' class; especially with Kits when they were a thing

Dual-classing was even more restrictive in the fact that you couldn't use your previous class features until your new class was one level higher than the previous, otherwise, if you used your previous class feature you wouldn't gain any XP. On top of that once you choose to dual-class you wou couldn't never again level up in you previous class... and it was restricted to human. Multiclass was for non-human and were set with specific class combinaison and you had to divided your experience point evenly between all your classes.

Those restriction is why I don't think we should use 2e multiclassing. But as Steampunkette pointed out, scenario 1 isn't well suited for 5e using the actual classes and multiclassing.

[Ruslan]

Disclaimer: the object of this thread is to have a discussion of an hypothetical scenario. It's not a thread looking to find a fix to a problem or to implement an houserule. It's just a thread to talk about the impact of the proposed scenario

This week in the "Another What if? thread" series, I'd like us to talk with XP. Again two independent scenarii that can work together.

1) What if xp chart were different from class to class, or from a group of classes to another (warrior, skill monkeys, divine and arcane)?

This is actually the default in 1E and 2E. Only starting from 3E, the XP charts are the same for all classes.
I kind of like it the old way - it gives another knob to balance the classes (if a class is weak, designers can just reduce the XP requirements for leveling up, and vice versa)


The problem with this approach is that it makes the concept of "level" nebulous at best, and make coordinating groups by power way harder. Not really. It's just that instead of telling a new player "our party is level 7, so your have to bring in a character of this level", you get "our PCs have 60,000 XP, so make a character with this much XP".

[Saeviomage]

The main problem with asymmetric xp is that it makes the concept of 'level' less useful. You can't use it as a yardstick of how powerful a character is, because the game has been explicitly designed with the idea that it isn't a measure of that. So what purpose does it serve?

[Naanomi]

Unless I am missing something, the only Dual-Class character I remember in all my 1e-2e days was someone who rolled really well, and wanted one level in Bard before dualclassing into... a specialty priest of some kind... because they wanted the Jester Kit bonuses

[Dracul3S]

1) No. Different charts never worked out. It did NOT help balancing the system. Did anyone actually enjoy it ? No one I played with did.

2) It already works like that? Never even heard of only giving/getting xp for combat.

[DanyBallon]

The main problem with asymmetric xp is that it makes the concept of 'level' less useful. You can't use it as a yardstick of how powerful a character is, because the game has been explicitly designed with the idea that it isn't a measure of that. So what purpose does it serve?

Not to disrespect you, but I find this argument kinda funny as for a large part of D&D history, it worked this way and no one ever complained. The concept of level allows the characters to get new abilities when they reach a certain treshold. In fact in the early iteration of the game, you weren't actually gaining level as much as getting an new title. And with this new title you got new powers.
Also even in the actual edition there is disparencies between to character of the same level.

[DanyBallon]

Unless I am missing something, the only Dual-Class character I remember in all my 1e-2e days was someone who rolled really well, and wanted one level in Bard before dualclassing into... a specialty priest of some kind... because they wanted the Jester Kit bonuses

I don't remember the jester kit, but as for myself, I've seen quite a few fighter mage (for the extra HP and sword proficiency). But let's admit it, it sucks to be a fighter 3/wizard x<4 when you are facing harder and harder challenge :smallbiggrin: