XP/life force as money

[Club Sandwich]

So I'll try to keep this short, I'm basically looking for insights/suggestions/problems with running a different money system in 5e.

I'm going to be running a game that takes place in Hell. It's more or less the nine hells that we're all familiar with, minus some modifications. The biggest modification is a gameplay element which I'd like to introduce in which experience points are basically interchangeable with cash.

The idea is that Hell's economy is based on a thing that Devils call the Exchange. All beings have life force, which usually dissipates into their home plane upon death. However, those of a religious bent basically dedicate their souls to a deity/devil, meaning that the soul appears in that deity/devil's realm post-mortem. The deity will then either consume the soul, or let the soul exist as a subject. This is basically a scheme by Asmodeus to encourage his devilish minions to corrupt as many souls as possible via market capitalism. The life force that a creature gains through this absorption of a soul is represented through xp, so the more life force a creature absorbs, the more powerful it becomes. This leads to all denizens of the Hells (being the power-craving creatures that they are) basically using souls/life force as a currency. He who makes the most money becomes the king kind of thing.

My plan is to give each player a starting pool of xp, say 20-50 at first level for pocket money (not sure how much cash each xp will be worth yet. 2gp? 1gp?), then give them the option to 'spend' their xp on a level when they reach the requirements (300xp for level 2), or to save the xp to use on something else. I'll give an example of the system in action:
Flynn the fighter is level 1 with 250xp. He wins a fight against a coupla goblins and now has 350xp. He decides to spend the xp to level himself up, so now he's a lvl 2 fighter with 50xp. To level up again he'll need 600xp (since that's the xp difference between 1st and 2nd level). He decides that he needs some bolts for his crossbow and finds a dingy blacksmith on a street corner in the iron city of Dis. He pays 5xp for the bolts (the flavour would be something like "he plonks the bolts on the counter and with a curved dagger slices his hand, dripping bright droplets of blood into the smirking shopkeep's waiting palm"). He is now a lvl 2 fighter with 45xp.
And so on. I also think it would be good to have physical tokens minted by the Fiendish bureaucracy that represent 1xp. Players can exchange them for xp and vice versa at central banks throughout the nine layers.

Okay let's hope that sleep-deprived scrawl made any sense. I know it's similar to 1st ed. gp = xp rules, but I think the flavour is different enough to merit its own thread.

[nickl_2000]

One of the biggest losers in this scheme is Wizards, those that take Ritual Caster, and those that want to buy full plate. Given the cost of scribing new spells into spells book or Ritual Book, they will majorly lag behind other classes in terms of levels.


The biggest winner in everything is going to be the Monk, they need to buy pretty much nothing. That class will end up WAY ahead of others in terms of experience. You will have to be really careful if you do this to keep the play style fair.

[Mordrigar]

In 3.5 edition 1 xp = 5 gp

But they changed both economics and xp rates.
In 3.5,
XP needed for level up= your current level x 1000
Also, if your ECL is higher than monsters CR, you don't get any xp. Which means, on level 19 killing 100 Goblins won't help you levelling.

In 5th edition level up xp doesn't follow any mathematical rule and you get fixed amount of xp whenever you kill a monster. Getting XP is easier and I believe you need less experience than 3.5. So XP is "cheaper" and lost its value in 5th edition.

Also "Blood War" has ended and armies of Hell and Abyss don't have to spend their savings. That's another reason for "XP prices" to go down.

Make it 4 Gold = 1 XP and have your own reasons :p

Besides, having a research or completing one is a big experince for any caster. Let the wizard choose a topic for himself/herself and roll some knowledge die on downtime. When you feel like they're lagging behind let him/her complete the research and gain "Research XP" as a bonus.

[Innocent_bystan]

The idea kind of reminds me of the movie 'In time' with Justin Timberlake. In short: the time you have left to live is used as a currency. Every person has a digital watch in their wrist which counts down to your death.

Things to potentially steal from the movie:

Moving between zones costs an increasing amount of time, thus ensuring a caste based system.
Time can be forcefully taken from a person.
When you kill someone, all their time is gone.
Time can be stored in vaults. Stored time is a sign of status.
Rich people are the only ones that can afford to be lazy. Being lazy is a mark of status.


Another thing that popped into my head is the novel Warbreaker, by Sanderson. In the novel everyone has 1 Breath, the equivalent of soul or life force. You can give your Breath away then you become a colorless depressed person called a drab. People with more than 1 Breath are able to perform magic. The more Breath, the more powerful they become. You could tie proficiency bonus to the amount of Breath they store.
Work out some table a la : 0 -> +0, 1 -> +1, 2 -> +2, 5 -> +3, 25 -> +4, 100 -> +5, 500 -> +6 and you have a direct link between Breath and Power level.

[Vogie]

You may want to expand the ability of PCs to purchase things as they get higher up. As they're in hell, they may also be able to give other parts of their character away - Memories, background, skills, training, sanity, et cetera - to exchange for skills. Basically, they can trade away their humanity for power, so they're encouraged to set themselves up to lose.

This way you can tap into "equivalent exchange" and "crippling overspecialization" tropes. It is Hell, after all.

This is seen in a few other mediums. The Dresden Files novel Ghost Story has the concept that you can turn your good memories into spells and ammunition, allowing you to do fantastic things... but at what cost? The podcast Cthulhu and Friends has their characters have a sanity stat, and those that go insane turn in their character sheets to the DM and become an NPC.

[Anonymouswizard]

I'm honestly doing this in the RPG I'm building (the one that isn't a 5e hack), there is no money or experience points in the standard sense. Instead characters have a Resources value that represents everything from who owes you favours to how much money and free time you have. Permanent improvements (new skills or non consumable items) cost points of Resources, one-shot items require a resources check and eventually vanish as the character decides they don't need it anymore.

But the point is that I've designed the system around this Resources value (apart from the short while it only served as an abstract wealth system). There is a benefit to buying skills and equipment, and a benefit not to (you eventually get to the point where you can buy 50 healing potions almost at will). Everybody is impacted the same, buying new spells or combat techniques costs points, as does buying thieves tools or rope. There's no unexpected consequence where monks level faster because they don't need armour.

[Provo]

Awesome idea! I want to play in a game like this now.

Here are my thoughts:
-At low levels mundane items should feel expensive. Keep xp at a 1 for 1 or 2 for 1 exchange. If you do 4 or 5, then pretty much everything but Platemail has a negligible cost from lvl 1.

-Merchants should price gouge the players. Make everything cost extra unless the players put work into finding a good price.

-You will need to set prices for magic item. Decide what level players should be able to afford uncommon, rare, etc. items and make the price half or two-thirds of the exp needed to level up.

-even in hell, merchants should have a limited selection. Roll several times on magic item tables to see wheats available. If the players are looking for something specific, make it a side quest to find.

-award extra XP so the game still progresses at the same pace.

[Joe the Rat]

Beware Barter.

When you kill things and take their stuff, you will have stuff to trade. Does that mean you can sell a stack of Iron Knives and level up? Why risk your own essence when you can offer up something else more readily traded, without that tedious cutting yourself open to let the iliaster flow?

Combining some ideas and elements:
1) What you kill, you keep. That killing-stuff XP is literally absorbing the Essence of what you've downed. Maybe not all gets sucked in, and you probably want to blur that a bit (Being Hell, having a Contract between party members gives you a binding way to distribute XP to the party as a whole.)

2) Less stabby storage mediums. Essences can vary by quality. You may be making a deal, and require a runner, but don't necessarily want a lower-class devil to carry that internally and get its funk all over your soul. Storing XP externally (in some type of crystal or weird magical container) should be a possibility, albeit not necessarily a common one. As an odd angle, living creatures make a good form of exchange. Minor, tiny CR-0 devils (like fiendish scorpions or hellbeetles) that are worth 0 or 10xp in a fight... and trade as 10xp. A truly wealthy being is a "Lord of the Flies," owing to the large number of 10xp insects swarming around them.

3) Barter for common goods. Since you aren't turning souls into bricks and ash trays, materials will have use and value. The aforementioned stack of daggers should be a viable option... though in proper hell fashion, unless you have a buyer (and they aren't appropriated by the local army for "defense of the layer,"), you may only get raw material value. You give me that 10lb stack of crappy iron daggers, and I'll give you one good one.

[Provo]

Off topic, but will this campaign allow for any travel outside of hell?

I was thinking that the characters could try to escape only to find that they can't stay away.

They are no longer native to the Material Plane, and they would gain exhaustion levels for every day they are out of hell. When they die of exhaustion they wake up in hell (with an experience penalty).

On top of that, spells such as "protection from good and evil" and "banishment" now work against them.

[Spiritchaser]

This makes me think of dark souls 3

[Mith]

Things I would probably change with such a system (they might not be good changes, just what comes to mind):

- I would like to do 1 GP = 1 XP, but I would probably have to adjust the experience tables to do this. Perhaps 25 XP = 1 GP might be better, although I might still halve the XP gain from combat. Robbing people still gives straight value.

- I would give every character a totem that allows them to extract XP from themselves to create currency. I am reminded of the soul currency from earlier editions (can't find a source of what the coinage actually was called). This can work as a bounty system where the bodies dissolve into the plane, leaving behind items and and the totem, which is used for verification. A slain creature's vitality is drained from the creatures totem to the one that killed them. I would set up a Session 1 party charter that allows for sharing of XP between teamwork to drive home the contract nature of the setting, and to minimize XP hogging and kill stealing leading to PvP problems.

- I would incorporate any spellbooks to the personal totem, since spells become more costly to wizards. And every spell becomes a bargaining chip worth the XP cost of the spell. Perhaps one could get rid of material component costs and just make all magic an XP cost. While that could be a penalty to casters, perhaps they can sometimes inflict the XP cost to the target, so Raise Dead costs the target the cost of a diamond. Perhaps the group charter allows for an XP tithe to go into reserve for spell component fuel.

[LordEntrails]

Is XP a closed loop system? Can XP be created or only taken from another (i.e. killing/draining it). Can you get XP for a story award? Or only for killing things?

If so, role-play will be of little value and murder-hoboism at it's height.

[Laserlight]

Max Gladstone's Craft Sequence books use bits of your soul as the medium of exchange. As I recall, if you go bankrupt, you might become a zombie.

[Vogie]

-At low levels mundane items should feel expensive.

-Merchants should price gouge the players. Make everything cost extra unless the players put work into finding a good price.

-You will need to set prices for magic item. Decide what level players should be able to afford uncommon, rare, etc. items and make the price half or two-thirds of the exp needed to level up.

I like some of these ideas. Make all salesmen are Used item salesmen. It is Hell, after all, so the fact that the "stay in town" aspects are equally aggravating is par for the course.

You could even use some sort of fame/infamy or reputation system to give to the PCs an option to make things cheaper.

Also, since it's hell, a "soul" super-currency could also be in order. PCs wouldn't be getting them all the time, and can't use it themselves (as they're soulless beings), but they could effectively be the currency that the overlords accept or recognize.

If you want to make thing more straightforward for spellcasters is by removing the "book" component of the caster, and turn all spells and abilities into stones or gems, similar to what is done in the dungeon-crawler Path of Exile. Equipped/prepared spell gems could be embedded in the skin, or floating around the caster's head in style like ioun stones or Invoker from DotA/Zenyatta from Overwatch/Halo from GrrlPower. That way the spells can be bartered for just like any other object.

[Club Sandwich]

You could even use some sort of fame/infamy or reputation system to give to the PCs an option to make things cheaper.


Actually yes. Because in absorbing life force, you're absorbing a creature's essence, it makes sense that the more infamous you are, the more a "piece of you" will be worth to the demons. I like this!

[Club Sandwich]

Off topic, but will this campaign allow for any travel outside of hell?

Ish. This is the continuation of a campaign I ran with this group a year ago. It ended with them basically causing the rapture - i.e. they ruptured the barriers between the material plane and the first of the seven heavens, essentially fusing the two planes. Every non-good being was then systematically purged by the angels, either killed or banished to the first layer of hell. This story is taking place about a year later after things start to cool down.

[Club Sandwich]

Is XP a closed loop system? Can XP be created or only taken from another (i.e. killing/draining it). Can you get XP for a story award? Or only for killing things?

If so, role-play will be of little value and murder-hoboism at it's height.

Yeah that's the key problem I've identified to be honest. I'm trying to figure out things like rewarding roleplaying in other ways (alliances etc.), or maybe the player's patron rewards them for making alliances and spreading their influence?

Ideas are welcome!

[Provo]

Yeah that's the key problem I've identified to be honest. I'm trying to figure out things like rewarding roleplaying in other ways (alliances etc.), or maybe the player's patron rewards them for making alliances and spreading their influence?

Ideas are welcome!

Well you could let xp represent both personal growth AND stolen life force. That could be why devils are so interested in people. Only mortals have the Capacity for spiritual growth.

So give xp for the RP encounters and the combat encounters

[Club Sandwich]

Well you could let xp represent both personal growth AND stolen life force. That could be why devils are so interested in people. Only mortals have the Capacity for spiritual growth.

So give xp for the RP encounters and the combat encounters

THIS is why I love giantitp! Great idea!! I'm gonna yoink that...

[MrBig]

In the real of economics, Adam Smith's "The Wealth of Nations" changed early industrial thinking about how economies work. They used to believe that the wealth of a nation was measured by how much gold they had sitting in the bank.
Smith argued that wealth isn't about your static assets, but rather, about how much you could *produce*.

e.g. if you had better factories and cheaper production than other countries, you'd be better off. This was pretty revolutionary at the time, and shifted how economists fundamentally thought about their field.

So, what if we don't think of souls as 'static assets'. e.g. instead of having a soul be a fixed bag of wealth, what if it's a _producer_ of wealth. e.g. generates a small, but steady stream of wealth over time.

Then, you would be incentivized to collect followers/worshipers.
In feudal times, having followers / subjects meant that they provided you with food, cattle, taxes.
In modern times, having money means that you can invest it, and it generates a return.
In your world, having followers can mean that they generate XP.

In terms of game mechanics, you could model this as : followers are semi-permanent XP.

So for example, commoners might be 10 XP. You convince 10 commoners to be your subjects, you now have 10x10=100XP. As long as they remain your loyal followers, and live in your town, you keep that 100 XP.

You go out and kill a dragon, it doesn't 'die'/vanish. Instead, you've proven your dominion over it, and you 'own' it. e.g. it becomes yours. Either it moves to territory you own, or you claim the territory that it previously owned. It's XP becomes part of your new base XP level.

As you grow more powerful, your territory grows, as does your number and type of followers. This makes you more powerful, but also makes you a bigger target. You need to defend your territory / assets. If someone else attacks and defeats a portion of your territory, you lose XP. So, if you expand too aggressively, you may not be able to defend your turf.

So, you need to play both offense and defense - both of which can be good plot hooks.

[Mith]

In the real of economics, Adam Smith's "The Wealth of Nations" changed early industrial thinking about how economies work. They used to believe that the wealth of a nation was measured by how much gold they had sitting in the bank.
Smith argued that wealth isn't about your static assets, but rather, about how much you could *produce*.

e.g. if you had better factories and cheaper production than other countries, you'd be better off. This was pretty revolutionary at the time, and shifted how economists fundamentally thought about their field.

So, what if we don't think of souls as 'static assets'. e.g. instead of having a soul be a fixed bag of wealth, what if it's a _producer_ of wealth. e.g. generates a small, but steady stream of wealth over time.

Then, you would be incentivized to collect followers/worshipers.
In feudal times, having followers / subjects meant that they provided you with food, cattle, taxes.
In modern times, having money means that you can invest it, and it generates a return.
In your world, having followers can mean that they generate XP.

In terms of game mechanics, you could model this as : followers are semi-permanent XP.

So for example, commoners might be 10 XP. You convince 10 commoners to be your subjects, you now have 10x10=100XP. As long as they remain your loyal followers, and live in your town, you keep that 100 XP.

You go out and kill a dragon, it doesn't 'die'/vanish. Instead, you've proven your dominion over it, and you 'own' it. e.g. it becomes yours. Either it moves to territory you own, or you claim the territory that it previously owned. It's XP becomes part of your new base XP level.

As you grow more powerful, your territory grows, as does your number and type of followers. This makes you more powerful, but also makes you a bigger target. You need to defend your territory / assets. If someone else attacks and defeats a portion of your territory, you lose XP. So, if you expand too aggressively, you may not be able to defend your turf.

So, you need to play both offense and defense - both of which can be good plot hooks.

Correct me if I am wrong, but wasn't this concept part of the basis for "high level" D&D originally? It's when you switched from adventuring party to army level wargaming. The party members gained followers, with Fighters gaining the most.

[Club Sandwich]

So, what if we don't think of souls as 'static assets'. e.g. instead of having a soul be a fixed bag of wealth, what if it's a _producer_ of wealth. e.g. generates a small, but steady stream of wealth over time.


I do like this idea, but I don't think it's really necessary, in that characters with more xp/followers/cash will already have greater means to produce wealth. A high level character may still need to buy things with xp, but he also has access to more ways of gaining xp (killing stronger monsters, getting minions to do stuff for him, etc).

In more Smithsian terms, the accumulated capital is itself the means of production.

[GreyBlack]

Is it just me or is this literally Dark Souls?

[Anonymouswizard]

Is it just me or is this literally Dark Souls?

Kinda, what Souls in DS actually represent is a bit weird and unclear, even the weakest hollow is carrying twenty no matter how many hollows I've killed. Then you've got Humanity, which is implied to be the actual 'soul' of a human as it's what makes you not hollow, but any piece of humanity is as good as any other piece. Of course, it makes it easier if we assume all souls are not equal and that having a soul and not being hollow aren't the same thing, but then people seem to be able to split souls as needed (unless the merchants have a lot of low denomination souls sitting around to make change). Then the Great Souls are different to regular souls and give powers or something, there's some great lore in the series you could steal for a campaign (I suggest not keeping the hollow and bonfire bits, but everything else is ripe for the taking).

EDIT: but in the case of 'XP=money' yes, yes it is.