How do you use milestones for 3.5?

[Trandir]

In this edition exp is also a resource so the usual "ignore the exp" also cuts completely some parts of the game, including spells, LA buyoff, crafting and more.


So is it even possible to use the milestones in 3.5? If yes how do you do that?

[Kayblis]

It's entirely possible to use them, but you will have to tailor it to your group if you use rules that rely on XP.

Costs can be translated into gold at the standard 1xp=5gp rate you see in magic services. It's a good approximation, and lets people spend money to still use the effects they want. Crafting here lets you craft an item at 70% base price, the only real tradeoff is time. In my opinion, it's a fine exchange, because the player most likely had to take a feat to begin crafting magic items at all.

For LA Buyoff, it can be as simple as leveling someone at a different pace - but it's a rule that doesn't mesh well with milestone leveling, I'll give you that. You could apply the above conversion instead, and have the 'buyoff' be a ritual with expensive components the player can perform when they reach buyoff levels, to set them straight on the other players' progression. It's actually a good trade balance-wise, because you use a big chunk of the character's money to effectively gain a level.

[rrwoods]

My preferred approach is basically a hybrid approach: award XP arbitrarily, and adjust the amount awarded for a party member that is not the same level as the rest of the party.

When you start the campaign, this is trivially easy, since (probably) everyone is the same ECL. When you want your party to level, give them enough XP to level (plus a little bit, maybe 20% of what it takes to get to the level after, for crafting/spell resources). If this happens less than once a session (which is probably the case), award some arbitrary amount of XP that seems appropriate. Maybe, for example, your party just got level 3 last session and has 3600 XP currently. You're planning on levelling them again in 2 sessions, so you award 1,600 XP this session and 1,600 XP again next session, putting them at 6,800 after those two sessions.

During this process, you largely ignore the fact that the crafters/spellcasters start having a little or a lot less XP than the rest of the party. At some point, one of them will lag behind. When this happens, you determine the XP for the rest of the party first. Then, pretend like that amount was awarded for killing a monster and do a reverse lookup in the table in the DMG to figure out how much XP the "behind" party member should get. If that amount exceeds any of the values in the table for the modal party level (fairly likely if you award your XP in very large chunks), halve it (or cut it by 1/3, or 1/4, or whatever it takes to get a value in the range), do the reverse lookup, then double (or triple, or quadruple...) the result.

This *might* sound like a lot of work. But it's a ton less work than determining "real" XP, and it still allows people to spend XP without doing XP/money conversions (which I always found sort of dissatisfying).

[Pinkie Pyro]

I use milestone, I just ignore XP things. magic items and such don't require XP, LA buyoff has never come up because I just don't use LA, ect ect ect.