alternate XP award curves

[Elves]

As for me? No. I think level ups are far too slow, not too fast.

This isn't about whether leveling is too slow or fast in itself. It's easy enough to proportionally adjust XP rate. What I'm saying is I think the CR vs ECL curve is too steep, especially at high levels and for optimized parties.

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Rereading 3), the problem with it is PCs who are one or two levels behind the others get screwed if the APL is lowered by lots of hirelings or mooks. So using APL doesn't work.

How about ECL/TPL*(300 ± x for every level by which CR exceeds or deceeds ECL)*EPL.

That's better but still has the problem of a much slower catchup rate than the default XP table.

To solve that it seems like x needs to be higher for CR>ECL than ECL>CR.

Maybe +100 per level by which CR>ECL (max 1000) [so max reward is 3.33x CR=ECL] but only -50 per level by which ECL>CR (min 1).
Or +75/-37.5.
Or +100/-37.5 (max 1000 min 0).