Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Smallinating Experience

(Yeah, I've been watching too much Phineas and Ferb with my kids lately)

Looking back at yesterday's post, something occurred to me.  In the standard version of Ye Auld Game, 1 gp = 1 XP, which requires you to collect an awful lot of XP to level up.  Thousands and tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands.  I must confess to never being crazy about the scale of the numbers.  I'm also not thrilled with the bean-counting on the preferred XP award scheme for monsters.

Now, I solved that later problem by going back to the original scheme of 100 XP/HD. And now I realize that if I keep all the XP awards in nice round numbers like that, I can smallinate (i.e. decrease) the awards and the requires by a factor of of 100!  It just requires one change to yesterday's scheme, which I was considering anyway:

Encountering a Monster for the 1st Time: 100 XP (instead of 50XP/HD + 50/special ability).

With that, and my already nicely-rounded advancement table from Empire of the Petal Throne, I can divide everything by 100.

Surviving in the Wilderness: 1 XP/day
Visiting A New Place: 1-10 XP depending upon difficulty and strangeness
Deciphering Artifacts: 1 XP base + additional 1 XP/difficulty modifier
Encountering a Monster for the 1st Time: 1 XP
Defeating Opponents: 1 XP/Hit Die + 1 XP/special ability
Defeating Sorcerous Item in Ego Struggle: 1 XP/item CHA
Mind-Altering Experience: 1-10 XP depending upon extent of alteration.

The advancement then goes:

Level 2: 20 XP
Level 3: 40 XP
Level 4: 80 XP
Level 5: 160 XP
etc.

5 comments:

  1. Interesting. I like the smaller numbers, though it does look like it would take a little more time in keeping track of the little things player's did to earm XP.

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  2. Although I do find the smaller number elegant, I'm also foaming with nerd rage about your deviations from somewhat baseline oldschool D&D rule...keep it intercompatible dammit! ;)

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  3. @Trey - maybe, although I foresee not having to work out how to split up the XP gained from 501 GP, 63 ep, 712 sp, and a bagful of coppers. That seems like more work to me.

    @Blair - see now, if you go calling something I do "elegant" , then there is no chance I'll change my mind. :) But, really, it is old-school (it's the EPT advancement table) simplified and divided by 10.

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  4. Although your small experience system is elegant, I find general compatibility with baseline D&D Elegant-er. ;)

    If it makes any sense, I just don't want any barriers to people using the Dying Sun setting (and the awesome exploration experience system) with a relatively vanilla version of D&D and simulacra?

    I'm probably overthinking things here..but it's because I care dammit! :)

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  5. I feel the love, man.

    I'm including a number of Designer's Note sections with options on making things more baseline. So I think I should include one on making the XP more normal. Good idea.

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