Alternate XP based on OD&D...

[Luther]

I have always been reluctant to mess with RAW, but I have to say that C&C has inspired the tinkerer in me. Not that the rules need extensive reworking, but they are just so flexible I can't help but experiment with different ideas before I start my fall game, regardless of whether or not I'll actually use them.

That said, I was looking through the OD&D booklets and I was reminded that the original way to award XP was to give the PCs 100xp per level of every monster they killed. Now, obviously this was A LOT and the Blackmoor supplement eventually went and prescribed the system that became the standard to this day, but it got me thinking of alternate XP schemes.

The three points to consider when thinking about awarding XP are:

1. The Speed of PC advancement

2. The actual worth of Monsters by Special Abilities/Danger they pose (a kobold with no special abilities vs. a spectre with Level Drain and Invulnerability to non-magic Weapons, for instance).

3. Potential XP from Treasure found with the beasties, which increases the actual worth of the monster indirectly.

Keeping these points in mind, here are there alternate XP systems I came up with:
1. OD&D Revised

For every monster 'defeated', you get their HDx50 in XP, divided amongst the party members. In practice this means that for cleaning out a minor cave system of a tribe of 30 dirt basic goblins, each member of the party will receive 375xp.

Monsters with special abilities will add their base experience again for each single ability (or per level of ability) or magic item (or per level of said item). So if the gobbo cavern had a gobbo that threw nets onto the party to entangle them, it would be worth 100xp. A Shaman who functioned as a 2nd level wizard would be worth 150xp and a Cheiftan with a magic dagger +2 and a Healing Potion would be worth 200xp.

Treasure would be worth 1xp/1gp worth recovered. Magic items are their own reward in this system, except when being used by a monster, in which they add to it's XP as noted above.

Additionally, there can be goals the characters must accomplish with an HD level similar to a monster and earning the same XP, with complications counting as Special Abilities.
2. The Session Reward

In this system, it isn't necessarily what the characters do that earns XP, but the fact that they do anything and learn from it. After all, we often learn more from our mistakes than our successes.

Mechanically, each player gains a set amount of experience for every play session of 3-4 hours. The amount is determined by the Highest level in the party:

Highest Level in the Party/ XP Per Session/ Levels Achieved (Paladin - Theif)

4 / 500xp /L3-4

6 / 1000xp /L5-6

9 / 5000xp /L7-9

11 / 10,000xp /L8-11

14 / 20,000xp /L10-14

19 / 30,000xp /L12-19

20+ /30k/ ~
3. The Flat Fee

The DM determines how many levels he wants the party to attain during an adventure and divides the XP needed for a Fighter to achieve the next level. He then divies it up based upon adventure milestones or goals and gives the players the set amount.

In the Keep on the Borderlands, for example, the game is meant to take characters to third level and there are a simple set of divisions based around caves divided into three levels, with the higher caves representing the higher levels of play.

Divide the number of caves on the bottom by the experience needed to get a Fighter to Level 2, perhaps weighting more of the the XP towards the Owlbear cave and less towards the goblin cave and award that amount when the PCs complete the cave in question. Do the same for Tier 2, aiming to bring a Fighter to level three and then the final tier should bring them to 4th.
PROS & CONS

Option 1 is easy to do on the fly (no charts to fiddle with) and maintains a moderate level of advancement. You could easily speed up or slow down advancement by doubling or halving the XP reward per HD. It lacks granularity, however, and at higher levels, some monsters special abilities (petrification, instant death, etc.) may seem worth a great deal more than the reward given, although I think it works out in the end and makes PCs think twice about fighting the more dangerous monsters.

If applied towards the Keep on the Borderlands, then the amount works out to be about right, with the PCs making it to 4th about the same place.

Option 2 works great in WFRP, although that is a flat session reward and different system of advancement. It has the great advantage of freeing the PCs up from attacking everything in site to get extra XPs and encourages them to act more realistically. Take an encounter with a Dragon in both games:

GM: A great red dragon rears up, flames spouting out of it's nostrils, it's screech rending the air.

C&C PCs: It wouldn't be here if we didn't have a least a chance of killing it. CHARGE!!!

WFRP PCs: ... [Cue sound of rapid footfalls as the PCs scatter for the hills]

It also encourages them to not haul off everything and the kitchen sink to get the last copper of value out of a session which makes them seem less like heroes and more like looters. When applied to the KotB module, which has always seemed to take about 6 sessions of adventuring to complete, the characters come out at about level 3 in the end, but the can come out with less or more depending on how active they are and how many combats they drag out or avoid.

Unfortunately, it also means that characters are less apt to do the heroic as they know that the rewards will be the same (although there are story related detriments to such behaviour) and it can completely derail an adventure when a party decides to go off and do something 'a little less dangerous' then to dive into a dark hole you spent a week mapping and populating.

Option 3 is obviously the most direct and easiest to apply to pre-existing modules. When applied to KotB, there is no conversion, just a simple divvy. Furthermore, you can control exactly how fast characters will advance, so you can use any module for any edition of D&D/C&C without fearing that while your party might make the requirements for the first part of the adventure, they might level up too fast/slow so that later parts of the module becomes a cakewalk/deathtrap.

Incidentally, I used this method for 3e when it came out, and it worked out pretty well until the hail of splatbooks a couple of years later.

I'm not altogether sure that there are any cons to this method outside of the rather subjective nature of goal/milestone driven xp. Maybe I'm just not seeing them.

Any opinions, folks...?

[Treebore]

I would go with option 1. That way when levelling slows down I could just up it from 50 to 100, or 200, etc...
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[Luther]

Treebore wrote:
I would go with option 1. That way when levelling slows down I could just up it from 50 to 100, or 200, etc...

It is by far the easiest to apply and modify on the fly, and the one I lean towards the most. The biggest problem is converting modules from other editions that might not match your games XP system (one for Levels 6-9 that actually only offers enough XP in your system to take the PCs to 7, for instance), and I think this one is flexible enough to accomodate that, but I'm more inclined to use Option 3 to make absolutely sure that the characters are where they need to be when using pre-published modules

Option 3, unfortunately, isn't really very useful for original adventures. So I think a combination of Options 1 and 3 are likely what I'd use depending on whether I'm going home-brew or pre-fab...

[Treebore]

I presume your referring to 3E modules? I do things a bit differently to keep them "on track". I mix and match several modules together, and when put together I get a better XP progression. Plus I get to use many more modules that way, and the characters have that much more depth to their character history.

That is one thing I did not like in 3E. You could make level 15 and only have 6 or so modules to your "history". In C&C my 15th level game has 17 modules to their history. Plus a lot of stuff that I just threw into the mix to flesh things out.

I have to say my family and I much prefer characters with 17+ modules worth of history rather than 6 to 8 modules.

Anyways, that is another thing option 1 also helps with, it gives you the freedom to change the XP awards based on the speed of progression you need to get them where you want them to be.

Like, C&C btb gives a lot of XP from treasure. To help me control the pace I vary how much XP's they get from treasure based on "difficulty". If they had a hard time, they often got 100% XP conversion for their loot, but I also modify it based on how fast I want them to level.

Since I have gotten so comfortable manipulating it this way I stick with it.
_________________
The Ruby Lord, Earl of the Society

Next Con I am attending: http://www.neoncon.com/

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[serleran]

If you can find the "Asbury Method" you should consider it. Its from an early White Dwarf.

[clavis123]

I award XP by session played (method #2), and it has exactly the effects you describe, for good and for ill. I know the PCs won't attack everything, and I've watched them run away from a dungeon they could easily have beaten simply because they got creeped out by it. I run a sandbox style campaign where PCs will often go solo or in pairs, while the remaining players run NPCs or monsters. In our situation, only a per-session award will work. It does mean, however, that planning ahead too far and creating mega-dungeons is right out. I enjoy creating maps, so I don't mind that I have a few that I thought I was going to use and never did because the PCs acted in an unexpected manner. So the method of XP award can both reflect and dictate play-style to a great extant.

[Luther]

Treebore wrote:
I presume your referring to 3E modules? ... That is one thing I did not like in 3E. You could make level 15 and only have 6 or so modules to your "history". In C&C my 15th level game has 17 modules to their history. Plus a lot of stuff that I just threw into the mix to flesh things out. I have to say my family and I much prefer characters with 17+ modules worth of history rather than 6 to 8 modules.

Anyways, that is another thing option 1 also helps with, it gives you the freedom to change the XP awards based on the speed of progression you need to get them where you want them to be.

Like, C&C btb gives a lot of XP from treasure. To help me control the pace I vary how much XP's they get from treasure based on "difficulty". If they had a hard time, they often got 100% XP conversion for their loot, but I also modify it based on how fast I want them to level.

Actually, you get some level disparity between BD&D/1e/2e modules as well, even if it's only a level or two, and I was including those as well as 3e, which is a pain to convert, but for which there are so many good modules from the likes of Goodman Games and other 3PPs that it's a shame not to use them. Goodman Games in particular know how hard it is and did a total conversion to 1e for some of their best 3e modules, and I hope they do more and that others follow suit.

I agree that an adventurer should have at least one adventure under their belt for every one or two levels (maybe less for real epics like ToEE). One of the things I'd like to happen, however, is to ditch awards for treasure (which is its own reward, IMO) and have them gain that XP somewhere else so they don't slow down the game trying to loot everything that's not bolted down.

Quote:
If you can find the "Asbury Method" you should consider it. Its from an early White Dwarf.

I'd love to read it, but it doesn't seem to google too well. Can you give some detail on it or at least the gist?

Quote:
I award XP by session played (method #2), and it has exactly the effects you describe, for good and for ill. I know the PCs won't attack everything, and I've watched them run away from a dungeon they could easily have beaten simply because they got creeped out by it... the method of XP award can both reflect and dictate play-style to a great extant.

Yes, it most certainly can, and that's why I'm interested in seeing how different systems might work before I start my fall campaign. It helps to write the stuff out as well as to get comments back form others who might expose angles I hadn't seen, which is why I've also done it with posts on Spell Hosuerules and Combat Houserules as well.

In the end, the goal for me is to have a campaign that reflects the pulp Sword & Sorcery genre that inspired D&D. That means an advancement system that is a little less glacial than the RAW, which doesn't fit the literature. and in the end, it all comes down to the campaign emulating the literature as much as possible...

[serleran]

Basically, the Asbury System awards XP for HP of damage dealt, but it weighs in level and class, so that a high level fighter, who is much better at dishing out damage than a low level wizard, gets less of a multiplier which is then weighed against HD of the slain monster.

So, for example:

If you have 3 PCs fighting a troll that is considered 6 HD with 40 HP. The three PCs are fighter 6, wizard 5, thief 7.

Fighter hits a lot, does 25 damage.

Wizard does some, dealing 8 damage.

Thief finishes it off, for 7.

Fighter gets something like 120 XP, and the wizard would get 85, and the thief something like 65 -- the player simply uses a multiplier against the damage they dealt.

There are serious concerns with this system in C&C, though -- it works in OD&D and BD&D because every weapon is equivalent. Otherwise, it greatly encourages two-handed weapons (which can be good if you also use the rule that they make you forfeit initiative...)

But that's a simple summation. It is a bit more involved.

[Luther]

serleran wrote:
Basically, the Asbury System awards XP for HP of damage dealt, but it weighs in level and class, so that a high level fighter, who is much better at dishing out damage than a low level wizard, gets less of a multiplier which is then weighed against HD of the slain monster.

*SNIP*

But that's a simple summation. It is a bit more involved.

Wow. If that's the simple summation, I think I'll stick with my other three options or the RAW...

[serleran]

Heh, I make it sound far more complex than it is, in practice. It does take some explaining to get the point of it across, though.

Anyway, I thought it might be of interest.

[Luther]

serleran wrote:
Heh, I make it sound far more complex than it is, in practice. It does take some explaining to get the point of it across, though.

Anyway, I thought it might be of interest.

I appreciate it...