Will Grind for Rez
There is only one natural predator of high level characters: the dreaded TPK. When your healy dude has resurrection powers or when you’ve got spare clones in the tank, death is only a temporary setback. Sure it’ll cost you a few gold, but there’s no real danger. Low level characters, on the other hand, have a lot more to worry about. An aggressive cat can straight up murder a first level commoner, and an ill-timed crit from an orc can trigger a visit from “my twin brother who is identical in every way to my last guy.”
For my money, it’s mid-level where things get really interesting. At that point, coming back from the dead is within the realm of possibility, but it’s just out of reach of your character. That means desperate gambits, bargains with eldritch powers, and ill-advised quests are all on the table. In D&D/Pathfinder terms, that might mean Cleric has to “prove his faith” by ridding the world of 24,000 XP worth of goblins. Only then will the gods help. Of course, since the 3.X spell raise dead only works on “a creature that has been dead for no longer than one day per caster level,” there’s suddenly this interesting tension in the game. Can you prove your faith quickly enough to help your companions?
The idea of grinding comes from video games, and it is a term synonymous with boring, repetitive tasks: Kill 178 goblins, acquire one level. And if you just look at the numbers, that really is boring stuff. Consider what it means though. Remember that XP is a metaphor, and that the numbers represent something real in the game world. For a divine character, that might be a test of faith that unlocks some new revelation. For a bard, it could mean you’ve finally unlocked the next piece of your own epic. For a martial character, XP might represent physical conditioning, soldierly seasoning, or losing that wide-eyed, wet-behind-the-ears wonder of the average man who picks up a sword.
That brings me to the question of the day. How do you personally conceptualize “experience points?” How do you translate those boring numbers into something meaningful for your character?
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EXP has never been a fun part of D&D for me. Nobody has ever made it feel more meaningful than some ephemeral reward for killing (and occasionally not killing) things. Milestone leveling is the way to go. No more tracking, no more grinding, no more meta. Players are doing well, just finished up a big quest line? They leveled up. Easy as that.
Do you think anything is lost by switching to the milestone system?
For me? Nothing. I have had other players say they somewhat lose that sense of anticipation from being close to leveling, though. I think it’s worth the trade.
I suppose some things like level adjustment buyoff are off the table… and possibly spells that require XP as a component (like Wish). Do they even use LA buyoff and XP as a component outiside of 3.Xe?
Personally, I 100% agree that milestone is the better system…
5e doesn’t, which is all I care about. =)
Even Pathfinder, despite the fact it’s essentially 3.5++, doesn’t use it. There is no EXP cost to anything, “negative levels” are actually just an assortment of debuffs, not actual lost levels, and LA has been replaced by some vague guidelines on playing monster characters.
I do like that XP represents an opportunity to reward individual merit. It’s a quick and easy, “You drew your character and that’s awesome. Here’s a token of my esteem.”
5e has Inspiration for that. Gives you a free reroll on practically anything.
I had a game recently where it all took place in a multi-floor cave system dungeon, and every few floors we got to level up. It got real tense when we got to the end of a floor where we knew we’d level up
And now we are gaining further clues regarding the Handbook’s continuity! For example we can now tell with certainty that “Flighty” took place after “Detect Evil”. The reasoning is as follows:
1) Due to the presence of Oracle we can tell that the comic’s reality is most likely using the Pathfinder rules.
2)In this strip paladin appears to already be familiar with Cleric, so we can assume it takes place after “Detect Evil”
3)Raise Dead is a 5th level spell for a Cleric, so our hero must be a level 8 character, unless he multiclassed earlier in his carrier.
4)In Flighty we can see Cleric flying using feathered wings. Since we do not usually see him with those, we can probably eliminate the possibility that he is actually an Aasimar(Dwarf) and took the “Angel Wing” Feat. If that is the case, then th only alternative I can think of is the “Angelic Aspect” spell or it’s greater version.
5)Angelic Aspect is a 5th level spell, so we can assume in Flightly Cleric is at least a 9th level character.
Of course, there is also a theoretical possiblity that the Handbook has not, in fact, been carefully planed out with a loving care being put to every single plot/continuity-relevant detail. But come on, who would do that?
Back to the topic of EXP, one thing that I really dislike about how it’s done in D&D is that for the most part, you only get it for combat encounters. At the very least, I couldn’t find any guidelines on how many should you get for any given encounter. I mean I get it – D&D is mostly about combat, but I really don’t want to go to such extremes as the Dungeon World, where there seem to bearly be any rules at all for things other than dungeon delving.
Wait a minute did’t Cleric cast guiding bolt that one time? And which edition has a circlet of abundant stats?
Circlet of Abundant Stats is probably your regular old Headband of Mental Superiority. By the way, I literally just realized it’s “Stats” not “Stars”. In which case, it would likely be a reskinned Headband of Alluring Charisma – everything is prettier with sparkles after all. Princesses, Sorcerers, Undead Abominations/Romantic Interests… Sparkling just seems like a sign of a high Cha in general.
To be fair is a golden sparkling skeleton not super pretty?
Perhaps…too pretty.
I would agree with MSK’s comment earlier about milestones being a more or less better system for leveling up…. except in play by post games which as it happens is entirely how I game these days.
Milestones reward completion of quests rather than slaying of monsters and even when large quests aren’t involved can just be handed out after “enough time” and when using that system it encourages everyone to play with a greater focus on accomplishing goals than the wholesale slaughter of “evil” (less developed) creatures who were “nefariously plotting” (not currently doing anything) in “dungeons” (their homes).
Sadly Milestones doesn’t work very well with play by post. Not because what I said doesn’t apply, but because without that face to face interaction and the inconsistent progress and no real “sessions” it’s hard to get everyone on the same page of when a “milestone” has been achieved or even to get a GM to much care what the players think is a reasonable time or on the other hand to not have the players manipulate a GM into thinking a milestone should happen because even though the party hasn’t done much of anything it’s been two months irl and that’s a long time to not have leveled up. XP being less arbitrary just winds up being more fair and less likely to result in somewhat abusive GM/Player relationships.
As far as giving the numbers meaning…. I kind of don’t? I view them as the abstraction and mechanical tool that they are. They’re just a good marker for how often the characters should be improving. If the GM wants to say “you guys should level up now” they can always just throw XP at you for little or no reason (for example quest completion on top of the stuff you had to do to complete the quest). In character… the characters do adventurous stuff and become stronger. Of course it’s better to not think too hard about how the fighter got better at using polearms, the wizard learned a new tier of spells, and the rogue got better at backstabbing from solving a murder mystery, convincing the dragon that the princess of the next country over is less trouble and prettier anyway, and sitting on their hands until a lethally smelly cloud finished clearing out a basement of cranium rats. =P
Challenge accepted!
Polearm fighter mounted an “ugly princess puppet” on his polearm. Convincingly portraying puppet princess’s rudeness to a dragon required expert tip control, allowing for more precise polearm handling.
By surveying the technique of a fellow murdering bastard, the rogue was able to lear from that poor sod’s mistakes, becoming a better backstabber through theory.
The wizard, disgusted by her reliance upon fart-based spells, decided to rededicate herself to the pursuit of better-smelling magic.
Clearly, I like turning mechanical minutia into plot. I recognize that this is a personal failing and not a universally enjoyed pastime.
Depending on the polearm in question, there’s an opportunity to use more than *cough* just the tip, but I digress…
What I’m reading from this is that leveling and experience depends on having at least one point of solidity. Either you need a solid numerical gain for when your timeline is fluid, or you need a solid timeline (regular weekly sessions or the like) which can allow your numbers to be fluid, which is the milestone method.
Now that is a truly interesting though. The ummm…second thought. Not the first. You perv. 😛
The question that underlies a lot of this is whether XP represents character achievement or player achievement. Do you get XP for the narrative exploits of player characters, or your cleverness/group contribution/physical freaking presence as a player?
I am a strong believer in Party XP. Meaning that I think it’s pretty much the worst thing you can do to give individual characters XP and not others.
The reason for this is it tends to reward certain types of players for just being who they are and thus effectively punishing others for not having irl skills the GM decided have value. Also it means harder to balance encounters (combat or otherwise since skills bonuses are a thing), people feeling like someone else is “better” than them (and it being REALLY hard to argue the point when their box for Level says 4 and the other guy’s says 5), and other such issues.
There’s really nothing that isn’t improved by making XP gained for in character or out of character reasons going to the whole party. It actually incentivizes creative thinking and showing off irl skills and the like since not only do those things get rewarded by the GM, but the other players will also encourage and thank that person since it rewards them as well. And hopefully this in turn makes them feel like returning the favor as best they can and being creative and finding ways of doing interesting things that GM will reward.
Basically Party XP results in players encouraging other players to be better players.
Individual XP can possibly result in players glaring at the artist in the group because the GM doesn’t appreciate poetry as much as drawings.
“Clearly, I like turning mechanical minutia into plot. I recognize that this is a personal failing and not a universally enjoyed pastime.”
THERE’S SOMEONE ELSE? FRIEND I AM HOME. Personally I believe EXP to be just that: experience. Life experience. You became better at what you are because you’re constantly adventuring, making a name for yourself, doing what you do best and making yourself better at it. Your god wasn’t just impressed with your healing; you earned those spells by working in your gods name in battle and out of it. Nothing creates poetic insight like high adventure, and your art can now help your allies be even better so you get even more inspiration. Even the Fighter in the midst of a social intrigue quest gets to level up because he’s learning a new kind of tactical ability, while of course still practising his swordsmanship at night or with the local guild. That’s my take on it, at least.
I will have you know that, every time my megadungeon players consider resting rather than opening the next door, one of them will usually say in character: “But think of all the valuable life experience we might miss!”
Ahaha, fantastic. In-Character and Out-of-Character, he’s an adventurer through and through.
I know it’s not exactly the question you asked, but….
Of all the games I’ve played, the majority of them started above level 1. This solves many problems, such as the accidental 1-hit kill, the fact that casters have enough spells to last more than a single encounter before resorting to a crossbow, and of course that you drastically increase the variety of possible encounters (seriously, we’re all tired of killing rats).
Eventually when I created my own homebrewed world, I codified this in a rule- any adult humanoid starts out with at least 3 HD. It’s kind of like the idea that dragons have a challenge rating for every age category- humanoid children have 1 HD and adolescents have 2, and you need special permission from the GM to play a non-standard character. Of course the majority of NPCs will still only have NPC levels, either all commoner or commoner with a splash of something else, but at least it means they’re in less danger of death from tangling with a common housecat.
Totally valid way to play. For my money though? I’m stoked to go in the opposite direction and try out the 0-level character funnel:
http://goodman-games.com/store/product-category/dcc-level-0-funnel/
I think I first read about that being used in Warhammer 40k rather than D&D.
actually the commoner has good chances to win, if he gets to grapple the cat the cat cant hurt him anymore(its tiny and thus unable to attack adjacent squares). he just has to hope it doesnt win the countergrapple check.
Speaking as a RL commoner who has had a number of cats, I can attest to the validity of this statement.
Sometimes as an abstract mechanical thing; sometimes as a sort of “soul power” that can be transferred between beings. Usually the former, though the latter has possibility if you build a campaign around it.
Have you actually implemented any of this business in-game? Or is it just a fun idea that rides around in your head and no one else’s at the table?
For my money, it sounds like a fun thing to build into lore.