[D&D '74] Experience Benefit Analysis

[Eero Tuovinen]

I only mentioned 4th edition because I found it notable how Marv had ended up with the exact same philosophy of the endeavour that the recent developers of the game have adopted. It's an interesting comparison, and I stand by my judgement that of all the editions of D&D 4th is the one that best supports ignoring experience points, design-wise. It's pretty explicit in the DMG chapter on experience points (as well as being confirmed by my own senses and reason), they even suggest the exact solution Marv has of ditching the points and leveling up the entire party as the pace dictates. (DMG p. 121, "Varying Rate of Advancement" outlines how arbitrary xp count is and how it can be replaced with adventure arc based level-ups; the next section "Experience at the Table" makes it explicit that despite xp being nominally encounter-based, coming to play is actually the only requirement of advancing, and failing even this requirement is grounds at most for delaying advancement temporarily.)

As for edition-warring, I've no idea where that comes from. I would expect it to take at least two people and me having both a hate for 4th edition and societal need to convince the Internet about my stance. I'll cop to mild evangelism (heh heh) and full willingness to contrast and compare editions for insight, which shouldn't be much of a sin when Marshall's entire premise is to compare the xp systems of different editions. (And to tell the truth, I do not personally consider 4th edition much of a D&D despite it being an interesting-yet-flawed game in other ways. However, this has nothing to do with Marshall's endeavour, which well might cover that part of D&D's history for all that I know.)

Perhaps I should make more PC word choices - calling xp a "dead appendage" might sound unnecessarily negative, even if I intended it in good humour, like people talk about "slaughtering holy cows" when similar elements are encountered in game design. "An element of design carefully balanced out of contributing to actual content of play, yet ritually preserved for the sake of nostalgia" could be more to the point. XP clearly is in the 4th edition merely as a more fine-grained pacing device for leveling up, as opposed to being a scoring tool, reward system and a goal-determinant as it was in most earlier games under the rubric of D&D. Just like Marv describes, xp controls the pacing of the game, so the 4th edition designers took that control away from the events of the game and gave it to the GM instead. Makes perfect sense once you're committed to the sort of math the game embraces, and it makes even more sense once you get explicit about it and just drop xp accounting altogether, playing encounters at whatever mechanical level you want to play.

[Miskatonic]

Marshall,

Here's a thing I never correlated before:
1) The text explicitly says there is no end to character level progression. This, despite leaving the players to figure out exactly what the XP goal is once they go off the charts. It's not quite clear if it continues to double (fighting man and cleric) or if it's a flat increase per level (as magic user). As far as character improvements, there are guidelines for going as far as about level 17.
2) Character levels are keyed to dungeon levels. As you mention earlier, XP rewards are nerfed for sticking around on low levels.
3) MOST OF THE XP COMES FROM TREASURE.
4) The tables for treasure and monsters max out at dungeon level 13.

This sort of implies the game, as written, is more-or-less maxed out around character level 13-16. I don't know where this "level 10" thing keeps coming from, as the yet-to-be-dubbed "name level" occurs at levels 9, 12, or 8 depending on class.



Now, what do you think is the reasoning behind prime requisite experience bonus/penalty? Is this some weird nod to "realism," that the most naturally capable would "obviously" progress faster? Is there some game mechanic reasoning I am overlooking? I never quite figured out where this rule comes from.

[Ron Edwards]

Eero, I don't want this kind of pushback here. We disagree about your post. You do it my way.

This thread's finished. As far as I can tell, Marshall's goal is met. Marv, feel free to start a new thread.