XP and GP guidelines for Rpga adventures [Archive] - Wizards Community

XP and GP guidelines for Rpga adventures [Archive] - Wizards Community

Post/Author/DateTime Post
CapnZapp
10-31-04, 05:11 AM A striking feature of adventures created for Living Greyhawk and other Rpga campaigns, is the substantially lesser amount of xp and/or gold awarded after each adventure.

Thus, Rpga must use modified versions of the relevant tables governing these issues, most importantly including these:

Table 2-6: "Experience point awards (Single Monster)", p.38
Table 3-3: "Treasure Values per Encounter", p. 51
Table 4-23: "NPC Gear Value", p. 127
Table 5-1: "Character Wealth per Level", p. 135

All references are from the 3.5 DMG.

Where can I find this information?

I want to run a home campaign (unconnected to the Rpga) with less character wealth, and would like to utilize the Rpga treasure levels as guidelines - if it works for the Living campaigns, it should work for me, at least as a point of comparison to the DMG.

Please note: I am aware there's a limit of treasure listed in rpga adventures. Having such an artificial limit in a home campaign is not my intention. But even without this, monsters and npcs still clearly do not follow the standard treasure levels.

Regards,
Zapp
SteveMND
10-31-04, 09:49 AM Yes, the RPGA campaigns tend to use 'custom' XP and gold guidelines, but there's more of a backwards-design inherent in it. They don't say "they will get 1/4 XP for Creature X," rather, they say "they will get X xp if they play a game at a certain difficulty." Same thing for gold.

The reason is because they campaigns are intended to last many years, and with many games, such as LG, if they didn't slow things down, PCs would go from 1st to 20th in a matter of a year or two.

For a home game, I'd suggest just cutting the XP gained per monster by a certain number -- say, by half. This will mean the PCs have to 'adventure' twice as long to reach the next level. Just remember, to keep things balanced, you'll want to cut the rewards similarly, ith maybe a little extra thrown in to handle for the occasional consumable or expendable item used.
Samwise
10-31-04, 01:00 PM The information is likely restricted to the Circle and Triad members. Or rather the specific formula. It is correct that the RPGA uses a lower amount of xp, and a different formula for gold. Two years ago, the xp was between 40 and 50% of the DMG number, depending on the amount of "role-playing" and task completion xp offered. It is possible this changed when the xp and gp standards for modules were altered last year. The intent, as Steve said, was to slow down advancement. (As well as the changes to switching regions.) The standards from the first year of the campaign would have had people hitting 20th level in 3 years, 2 with region hopping. That was slowed down to around 4 years, and the region hopping neutralized, then slowed even more so the level cap would still take people out after about 4 years. (I would have to do another analysis of all the xp standards to be sure.)

As for a home game, I would suggest cutting it even more depending on your rate of play and character level preference. For my home games I just award levels rather than actual xp as I feel like, based on the rate I want the campaign to progress. I pay less attention to gp, simply controlling what items are available for purchase, making high cost prestige purchases attractive (like ships, estates, small armies, and the like), and providing most magic items I want the players to have as placed treasure.
CapnZapp
10-31-04, 02:25 PM Thanks.

The xp part is actually the easiest, because you can simply follow Steve's advice and lower the xp and gp awards to 1/2 or 1/3 or whatever. This will still let characters have the expected amount of gear at a certain level, so Encounter Levels will still be the same.

But as far as I can tell RPGA characters does not only have less gold per adventure played (because of lesser xp awards), they also have less gold at a certain level than a standard character of that same level.

This changes things much more: if characters are to be underequipped (note by "underequipped" I'm not judging, I'm merely comparing to the core baseline) they should encounter less powerful opposition with less treasure.

It would be insightful to know how much less gold a rpga pc have, how much less power his opponent should have, and how much less treasure he should gain by defeating that opponent.

To do this without access to the underlying formulas, we need to talk in terms relative of the standard level. "give half xp" then means "give xp as for a CR two steps lower". For treasure, this means we can still use all the DMG tables without having to recalculate any of them.

If we then have a campaign with xp awards at "-2" and treasure at "-4", then this means we have a campaign where you need to adventure twice as long to gain a level, and you have gold as for an adventurer four levels below your own level.

A party of four level 9 adventurers (PL 9) defeating two Behir (CR 8 each; EL 10) would then get 1800 xp (instead of 3600) and expect to find 2000 gp (instead of 5600). This would make it simple to find out how much gold one of the adventurers should have after deducting consumables: approx. 9000 gp (instead of 36000). If they meet a level 9 NPC, if he were to carry gear totalling 12000 gp this would quickly make the party "too rich" - instead he's recommended to have 4300 gp.

What I need you help with (and this simplification of the question is my point with this post), how would you estimate the rpga levels (if you look at the tables listed in my first post)?

Is "XP-2" and "GP-4" somewhat close?

Or is the rpga levels set at some completely different levels?
CapnZapp
10-31-04, 03:46 PM Hello again. After examining the details, I conclude that XP-3 and GP-3 seem to be figures closer to the truth.

But there might be many errors in my process, so I'd like to give you an overview of my methods and my result. Any comments are most welcome.

I looked at a fairly recent LG module, and for each encounter and APL compared the awarded xp with how much the DMG would give (dividing DMG awards by for, of course).

This showed rpga gives 25% at low levels and almost 50% at higher levels, with the average around 33%. Translated into relative levels, this means -4, -2, and -3 respectively. To make sure, I calculated the xp you get at DMG-3, and sure, the total fit fairly close to the one given by the module. Thus I conclude rpga uses XP-3 (disregarding the numerous instances of a set xp award, no matter how scaled-up the encounter; commonly traps; was).

Calculating gp values for all these encounters was too tedious, so I merely compared the Total XP with the Total GP awarded (already calculated by the module). Then I determined at what CR a party of the given APL would get the xp total indicated, and compared that to what EL would give the indicated gp total.

For instance, the xp total at APL 8 was 2000. Normally this means an EL of 7-8. The gp total awarded was about 1700, which normally is yielded by EL 5. Thus my conclusion that GP awards is about at 3 levels lower than normal.

So, on average, an rpga PC needs to adventure three times longer to gain a certain level (but will remain on the lower levels longer).

No matter his level, he will have (very approximately) the gear of a standard character three times lower, and encounter opposition with treasure (for monsters) or gear (for npcs) at that same niveau, three levels lower.

What do you think?
Sieylianna
10-31-04, 06:10 PM Thanks.
But as far as I can tell RPGA characters does not only have less gold per adventure played (because of lesser xp awards), they also have less gold at a certain level than a standard character of that same level.

Absolutely. My experience has been that PCs have about 70 percent of the equipment value the DMG gives them (I have 5 PCs ranging from 1st to 16th level). Prior to the latest LGCS, it was possible for low level PCs to play up and reap huge amounts of gold. This has been eliminated.

The only PCs which approach book values are ones that are able to craft items. Not only does this slow their advancement, but it also provides a gold piece boost.

Of course, all RPGA campaigns reduce the XP gained. In addition, most of the others offer far less wealth than Living Greyhawk. (Kalamar seems to be about 10% of DMG, Arcanis is about 25% and Death is about 1%).

Ed
CapnZapp
11-01-04, 03:16 AM Interesting to know, Ed.

But how does that change the game balance? What do a rpga adventure author have to keep in mind, so he/she doesn't create overwhelmingly difficult encounters?

(Perhaps I should post this question again in a Living Death forum... it seems they should have the most experience dealing with the issue...)

The DMG does a pretty good job of explaing how a DM can lower or raise the rate of levelling, by increasing or decreasing the amount of xp (and gp) given. What it doesn't discuss, however, is how to rebalance a game with more or less gold in it.
kenobi65
11-01-04, 10:39 AM (Perhaps I should post this question again in a Living Death forum... it seems they should have the most experience dealing with the issue...)

Actually, Living Death is a totally different bird. It takes place in an alternate 1890s Earth, where magic exists (though it is tainted by the Red Death, an evil entity).

At least in the past few years, the XP awards in Living Death haven't been particularly out-of-step with the D&D "norm". For example, My Living Death PC has participated in 16 adventures, and is now 6th level.

However, magic items are *extraordinarily* rare in Living Death (and nearly always come equipped with some sort of downside or curse). In those 16 adventures, my PC has gained a couple of flasks of holy water, and an American Indian medicine bag, with a couple of minor items in it. In addition, any sort of monetary reward within the game is also extraordinarly rare.

The campaign seems to be written to take this into account. At least at lower tiers, it's the rare adventure that assumes the PCs have access to any magic at all.

Each character gets an amount of money at the beginning of each adventure (the exact amount based on the character's class, and, IIRC, the average of his Intelligence and Charisma). This money is usually more than enough to cover any incidental purchases in-game (i.e., lodging, more bullets, etc.). In many adventures, the characters have the opportunity to purchase silver bullets (which help to damage a fair number of the gothic-horror nasties that they face).
Sieylianna
11-01-04, 12:51 PM Each character gets an amount of money at the beginning of each adventure (the exact amount based on the character's class, and, IIRC, the average of his Intelligence and Charisma). This money is usually more than enough to cover any incidental purchases in-game (i.e., lodging, more bullets, etc.). In many adventures, the characters have the opportunity to purchase silver bullets (which help to damage a fair number of the gothic-horror nasties that they face).

It's Wisdom and Charisma, along with class which determine per module income. The campaign does this so the heroes (PCs) can concentrate on fighting evil and not have to Greyhawk the bodies of their foes to pay for a train ticket home. I have four PCs and three of them get between $20-$30 per module (which is generally plenty of money, there isn't much you can spend your money on).

Ed
solbergb
11-09-04, 01:39 PM Interesting to know, Ed.

But how does that change the game balance? What do a rpga adventure author have to keep in mind, so he/she doesn't create overwhelmingly difficult encounters?

(Perhaps I should post this question again in a Living Death forum... it seems they should have the most experience dealing with the issue...)

The DMG does a pretty good job of explaing how a DM can lower or raise the rate of levelling, by increasing or decreasing the amount of xp (and gp) given. What it doesn't discuss, however, is how to rebalance a game with more or less gold in it.

Well, RPGA tables quite often have 5-6 characters instead of the iconic 4 as well. In LG at least, that tends to mean that you can handle EL+3 encounters pretty routinely even with 70% of the "expected" cash. 1-2 extra actions every round is a VERY powerful edge in D&D. Playing LG mods with only 4 characters is risky....they'd better all be both fairly strong for the APL and decent team players.

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
CapnZapp 10-31-04, 05:11 AM	A striking feature of adventures created for Living Greyhawk and other Rpga campaigns, is the substantially lesser amount of xp and/or gold awarded after each adventure. Thus, Rpga must use modified versions of the relevant tables governing these issues, most importantly including these: Table 2-6: "Experience point awards (Single Monster)", p.38 Table 3-3: "Treasure Values per Encounter", p. 51 Table 4-23: "NPC Gear Value", p. 127 Table 5-1: "Character Wealth per Level", p. 135 All references are from the 3.5 DMG. Where can I find this information? I want to run a home campaign (unconnected to the Rpga) with less character wealth, and would like to utilize the Rpga treasure levels as guidelines - if it works for the Living campaigns, it should work for me, at least as a point of comparison to the DMG. Please note: I am aware there's a limit of treasure listed in rpga adventures. Having such an artificial limit in a home campaign is not my intention. But even without this, monsters and npcs still clearly do not follow the standard treasure levels. Regards, Zapp
SteveMND 10-31-04, 09:49 AM	Yes, the RPGA campaigns tend to use 'custom' XP and gold guidelines, but there's more of a backwards-design inherent in it. They don't say "they will get 1/4 XP for Creature X," rather, they say "they will get X xp if they play a game at a certain difficulty." Same thing for gold. The reason is because they campaigns are intended to last many years, and with many games, such as LG, if they didn't slow things down, PCs would go from 1st to 20th in a matter of a year or two. For a home game, I'd suggest just cutting the XP gained per monster by a certain number -- say, by half. This will mean the PCs have to 'adventure' twice as long to reach the next level. Just remember, to keep things balanced, you'll want to cut the rewards similarly, ith maybe a little extra thrown in to handle for the occasional consumable or expendable item used.
Samwise 10-31-04, 01:00 PM	The information is likely restricted to the Circle and Triad members. Or rather the specific formula. It is correct that the RPGA uses a lower amount of xp, and a different formula for gold. Two years ago, the xp was between 40 and 50% of the DMG number, depending on the amount of "role-playing" and task completion xp offered. It is possible this changed when the xp and gp standards for modules were altered last year. The intent, as Steve said, was to slow down advancement. (As well as the changes to switching regions.) The standards from the first year of the campaign would have had people hitting 20th level in 3 years, 2 with region hopping. That was slowed down to around 4 years, and the region hopping neutralized, then slowed even more so the level cap would still take people out after about 4 years. (I would have to do another analysis of all the xp standards to be sure.) As for a home game, I would suggest cutting it even more depending on your rate of play and character level preference. For my home games I just award levels rather than actual xp as I feel like, based on the rate I want the campaign to progress. I pay less attention to gp, simply controlling what items are available for purchase, making high cost prestige purchases attractive (like ships, estates, small armies, and the like), and providing most magic items I want the players to have as placed treasure.
CapnZapp 10-31-04, 02:25 PM	Thanks. The xp part is actually the easiest, because you can simply follow Steve's advice and lower the xp and gp awards to 1/2 or 1/3 or whatever. This will still let characters have the expected amount of gear at a certain level, so Encounter Levels will still be the same. But as far as I can tell RPGA characters does not only have less gold per adventure played (because of lesser xp awards), they also have less gold at a certain level than a standard character of that same level. This changes things much more: if characters are to be underequipped (note by "underequipped" I'm not judging, I'm merely comparing to the core baseline) they should encounter less powerful opposition with less treasure. It would be insightful to know how much less gold a rpga pc have, how much less power his opponent should have, and how much less treasure he should gain by defeating that opponent. To do this without access to the underlying formulas, we need to talk in terms relative of the standard level. "give half xp" then means "give xp as for a CR two steps lower". For treasure, this means we can still use all the DMG tables without having to recalculate any of them. If we then have a campaign with xp awards at "-2" and treasure at "-4", then this means we have a campaign where you need to adventure twice as long to gain a level, and you have gold as for an adventurer four levels below your own level. A party of four level 9 adventurers (PL 9) defeating two Behir (CR 8 each; EL 10) would then get 1800 xp (instead of 3600) and expect to find 2000 gp (instead of 5600). This would make it simple to find out how much gold one of the adventurers should have after deducting consumables: approx. 9000 gp (instead of 36000). If they meet a level 9 NPC, if he were to carry gear totalling 12000 gp this would quickly make the party "too rich" - instead he's recommended to have 4300 gp. What I need you help with (and this simplification of the question is my point with this post), how would you estimate the rpga levels (if you look at the tables listed in my first post)? Is "XP-2" and "GP-4" somewhat close? Or is the rpga levels set at some completely different levels?
CapnZapp 10-31-04, 03:46 PM	Hello again. After examining the details, I conclude that XP-3 and GP-3 seem to be figures closer to the truth. But there might be many errors in my process, so I'd like to give you an overview of my methods and my result. Any comments are most welcome. I looked at a fairly recent LG module, and for each encounter and APL compared the awarded xp with how much the DMG would give (dividing DMG awards by for, of course). This showed rpga gives 25% at low levels and almost 50% at higher levels, with the average around 33%. Translated into relative levels, this means -4, -2, and -3 respectively. To make sure, I calculated the xp you get at DMG-3, and sure, the total fit fairly close to the one given by the module. Thus I conclude rpga uses XP-3 (disregarding the numerous instances of a set xp award, no matter how scaled-up the encounter; commonly traps; was). Calculating gp values for all these encounters was too tedious, so I merely compared the Total XP with the Total GP awarded (already calculated by the module). Then I determined at what CR a party of the given APL would get the xp total indicated, and compared that to what EL would give the indicated gp total. For instance, the xp total at APL 8 was 2000. Normally this means an EL of 7-8. The gp total awarded was about 1700, which normally is yielded by EL 5. Thus my conclusion that GP awards is about at 3 levels lower than normal. So, on average, an rpga PC needs to adventure three times longer to gain a certain level (but will remain on the lower levels longer). No matter his level, he will have (very approximately) the gear of a standard character three times lower, and encounter opposition with treasure (for monsters) or gear (for npcs) at that same niveau, three levels lower. What do you think?
Sieylianna 10-31-04, 06:10 PM	Thanks. But as far as I can tell RPGA characters does not only have less gold per adventure played (because of lesser xp awards), they also have less gold at a certain level than a standard character of that same level. Absolutely. My experience has been that PCs have about 70 percent of the equipment value the DMG gives them (I have 5 PCs ranging from 1st to 16th level). Prior to the latest LGCS, it was possible for low level PCs to play up and reap huge amounts of gold. This has been eliminated. The only PCs which approach book values are ones that are able to craft items. Not only does this slow their advancement, but it also provides a gold piece boost. Of course, all RPGA campaigns reduce the XP gained. In addition, most of the others offer far less wealth than Living Greyhawk. (Kalamar seems to be about 10% of DMG, Arcanis is about 25% and Death is about 1%). Ed
CapnZapp 11-01-04, 03:16 AM	Interesting to know, Ed. But how does that change the game balance? What do a rpga adventure author have to keep in mind, so he/she doesn't create overwhelmingly difficult encounters? (Perhaps I should post this question again in a Living Death forum... it seems they should have the most experience dealing with the issue...) The DMG does a pretty good job of explaing how a DM can lower or raise the rate of levelling, by increasing or decreasing the amount of xp (and gp) given. What it doesn't discuss, however, is how to rebalance a game with more or less gold in it.
kenobi65 11-01-04, 10:39 AM	(Perhaps I should post this question again in a Living Death forum... it seems they should have the most experience dealing with the issue...) Actually, Living Death is a totally different bird. It takes place in an alternate 1890s Earth, where magic exists (though it is tainted by the Red Death, an evil entity). At least in the past few years, the XP awards in Living Death haven't been particularly out-of-step with the D&D "norm". For example, My Living Death PC has participated in 16 adventures, and is now 6th level. However, magic items are extraordinarily rare in Living Death (and nearly always come equipped with some sort of downside or curse). In those 16 adventures, my PC has gained a couple of flasks of holy water, and an American Indian medicine bag, with a couple of minor items in it. In addition, any sort of monetary reward within the game is also extraordinarly rare. The campaign seems to be written to take this into account. At least at lower tiers, it's the rare adventure that assumes the PCs have access to any magic at all. Each character gets an amount of money at the beginning of each adventure (the exact amount based on the character's class, and, IIRC, the average of his Intelligence and Charisma). This money is usually more than enough to cover any incidental purchases in-game (i.e., lodging, more bullets, etc.). In many adventures, the characters have the opportunity to purchase silver bullets (which help to damage a fair number of the gothic-horror nasties that they face).
Sieylianna 11-01-04, 12:51 PM	Each character gets an amount of money at the beginning of each adventure (the exact amount based on the character's class, and, IIRC, the average of his Intelligence and Charisma). This money is usually more than enough to cover any incidental purchases in-game (i.e., lodging, more bullets, etc.). In many adventures, the characters have the opportunity to purchase silver bullets (which help to damage a fair number of the gothic-horror nasties that they face). It's Wisdom and Charisma, along with class which determine per module income. The campaign does this so the heroes (PCs) can concentrate on fighting evil and not have to Greyhawk the bodies of their foes to pay for a train ticket home. I have four PCs and three of them get between $20-$30 per module (which is generally plenty of money, there isn't much you can spend your money on). Ed
solbergb 11-09-04, 01:39 PM	Interesting to know, Ed. But how does that change the game balance? What do a rpga adventure author have to keep in mind, so he/she doesn't create overwhelmingly difficult encounters? (Perhaps I should post this question again in a Living Death forum... it seems they should have the most experience dealing with the issue...) The DMG does a pretty good job of explaing how a DM can lower or raise the rate of levelling, by increasing or decreasing the amount of xp (and gp) given. What it doesn't discuss, however, is how to rebalance a game with more or less gold in it. Well, RPGA tables quite often have 5-6 characters instead of the iconic 4 as well. In LG at least, that tends to mean that you can handle EL+3 encounters pretty routinely even with 70% of the "expected" cash. 1-2 extra actions every round is a VERY powerful edge in D&D. Playing LG mods with only 4 characters is risky....they'd better all be both fairly strong for the APL and decent team players.