Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Koverchenko 03-05-06, 12:55 AM	There are two items I wish to discuss here, both of which concern the noble task of making level advancement less wonky. Firstly, does anybody know of any alternative ways to award experience points? I hate the normal way of awarding experience based on the number/difficulty of enemies killed--that works alright for characters like Fighters, whose abilities are completely oriented towards combat, but for most other classes a substantial number of their abilities/skills do not have a very direct connection to combat. For instance, I find it difficult to believe that killing a dragon would make a Bard better at playing music, or a Wizard better at casting spells--combat type spells might improve, but the destruction of an enemy does nothing to make one better understand the nature of magic, does it? Plus, awarding XP based on kills scored encourages rather blood-thirsty behavior, and punishes those who attempt more subtle and elaborate solutions. Also, how do you award XP for defeat? It is often said that you can learn more from losing than you can from winning--how could this be reflected in XP? It is of course possible to award XP for these things, but it is difficult to do so in a very objective manner, and I was just wondering if anybody has any systems for this sort of thing? Secondly, I am trying to come up with a way to advance classes through the levels categorically, rather than all at once. For example, a Rogue moving from 2nd level to 3rd level gains a +1 to Base Attack, a +1 in Fort and Will saves, another d6 of sneak attack damage, and trap sense +1, plus a whole bunch of skill points. Yet what happens if, during that level, the Rogue is engaged in a massive army-style battle during which he or she uses no skills? In a big battle, he or she might acquire enough XP to advance a level, but it seems a little strange to me that these XP would be able to improve the rogue's ability to disable traps. I am thinking about dividing XP into different catagories--Combat, Saves, Class Abilities, Skills, Spells. A character might advance one catagory without advancing the others--for instance, the Rogue mentioned above might gain the increase to Base Attack as a result of the battle (and so would advance to 3rd level in the Combat catagory), but until he or she accomplishes something challenging with her Skills will remain at 2nd level in the Skills catagory. This is a rather simplistic example, but I hope the intention behind this is clear--it makes little sense that a Rogue might leave on a wilderness adventure, gain a level over the course of the adventure, and then return to the city and suddenly be better at picking locks. I understand that many people simply assume that the characters are practicing all their skills in their spare time--perhaps the Rogue brings a practice lock out on the wilderness adventure? But seldom do I see real people advancing their skills in such a balanced and uniform way. More often people, after encountering a new problem, begin thinking about it in a different way and learning something new because of it. Without new and challenging locks to make a Rogue think of new moves to try, and serious pressure to do so, he or she would probably not really learn a great deal more. A practice lock might prevent a Rogue's skills from atrophying, but I can't really see how they would allow the skill to improve. I would like to find a way to reflect this theory of advancement. Does anybody have any opinions/suggestions on this subject? Ways it could work? Problems that might occur? Anything?
dragonman407 03-05-06, 01:33 AM	Stop reading my mind!!!! I have been thinking of this for a long time now, but it never occured to me to post it on the boards. I did come up with one way to handle skills though. You could have a set level advancement for each skill using an exp. chart. You gain experience in a skill by using the skill. Whatever the result of your skill check is, is the exp. that you add to your pool for that skill. the only problem with a system like this, however, is that there are no restrictions to this and players would probably just use a cheap way to get these skill exp., like using a practice lock. If no one else has any ideas, we should cooperate to try to come up with a way that this can be done. Also note: Posting that this idea is stupid will only waste space and not help us at all.
Wolghan 03-05-06, 01:53 AM	A couple of months ago I was trying to make some changes to the rules for my campaign setting and this was one of the issues. Why would a character get skill points in something he hasn't used anytime during his level advancement? I like the way Cyberpunk manages this; you get exp. points everytime you use a skill and when you reach a certain number you get one more level in that skill. This isn't something that would appeal to everyone though... Say you had a PC who spent several points in swim when he was at first level and after a while the characters end up in a desert. There is no way he could raise his skill level and the character might feel cheated because he 'lost' all those points he spent. By assigning exp. points to each skill you also face the problem of having a fighter improving a skill or improving many of them at the same pace than a rogue when this shouldn't happen. A solution for this could be that classes which get more skills per level have to gain less skill exp. points in order to attain a level. The problem with this idea would be handling multiclass characters... You could, I guess... Say that the class with the highest level sets the way that this takes place... and if they have the same level the best is taken. Finally, you have to deal with the way exp. points are awarded... The XP you get should be worth the difficulty of it, just like normal encounters with monsters or traps. Perhaps using the DC minus the skill modifier the character has... so for instance... Taking a balance check for a slippery surface (DC 10) would grant 8 skill xp for a character with only a +2 to the skill; and a character with a +10 to balance would get no xp. This way you could avoid players having practice locks or whatever...
Mist of Shadows 03-05-06, 02:44 PM	stop playing dnd and play something else. Honestly guys this is one of the main issues with level. You could always go to a level less system or the game. And class less. Just chart everything, for example how many times they attacked how many times they saved against poison and such. It doesn't appeal to me that much to chart everything. (well it does just not to the people I play with) For example star wars d6 you get character points (exp) to spend on abilities you used during the adventure and you spend them to improve skills. It's a nice system. As for how to fix dnd I'm not sure it's possible.
Koverchenko 03-05-06, 03:50 PM	A valid point. DnD is the only I system I know at present, but perhaps it might be a good time to start exploring some others, either to adopt totally or to borrow a few ideas from. Charting everything seems perhaps a little bit extreme, I suppose, though tallying number of attacks would not exactly be difficult, and if you compare it to number of hits you could calculate your hit percentage, which might be kind of cool to know--kind of like sports statistics for your DnD character! But keeping track of every single use of a skill and assigning XP to it could very quickly become accountant-like. When I play in campaigns, I have a rule just for myself that I will not add ranks to any skill I did not use at least once during the level, unless I specifically roleplay the training and have a reason and source for the increased skill. Perhaps making that a house rule in a campaign would help? Or here is another idea: instead of assigning skill points at the beginning of a level, players assign them at the end of the level, or at some point during it? For example, say a Rogue reaches 3rd level, which would normally entitle him or her to 8 + Int mod skill points. With this variant, the player would not change the skill ranks immediately upon hitting the next level. They would remain banked until the character demonstrated something that would justify a skill increase--say a few days after hitting 3rd level the Rogue finds and disables a particularly cunning poison dart trap. This would "unlock" the Search and Disable Device skills, which the Rogue could then spend some of the skill point bank to increase--you might allow the Rogue to immediately spend the rank, or you might require him or her to spend some time in game pondering the new experience and learning lessons from it. Any skill points not spent during one level would roll over into the next one. The max ranks in a skill would increase as normal. This might present a problem at 1st level--you get more skill points there, and they represent the long period of training your character received before gaining the coveted adventurer class level. It would be very difficult to start off with no ranks in any skill, and this would make learning/using trained-only skills very difficult. The solution: normally at first level you get your normal number of skill points multiplied by four. With this variant, you would assign ranks using your normal number of skill points multiplied by 3, and would then have one more "level" to assign over the course of 1st level. For example, at first level a Rogue normally gets (8 + Int mod) x 4 skill points to assign right from the beginning. With this variant, the Rogue would get (8 + Int mod) x 3 skill points to assign right from the beginning, plus an additional (8 + Int mod) to assign over the course of 1st level. Does this seem reasonable?
SokenzanMarauder 03-05-06, 06:11 PM	Well, I think this was either mentioned in the 3.5 DM Guide or the 2nd Edition DM Guide. Basically you get bonus experience for doing things your class is good at. Examples: Fighters get XP based on the Hit Dice of the creatures they combat. Clerics get XP based on how many spells they cast and Hit Dice from creatures they slay. Rogues get XP based on how much gold they earn (It was like 2-5 xp per 1 gp). Wizards get XP based on how many spells they cast as well as items/scrolls/wands they create. Pretty rough system but I used to use it a long time ago and it worked fairly well. -Gene
Mist of Shadows 03-05-06, 07:18 PM	There is a problem with that in 3.0 / 3.5 They went out of their way to make exp the same for all the characters. (Then hit that system in the nuts with wizards spending exp on spells and magical items.) So if you change the way characters get exp then you might have issues. As for the spending skills in my game I let players have their skill pools unspent. In other words if they get 8 points a level the character spends those points over the course of a few adventures. When they do something note worthy. My players started getting some extra points around after half of them failed to have any points to spend learning a unique summoning skill. The party members that didn't have extra skills took longer to train to acquire the skills. I'm fine with players saving feats for a while as well. To me it adds to the flowing feel of an actual character rather then a page of written rules and stat sheet.
Wayfarer 03-05-06, 08:26 PM	Only responding to the first point, since the second one gets into skill-based mechanics, which is a completely different topic. There are two items I wish to discuss here, both of which concern the noble task of making level advancement less wonky. Firstly, does anybody know of any alternative ways to award experience points? I hate the normal way of awarding experience based on the number/difficulty of enemies killed--that works alright for characters like Fighters, whose abilities are completely oriented towards combat, but for most other classes a substantial number of their abilities/skills do not have a very direct connection to combat. For instance, I find it difficult to believe that killing a dragon would make a Bard better at playing music, or a Wizard better at casting spells--combat type spells might improve, but the destruction of an enemy does nothing to make one better understand the nature of magic, does it? Plus, awarding XP based on kills scored encourages rather blood-thirsty behavior, and punishes those who attempt more subtle and elaborate solutions. Also, how do you award XP for defeat? It is often said that you can learn more from losing than you can from winning--how could this be reflected in XP? It is of course possible to award XP for these things, but it is difficult to do so in a very objective manner, and I was just wondering if anybody has any systems for this sort of thing? You don't get experience just for killing stuff. You get experience by overcoming anything that has a challenger rating. Combat encounters fall into that category, but so can anything else. The most notable example is traps (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/traps.htm#challengeRatingOfATrap). Every trap should have a challenge rating, and when the PC's overcome that trap - by disarming it, smashing it, or simply sneaking past it - they get experience based on its challenge rating, exactly the same as they would for killing a monster. The challenge rating system is universal - you can apply it to anything. Going to fight some orcs? That encounter has a challenge rating. Going to negotiate with them for safe passage? That encounter should also have a challenge rating. Trying to get past some traps? Challenge Rating. Trying to pick the guard's pocket? That has a challenge rating. Trying to impress a crowd with your music? It's got a challenge rating. Trying to decode the arcane runes in the temple? That's got a challenge rating too. The key thing is, any time you set an obstacle of any kind for the PC's to overcome you can give that obstacle a challenge rating, and grant experience awards as appropriate for the party's level. Just estimate the difficulty based on the PC's abilities and difficulty, which shouldn't be too hard since the Monster CR's are just rough estimates anyway.
Millennium 03-06-06, 07:41 AM	If you've ever played a game called Vagrant Story for the PlayStation, you might consider dealing with the character-improvement system from that game. You got abilities and stat boosts at significant points during the game, but there was no concept of "level". In VS, the stat boosts were essentially random, but you could control these easily enough if you wanted.
Lucan_Desmond 03-07-06, 11:44 PM	You don't get experience just for killing stuff. You get experience by overcoming anything that has a challenger rating. Combat encounters fall into that category, but so can anything else. The most notable example is traps (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/traps.htm#challengeRatingOfATrap). Every trap should have a challenge rating, and when the PC's overcome that trap - by disarming it, smashing it, or simply sneaking past it - they get experience based on its challenge rating, exactly the same as they would for killing a monster. The challenge rating system is universal - you can apply it to anything. Going to fight some orcs? That encounter has a challenge rating. Going to negotiate with them for safe passage? That encounter should also have a challenge rating. Trying to get past some traps? Challenge Rating. Trying to pick the guard's pocket? That has a challenge rating. Trying to impress a crowd with your music? It's got a challenge rating. Trying to decode the arcane runes in the temple? That's got a challenge rating too. The key thing is, any time you set an obstacle of any kind for the PC's to overcome you can give that obstacle a challenge rating, and grant experience awards as appropriate for the party's level. Just estimate the difficulty based on the PC's abilities and difficulty, which shouldn't be too hard since the Monster CR's are just rough estimates anyway. This is true, so now all you have to do is figure out what the challenge rating is. The best way to figure out what the challenge rating is is to first determine what skill is needed to solve the problem. Then figure out who in the party has the highest bonus with that skill. Next compare that character's bonus the the DC to figure out what that character will need to roll on a D20 to succeed. If this number is higher than 10 than the CR will be higher than the chracters level (how much higher is up to you) and if its lower than 10 than the CR will be lower than the characters level (once again, up to you how much). If it comes to an even 10, than the CR is the characters level. I've found this to be the best way to determine and award XP for using a skill. If it works for you, use it, if not, don't. Good luck and happy gaming to all!
JulesCARV 03-08-06, 12:41 AM	Here's what I say: figure out how quickly you want your characters to advance. Say, a level for every 15 hours of play is good. Then award them experience at roughly the rate that will level them up that quickly. So, for example, if your sessions are three hours long, and they're 5th level, so they need to go from 10,000 to 15,000 experience to level up, award them about 1000 experience per session. Then, apply modifiers based on how much fun you guys had and how well you played the game. You were all staying in character and portrayed them persuasively, were brilliant deductive minds, were brilliant strategists in combat, and advanced the story faster than expected? Give the players all 2000 experience. They were arguing half the time out of character, missed a lot of clues, ended up running screaming from a level 1 kobold warrior due to terrible organization, and stalled the story? 400 experience per person. Then have an individual experience modifier, for the individuals rather than the group as a whole, to reward brilliant roleplaying and punish argumentative B.S., metagaming, etc: these should be no more than 10-20% of the group as a whole. I.e., if the base experience for everyone is 1000 experience, don't reduce individual experience below 800 or increase it above 1200. You want the party as a whole to be of roughly comparable level. In fact, individual modifiers should usually not be used at all: they should be exceptions to the usual rule of awarding the party experience as a whole based on whole-game quality and storyline advancement, pulled out in rare cases of individual roleplaying brilliance, obstructive arguing with the DM, or bribing the DM.