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Experience Point Question

Post/Author/DateTime Post
#1
-Aribeth-
Jun 30, 2009 12:06:19 Hello,

Does anyone know of an "official" ruling that allows a character to take less than awarded experience points?

In other words for example, taking the "low" experience award when the character/party successfully completed the mod on "high".

The reason why I am asking is that I am planning to play at an upcoming convention and some mods that I want to play are not being offered and I do not want to force a party to play low or sit out of a gaming session just to keep my experience point total underneath a certain threshold.

Aribeth
#2
smerwin29
Jun 30, 2009 12:20:17 You must take the XP and treasure of the tier you played. You cannot take less XP than you earned. This was discussed on these forums at some point, but it might have been months ago.

Thanks,

Shawn
LFR Global Admin
#3
-Aribeth-
Jun 30, 2009 12:35:06 Thanks for the quick reply....

Any chance to have that position change or is it set in concrete?

Aribeth
#4
telvin3d
Jun 30, 2009 12:55:56 I think you earn what you earn. If you don't want your character to level out of a certain range then I'd suggest you play a different character.
#5
amysrevenge
Jun 30, 2009 13:26:40 Beyond requiring that a person take the reward that they actually played for, one of the main reasonings you'll hear behind the ruling is that if you were to take the low XP and the high gold, you will end up having more wealth for your level than anyone else.

On paper it sounds right, but in practise I suspect that the difference would be very small, and would be far more than outweighed by the choice of the level of items you take for found items.

Just taking the low tier as an example, consider the following cases:

1) Playing low every time, taking the proper low rewards. Someone taking 400 xp and 125 gp and 4 found items all the way to level 5 will have 1250 gp upon hitting level 5

2) Playing low at levels 1 and 2, playing high at levels 3 and 4, taking the proper rewards each time and choosing one magic item at each level. Someone taking 400 xp and 125 gold for levels 1-2 and 560 xp and 175 gold for levels 3-4 will have 1300 gp upon hitting 5th level.

3) Playing high every time, and taking the proper rewards. Someone taking 560 xp and 175 gp will have 1050 gp upon hitting 5th level.

4) Consider this time the case of someone playing high, taking the treasure reward of the high level, but only taking the xp reward for low level. Someone taking 400 xp (low) and 175 gold (high) and 4 found items will have 1750 gold upon hitting level 5.

Player #4 ends up with 450 gold more than should be possible by level 5. Sounds terrible, right? Only, we're forgetting one thing. The value of the 4 found items. This can vary from four level 1 items (total value 1440 gp) to four level 7 items (total value 10,400 gp). Thus, the minimum expected legitimate wealth at level 5 is 2490 gp, and the maximum is 11,700 gp. I'm just not seeing the huge impact of 450 gold, less than 5% of the possible disparity in PC wealth that can already exist within the system. :P
#6
kenobi65
Jun 30, 2009 13:54:04 Conceptually, I just don't see how you can "pass" on taking some XP.

Treasure / gold pieces are a concrete thing. Conceptually, your character could say, "no, I won't take some of that gold you're offering me."

Experience points are an abstraction of the learning you gain from your experiences. I don't see how you can justify saying, "I'll take a pass on learning some of the things I learned from fighting those trolls."

I'd be very, very surprised if the policy were changed.
#7
ibixat
Jun 30, 2009 21:19:32
Conceptually, I just don't see how you can "pass" on taking some XP.

Treasure / gold pieces are a concrete thing. Conceptually, your character could say, "no, I won't take some of that gold you're offering me."

Experience points are an abstraction of the learning you gain from your experiences. I don't see how you can justify saying, "I'll take a pass on learning some of the things I learned from fighting those trolls."

I'd be very, very surprised if the policy were changed.

You could always try your best to die before the end of the last fight in every mod, take charity of death and basically suck for all eternity due to the -1's and lack of bundle choices.
#8
kinevon
Jun 30, 2009 23:28:00
You could always try your best to die before the end of the last fight in every mod, take charity of death and basically suck for all eternity due to the -1's and lack of bundle choices.

Not to mention lack of gold, since you don't get ANY rewards except the half XP for dying during a mod for that mod...
#9
ibixat
Jul 01, 2009 9:17:35
Not to mention lack of gold, since you don't get ANY rewards except the half XP for dying during a mod for that mod...

True, if the reward would be more than 500g you could pay for a res and still get the gold rewards at least as well.
#10
Vamroc
Jul 01, 2009 13:58:30
Beyond requiring that a person take the reward that they actually played for, one of the main reasonings you'll hear behind the ruling is that if you were to take the low XP and the high gold, you will end up having more wealth for your level than anyone else.

On paper it sounds right, but in practise I suspect that the difference would be very small, and would be far more than outweighed by the choice of the level of items you take for found items.

Just taking the low tier as an example, consider the following cases:

1) Playing low every time, taking the proper low rewards. Someone taking 400 xp and 125 gp and 4 found items all the way to level 5 will have 1250 gp upon hitting level 5

2) Playing low at levels 1 and 2, playing high at levels 3 and 4, taking the proper rewards each time and choosing one magic item at each level. Someone taking 400 xp and 125 gold for levels 1-2 and 560 xp and 175 gold for levels 3-4 will have 1300 gp upon hitting 5th level.

3) Playing high every time, and taking the proper rewards. Someone taking 560 xp and 175 gp will have 1050 gp upon hitting 5th level.

4) Consider this time the case of someone playing high, taking the treasure reward of the high level, but only taking the xp reward for low level. Someone taking 400 xp (low) and 175 gold (high) and 4 found items will have 1750 gold upon hitting level 5.

Player #4 ends up with 450 gold more than should be possible by level 5. Sounds terrible, right? Only, we're forgetting one thing. The value of the 4 found items. This can vary from four level 1 items (total value 1440 gp) to four level 7 items (total value 10,400 gp). Thus, the minimum expected legitimate wealth at level 5 is 2490 gp, and the maximum is 11,700 gp. I'm just not seeing the huge impact of 450 gold, less than 5% of the possible disparity in PC wealth that can already exist within the system. :P

Your factoring in items at each level if somebody played low, didn't take items, then the total climbs to 3,175 now he starts 4-7 getting magic items every couple of mods. It puts him at 3,775 if he starts saving slots again he he'll have 5775 at 7th level now we get 7-10 gold at this level is just plain sick. If my calculations are on target this gives the PC 12,775 at 10th or slightly less if items are choosen but he can play untill eleventh. So it should give him another 2k in gold this puts him way above the normal curve. At Paragon level he'll be close 1,000 per mod and when he gets to 30,000 at about 14th or 15th level he could buy an Air Ship. Think about the devestation that can bring to a fight PCs can just carpet bomb targets with easy and the odds of fighting dragons or drakes every mod is pretty slim.
#11
bgibbons
Jul 01, 2009 14:50:11
You must take the XP and treasure of the tier you played. You cannot take less XP than you earned. This was discussed on these forums at some point, but it might have been months ago.

I agree that this is the rule, and generally I'm against people being able to game the system to prolong their PC's career.

However, in this instance, I would find it difficult to see any problems resulting from a rule along the lines of:
"Even if the party chooses to play the high-tier version of an adventure, an individual PC is free to declare that they are playing low. This does not change the combats or challenges the group faces, but that PC receives only the experience, gold and bundle options available as if they had played the low-tier version of the adventure. This must be declared at the beginning of the adventure, and is all or nothing: the PC cannot, for example, decide to take the gold reward of the high-tier version and the other rewards of low-tier, or receive a bundle not available at low-tier; the PC receives exactly the rewards that would have been available if the group had played the low-tier version of the adventure."
#12
amysrevenge
Jul 01, 2009 15:12:42
this puts him way above the normal curve.

The problem is that absolute gp amounts are not what are important. Expected wealth scales very fast with level.

In my example, by the time a PC doing the "cheater" way reaches level 4, he is ahead by about a level 2 magic item (which is 560 gold). If the rewards all scale roughly the same as levels go up, then you'd expect the same PC at level 14 to be ahead by about the value of a 12th level item (13,000 gp) and at 24th level to be ahead by the value of a 22nd level item (325,000 gp). Sound like a lot, 325,000 gp, doesn't it? But you're really only effectively ahead by the same amount as the level 4 guy with an extra 560 gold.
#13
gamersgambit
Jul 08, 2009 13:05:50 This is a silly rule, and it should definately be changed.

I run a vast number of events at my store--12 or more a week. One of the biggest problems I have, and it continues to be a problem, are players who want to play favorite characters, usually with other people, but who cannot simply because they've levelled out of a range. I have adventuring groups which have never met their adventuring group leaders because they can't catch up with them.

Most players want to play on high not so much because of the *rewards* but because the mods are *too easy* for them on low. They're glad to take the lower XP, item, and gold rewards (I would say you can only choose to take both low, not just low XP; that would be cheating). But if you want to fight tougher monsters for less reward, that should be your choice. You are facing a greater risk for less stuff. You are not stopping the people who want to play up and gain up from gaining what they want.

The *ONLY* thing about this that I believe could be considered "cheating" is the fact that these PCs may receive more story awards from their careers due to being able to play in more mods and, frankly? I don't see a problem with that. This is a roleplaying game, if they get more roleplaying opportunities, more power to them.

The gold piece curve is pretty irrelevant, because in my opinion you can only take the low XP if you also take the low gold and low item choices. That just makes sense; else players have the opportunity to gain all sorts of items that they might not otherwise avail themselves of.

I don't see the problem with players "prolonging their PC's career"...what's the point of this game we are playing anyway?
#14
szwanger
Jul 08, 2009 13:53:28 If players want less XP, they can play low tier and ask the DM to use DME to make the adventure more challenging.
#15
bgibbons
Jul 08, 2009 15:30:38 I was both amused and slightly confused by a question at the end of AKAN1-4:
3) At what tier did the PCs play this adventure?
a) Low
b) High
c) It was run at a mix of low and high.

I was previously unaware that the last was an option, being under the impression that tiering was an all-or-nothing deal.
#16
Dragon9
Jul 08, 2009 16:14:03 Well, if the players decided to play low and thought it was too easy, the DM could throw the high tier encounters at them. (it's within the rules for DME) So i guess they could mean that.
#17
gamersgambit
Jul 08, 2009 23:36:17 Switching between low and high tiers is actually pretty simple; there's nothing in the rules I've seen that prohibits it--the group gets high XP for those encounters they did on high; low for those they did on low; and the treasure bundles from the encounters as listed.

As for playing low with DME to make it harder, I get that. Problem is when you're at a table where there's a split of player opinion on playing low vs. playing high; and when the split of opinion is not about the mod's difficulty but about players' desire to not level out of a level range.
#18
Madfox11
Jul 09, 2009 4:14:43
Switching between low and high tiers is actually pretty simple; there's nothing in the rules I've seen that prohibits it--the group gets high XP for those encounters they did on high; low for those they did on low; and the treasure bundles from the encounters as listed.

Actually, each tier has a cap on xp and gp and different treasure bundles. DME allows a DM to change the challenge of a fight, but it does not allow a change in gold and xp, let alone treasure bundles. A group has to pick high or low for all rewards, and you cannot mix the two. If they picked low, and the DM decides to change to high half way, the DM either picks high (probably giving less then the max) or low (by the book getting an overcap). Personally I tend to discuss this with the players beforehand. Changing a tier midway is asking for trouble.

I have run "mixed" tiers btw. The players said that they felt high was going to be too challenging, but low not challenging enough. So they asked me to use low tier awards, and upgrade the challenge on average by 1 level. When I had to tell in a questionaire what it was I would have gone for a mix of the two ;)

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 -Aribeth- Jun 30, 2009 12:06:19	Hello, Does anyone know of an "official" ruling that allows a character to take less than awarded experience points? In other words for example, taking the "low" experience award when the character/party successfully completed the mod on "high". The reason why I am asking is that I am planning to play at an upcoming convention and some mods that I want to play are not being offered and I do not want to force a party to play low or sit out of a gaming session just to keep my experience point total underneath a certain threshold. Aribeth
#2 smerwin29 Jun 30, 2009 12:20:17	You must take the XP and treasure of the tier you played. You cannot take less XP than you earned. This was discussed on these forums at some point, but it might have been months ago. Thanks, Shawn LFR Global Admin
#3 -Aribeth- Jun 30, 2009 12:35:06	Thanks for the quick reply.... Any chance to have that position change or is it set in concrete? Aribeth
#4 telvin3d Jun 30, 2009 12:55:56	I think you earn what you earn. If you don't want your character to level out of a certain range then I'd suggest you play a different character.
#5 amysrevenge Jun 30, 2009 13:26:40	Beyond requiring that a person take the reward that they actually played for, one of the main reasonings you'll hear behind the ruling is that if you were to take the low XP and the high gold, you will end up having more wealth for your level than anyone else. On paper it sounds right, but in practise I suspect that the difference would be very small, and would be far more than outweighed by the choice of the level of items you take for found items. Just taking the low tier as an example, consider the following cases: 1) Playing low every time, taking the proper low rewards. Someone taking 400 xp and 125 gp and 4 found items all the way to level 5 will have 1250 gp upon hitting level 5 2) Playing low at levels 1 and 2, playing high at levels 3 and 4, taking the proper rewards each time and choosing one magic item at each level. Someone taking 400 xp and 125 gold for levels 1-2 and 560 xp and 175 gold for levels 3-4 will have 1300 gp upon hitting 5th level. 3) Playing high every time, and taking the proper rewards. Someone taking 560 xp and 175 gp will have 1050 gp upon hitting 5th level. 4) Consider this time the case of someone playing high, taking the treasure reward of the high level, but only taking the xp reward for low level. Someone taking 400 xp (low) and 175 gold (high) and 4 found items will have 1750 gold upon hitting level 5. Player #4 ends up with 450 gold more than should be possible by level 5. Sounds terrible, right? Only, we're forgetting one thing. The value of the 4 found items. This can vary from four level 1 items (total value 1440 gp) to four level 7 items (total value 10,400 gp). Thus, the minimum expected legitimate wealth at level 5 is 2490 gp, and the maximum is 11,700 gp. I'm just not seeing the huge impact of 450 gold, less than 5% of the possible disparity in PC wealth that can already exist within the system. :P
#6 kenobi65 Jun 30, 2009 13:54:04	Conceptually, I just don't see how you can "pass" on taking some XP. Treasure / gold pieces are a concrete thing. Conceptually, your character could say, "no, I won't take some of that gold you're offering me." Experience points are an abstraction of the learning you gain from your experiences. I don't see how you can justify saying, "I'll take a pass on learning some of the things I learned from fighting those trolls." I'd be very, very surprised if the policy were changed.
#7 ibixat Jun 30, 2009 21:19:32	Conceptually, I just don't see how you can "pass" on taking some XP. Treasure / gold pieces are a concrete thing. Conceptually, your character could say, "no, I won't take some of that gold you're offering me." Experience points are an abstraction of the learning you gain from your experiences. I don't see how you can justify saying, "I'll take a pass on learning some of the things I learned from fighting those trolls." I'd be very, very surprised if the policy were changed. You could always try your best to die before the end of the last fight in every mod, take charity of death and basically suck for all eternity due to the -1's and lack of bundle choices.
#8 kinevon Jun 30, 2009 23:28:00	You could always try your best to die before the end of the last fight in every mod, take charity of death and basically suck for all eternity due to the -1's and lack of bundle choices. Not to mention lack of gold, since you don't get ANY rewards except the half XP for dying during a mod for that mod...
#9 ibixat Jul 01, 2009 9:17:35	Not to mention lack of gold, since you don't get ANY rewards except the half XP for dying during a mod for that mod... True, if the reward would be more than 500g you could pay for a res and still get the gold rewards at least as well.
#10 Vamroc Jul 01, 2009 13:58:30	Beyond requiring that a person take the reward that they actually played for, one of the main reasonings you'll hear behind the ruling is that if you were to take the low XP and the high gold, you will end up having more wealth for your level than anyone else. On paper it sounds right, but in practise I suspect that the difference would be very small, and would be far more than outweighed by the choice of the level of items you take for found items. Just taking the low tier as an example, consider the following cases: 1) Playing low every time, taking the proper low rewards. Someone taking 400 xp and 125 gp and 4 found items all the way to level 5 will have 1250 gp upon hitting level 5 2) Playing low at levels 1 and 2, playing high at levels 3 and 4, taking the proper rewards each time and choosing one magic item at each level. Someone taking 400 xp and 125 gold for levels 1-2 and 560 xp and 175 gold for levels 3-4 will have 1300 gp upon hitting 5th level. 3) Playing high every time, and taking the proper rewards. Someone taking 560 xp and 175 gp will have 1050 gp upon hitting 5th level. 4) Consider this time the case of someone playing high, taking the treasure reward of the high level, but only taking the xp reward for low level. Someone taking 400 xp (low) and 175 gold (high) and 4 found items will have 1750 gold upon hitting level 5. Player #4 ends up with 450 gold more than should be possible by level 5. Sounds terrible, right? Only, we're forgetting one thing. The value of the 4 found items. This can vary from four level 1 items (total value 1440 gp) to four level 7 items (total value 10,400 gp). Thus, the minimum expected legitimate wealth at level 5 is 2490 gp, and the maximum is 11,700 gp. I'm just not seeing the huge impact of 450 gold, less than 5% of the possible disparity in PC wealth that can already exist within the system. :P Your factoring in items at each level if somebody played low, didn't take items, then the total climbs to 3,175 now he starts 4-7 getting magic items every couple of mods. It puts him at 3,775 if he starts saving slots again he he'll have 5775 at 7th level now we get 7-10 gold at this level is just plain sick. If my calculations are on target this gives the PC 12,775 at 10th or slightly less if items are choosen but he can play untill eleventh. So it should give him another 2k in gold this puts him way above the normal curve. At Paragon level he'll be close 1,000 per mod and when he gets to 30,000 at about 14th or 15th level he could buy an Air Ship. Think about the devestation that can bring to a fight PCs can just carpet bomb targets with easy and the odds of fighting dragons or drakes every mod is pretty slim.
#11 bgibbons Jul 01, 2009 14:50:11	You must take the XP and treasure of the tier you played. You cannot take less XP than you earned. This was discussed on these forums at some point, but it might have been months ago. I agree that this is the rule, and generally I'm against people being able to game the system to prolong their PC's career. However, in this instance, I would find it difficult to see any problems resulting from a rule along the lines of: "Even if the party chooses to play the high-tier version of an adventure, an individual PC is free to declare that they are playing low. This does not change the combats or challenges the group faces, but that PC receives only the experience, gold and bundle options available as if they had played the low-tier version of the adventure. This must be declared at the beginning of the adventure, and is all or nothing: the PC cannot, for example, decide to take the gold reward of the high-tier version and the other rewards of low-tier, or receive a bundle not available at low-tier; the PC receives exactly the rewards that would have been available if the group had played the low-tier version of the adventure."
#12 amysrevenge Jul 01, 2009 15:12:42	this puts him way above the normal curve. The problem is that absolute gp amounts are not what are important. Expected wealth scales very fast with level. In my example, by the time a PC doing the "cheater" way reaches level 4, he is ahead by about a level 2 magic item (which is 560 gold). If the rewards all scale roughly the same as levels go up, then you'd expect the same PC at level 14 to be ahead by about the value of a 12th level item (13,000 gp) and at 24th level to be ahead by the value of a 22nd level item (325,000 gp). Sound like a lot, 325,000 gp, doesn't it? But you're really only effectively ahead by the same amount as the level 4 guy with an extra 560 gold.
#13 gamersgambit Jul 08, 2009 13:05:50	This is a silly rule, and it should definately be changed. I run a vast number of events at my store--12 or more a week. One of the biggest problems I have, and it continues to be a problem, are players who want to play favorite characters, usually with other people, but who cannot simply because they've levelled out of a range. I have adventuring groups which have never met their adventuring group leaders because they can't catch up with them. Most players want to play on high not so much because of the rewards but because the mods are too easy for them on low. They're glad to take the lower XP, item, and gold rewards (I would say you can only choose to take both low, not just low XP; that would be cheating). But if you want to fight tougher monsters for less reward, that should be your choice. You are facing a greater risk for less stuff. You are not stopping the people who want to play up and gain up from gaining what they want. The ONLY thing about this that I believe could be considered "cheating" is the fact that these PCs may receive more story awards from their careers due to being able to play in more mods and, frankly? I don't see a problem with that. This is a roleplaying game, if they get more roleplaying opportunities, more power to them. The gold piece curve is pretty irrelevant, because in my opinion you can only take the low XP if you also take the low gold and low item choices. That just makes sense; else players have the opportunity to gain all sorts of items that they might not otherwise avail themselves of. I don't see the problem with players "prolonging their PC's career"...what's the point of this game we are playing anyway?
#14 szwanger Jul 08, 2009 13:53:28	If players want less XP, they can play low tier and ask the DM to use DME to make the adventure more challenging.
#15 bgibbons Jul 08, 2009 15:30:38	I was both amused and slightly confused by a question at the end of AKAN1-4: 3) At what tier did the PCs play this adventure? a) Low b) High c) It was run at a mix of low and high. I was previously unaware that the last was an option, being under the impression that tiering was an all-or-nothing deal.
#16 Dragon9 Jul 08, 2009 16:14:03	Well, if the players decided to play low and thought it was too easy, the DM could throw the high tier encounters at them. (it's within the rules for DME) So i guess they could mean that.
#17 gamersgambit Jul 08, 2009 23:36:17	Switching between low and high tiers is actually pretty simple; there's nothing in the rules I've seen that prohibits it--the group gets high XP for those encounters they did on high; low for those they did on low; and the treasure bundles from the encounters as listed. As for playing low with DME to make it harder, I get that. Problem is when you're at a table where there's a split of player opinion on playing low vs. playing high; and when the split of opinion is not about the mod's difficulty but about players' desire to not level out of a level range.
#18 Madfox11 Jul 09, 2009 4:14:43	Switching between low and high tiers is actually pretty simple; there's nothing in the rules I've seen that prohibits it--the group gets high XP for those encounters they did on high; low for those they did on low; and the treasure bundles from the encounters as listed. Actually, each tier has a cap on xp and gp and different treasure bundles. DME allows a DM to change the challenge of a fight, but it does not allow a change in gold and xp, let alone treasure bundles. A group has to pick high or low for all rewards, and you cannot mix the two. If they picked low, and the DM decides to change to high half way, the DM either picks high (probably giving less then the max) or low (by the book getting an overcap). Personally I tend to discuss this with the players beforehand. Changing a tier midway is asking for trouble. I have run "mixed" tiers btw. The players said that they felt high was going to be too challenging, but low not challenging enough. So they asked me to use low tier awards, and upgrade the challenge on average by 1 level. When I had to tell in a questionaire what it was I would have gone for a mix of the two ;)