Quick question about experience points...

[Mike]

Hi there,

Page 17 of Characters & Combat discusses the experience value of defeated foes based on the level of the enemy monster (which I take to mean hit dice). It also rates monsters (I'm guessing with less than one hit die) as level A, B and C. I don't see reference to this info in the Book of Monsters.

Am I missing something?

Thanks

[Mike]

Yep, I was missing the detailed explanation on page 14 of the campaign book!

[oakesspalding]

Hey, Mike. Yeah, as you may have noticed, the Zylarthen scheme tracks the Swords & Wizardry scheme, but it's 2 off. S&W takes the number of hit dice and then adds 1 or 2 (or perhaps even 3), based on special attacks and powers, etc. I do the same but start out by subtracting 2 from the hit dice. That's why I have A, B and C as opposed to just starting off at 1.

I did this for two reasons. First, it fits symmetrically with level difficulty. Ideally, ONE Level 1 creature would be a good match for 1st level adventurers on, well, the 1st level of the dungeon.

Second, I wanted a simple monster experience point system where you simply multiplied the monster level by some constant number to get the total. 100 seemed simplest, and was the scheme in the little brown books. But if you start at "Level 1" (as opposed to "Level 1" actually being 4th in the progression), you end up with monster experience point totals being (in my view) too high, at least at lower levels.

Frankly, I think the labels "A", "B" and "C" are a bit awkward. I considered "-2", "-1" and "0" but felt that that would be even more awkward and confusing. I wonder if there is a better set of alternatives.

[jdjarvis]

A,B,C works well enough. I suppose you could have gone descriptive with something like Nusiance, Rabble, and Apprentice/Man@arms but those would likely get shorhanded down to letter codes anyway to mesh with numbers and be less intuitive as alphabetical order.

[Mike]

Thanks for the additional explanation.

I'm yet to play my first game but I am wondering: as experience points for defeating enemies plays such a small part in the total xp award, is it worth the effort of going into this much detail?