Experience Required for Continued Advancement

[Deleted]

Mar 23, 2015 11:23:23 GMT -6 @gronanofsimmerya said:

"Let's see, you've got 35,000 GP. You fought mostly 5th and 6th level stuff, so anybody 6th level or below gets full XP. Robilar is 9th level, he'll get 2/3 XP, Gronan is 8th level, he'll get 3/4 XP."

So, average monster level versus actual individual PC level. Go it!

Mar 23, 2015 9:47:34 GMT -6 Red Baron said:

Henchman shares of gold and experience come from their liege-player's share, so don't forget to take those out.

Where does this come from? I've never seen it done this way. Wouldn't that greatly discourage getting henchmen in the first place?

[Red Baron]

Mar 24, 2015 10:09:04 GMT -6 @hedgehobbit said:

Mar 23, 2015 9:47:34 GMT -6 Red Baron said:

Henchman shares of gold and experience come from their liege-player's share, so don't forget to take those out.

Where does this come from? I've never seen it done this way.

The DMG I believe. I do not believe OD&D specifies how henchman are paid. Fixed prices are given for hirelings and special hirelings in TU&WA.

Mar 24, 2015 10:09:04 GMT -6 @hedgehobbit said:

Wouldn't that greatly discourage getting henchmen in the first place?

Not at all. An 8th level magic-user can do a lot more if he has a hero or two along with him, than he can all on his own.

If anything the reverse is true, as otherwise other player characters are receiving a smaller share of money and experience just because one of them wanted to bring his lackey. Yes they may benefit from the lackey being there, but only as an extension of the other player character's presence. Having henchmen take a share of their liege's wealth encourages every player to determine the extent of his personal retinue.

Henchman shares should typically be small enough anyhow. 10% of their liege's share is perfectly reasonable if they are several levels below their liege, as the henchman will have the opportunity to gain more gold than they could ever possibly do on their own: 10% of a hoard 10x larger + magical items + upkeep&expenses covered is a tasty deal for a henchman. 

[scottyg]

The only thing the DMG states is that henchmen get half a share each. It does not state it comes out of their boss's share.

[Red Baron]

Let me check my copy .

I remember offers of henchman-ship status requiring an offer of shares by the player character.

I wouldn't think that you could offer "party shares" to gain personal employment.

[Deleted]

Once again the way we ACTUALLY played was divvy it up by the actual number of characters who could advance.

So, Robilar, Tenser, Gronan, and 5 NPCs we'd divvy the treasure 8 ways. After all, the two NPC swashbuckers were protecting everyone, the NPC cleric healed whoever needed it, etc.

Mercenaries, etc, weren't much of a problem to pay after first or second level.

[Scott Anderson]

So NPCs with class and level got a full share?

[Torreny]

Mar 23, 2015 16:35:25 GMT -6 Red Baron said:

I actually have the tax collectors for my renamed-blackmoor village written up, in case the players realize that their a huge chest of gold there ready for the taking.

Go bury it with a friendly draugr in the garden.

I think the Tax Collector class wouldn't be that far off from the Mugger class...

[Deleted]

Mar 25, 2015 16:46:23 GMT -6 Scott Anderson said:

So NPCs with class and level got a full share?

If you thought you could get away with less you might try it, but NPC loyalty was always in flux. Shortchanging your henchmen was a great way to get them to desert.

[Scott Anderson]

Conceptually, it seems to me that management ought to have a bigger stake. I do half shares for NPC's with class and level because they don't actually have to do any thinking. But your NPC treasure hunters sound more like DMPCs.

[tetramorph]

I got used to how austinjimm has house ruled things in his Planet Eris campaign. He must have ruled it back from 1e, I guess, I've never played it.

He has a distinction between retainers and henchmen where retainers are 0th lvl things like shield-bearers, men-at-arms, porters, torch-bearers, cooks, etc. Henchmen are lvl1+, you have to be a certain lvl for them even to be willing to be hired by you.

With his retainers, they are all 10% of your share of the treasure and something like 1 sp per diem. Henchmen, on the other hand, are a ½ share of treasure and 1 gp per diem. In terms of XP he gives retainers ¼ and henchmen ½ shares, respectively.

This he considers base standard. If you want to "sweeten the deal" to positively affect reaction rolls for hire or to positively affect loyalty after you have hired them then the stakes go up from there.

[Zenopus]

Mar 21, 2015 19:40:34 GMT -6 Zenopus said:

Mar 21, 2015 17:23:29 GMT -6 @gronanofsimmerya said:

I'll be darned, it's not in there.

I'll tell you how Gary actually played it; after name level, each additional level was the cost of originally getting to name level.

a 9th level Patriarch needed 100,000 XP to get from 8th to 9th level, and an additional 100,00 if they wanted to go from 9th to 10th, etc.

A 10th level Lord needed 240,000 XP to get from 9th to 10th level, and an additional 240,000 XP per level.

An 11th level Wizard needed 300,000 XP to get from 11th to 12th level, then an additional 300,000 XP per level.

Combine this with XP from gold, and dividing the monster level by your level... that is, a 9th level Lord killing some trolls would get only 2/3 XP per gold piece (troll level/lord level, 6/9, 2/3) ... and you see that advancement, though not technically capped, effectively grinds to a halt. You start to need millions of gold to level up.

Thanks for the info gronan. I'd wondered about this before.

These numbers seem to fit well with the Alternate Hit Dice system in Greyhawk.

Fighters - 240,000 XP per level above 9th, +2 HP per level (= 120,000 XP per additional HP)
MU - 300,000 XP per level above 11th, +1 HP per level (= 300,000 XP per additional HP)
Clerics - 100,000 XP per level above 8th, +1/2 HP per level (= 200,000 XP per additional HP)
Thieves - 125,000 XP per level above 10th, +1/2 HP per level (= 250,000 XP per additional HP)

So Fighters need the least XP for additional HPs over name level, followed by Clerics, Thieves and then MUs, which all seems appropriate.

Not that we should be fussing over small HP increases at these levels.

I just noticed that the original Strategic Review versions of the Ranger (Summer 1975) and Illusionist (Winter 1975) conform to the same pattern pointed out by Gronan.

Rangers need 275,000 XP for name level (10th, Ranger-Lord) and then the same amount for each level after.

Illusionists need 175,000 XP for name level (9th, Illusionist) and then the same amount for each level after.

[Fearghus]

Mar 26, 2015 21:41:58 GMT -6 Zenopus said:

I just noticed that the original Strategic Review versions of the Ranger (Summer 1975) and Illusionist (Winter 1975) conform to the same pattern pointed out by Gronan.

Rangers need 275,000 XP for name level (10th, Ranger-Lord) and then the same amount for each level after.

Illusionists need 175,000 XP for name level (9th, Illusionist) and then the same amount for each level after.

Good find. Thank you. Are they significantly different than their AD&D versions?

[Zenopus]

They are similar but simpler.

Sieg transcribed them on DF long ago. See this thread for links: www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=4132

* * * * *

The Alchemist from Dragon #2 (Aug 1976) also follows this pattern, 150,000 XP for name level (9th, Alchemist) and then the same amount for each level afterwards.

[countingwizard]

I've done some mathematical calculations to determine how house ruling reduced experience (with a simpler flat reduction rule) might effect advancement.

First let's look at the assumptions:

1. I thought it reasonable that the occurrence of creatures and challenges within a world (or dungeon) would be increasingly rare the higher in level or difficulty they were. I weighted each level of creature by a percentage chance that they would be encountered by a group of adventurers. I did not thoroughly analyze the actual encounter charts, but it is easy to update my calculation with more accurate percentages. Below are the percentages:
   
   50% of a group's xp (in all adventures) will be obtained from level 1 sources
   25% from level 2 sources
   12.50% from level 3 sources
   6.25% from level 4 sources
   3.13% from level 5 sources
   1.57% from level 6 sources
   0.79% from level 7 sources
   0.40% from level 8 sources
   0.20% from level 9 sources
   0.16% from level 10 (or higher) sources
   
   
2. The actual amount of treasure or xp per monster was not considered in this formula. One would expect higher level creatures to have more valuable treasures than a level 1 monster, but I wasn't about to go creating a probability table of value of treasure for each treasure type found with each monster.
3. Only levels 1 through 10 were evaluated.
4. House rules would reduce experience as follows: Any experience earned from a lower level source would be at a flat % of original experience earned. A level 4 earning experience from a level 3 source would earn 50% of the experience if I was using a 50% rule.

The Results:




What this means is that under the standard LBB rules, from level 6 to 7 a player is earning experience at about 33% the normal rate if they weren't using the experience reduction rules. The flat experience reduction house rules are comparable to the more detailed breakdown outlined in the LBB. The primary differences are that eventually the experience penalty levels off with the flat rule; like using the 75% rule, players will never gain experience at less than 75% the original rate (even at like level 20). The standard LBB rules would have far more of an impact at levels above 10. At a flat rule rate of less than 50%, lower levels would find it far more difficult to get to the next level. For example, at a 25% flat rate, it would take more treasure and monster killing to reach level 9 compared to the LBB rules, but after level 9 it would take less treasure and monster killing to reach additional levels compared to the LBB.

Depending on what your views on experience penalties are, this calculation and chart could be useful in deciding how to handle them.

My view is that players should find it fairly easy to reach level 4 (I consider this to be the most fun level to be in a D&D campaign), and progressively more difficult to reach higher levels. I view the game as more rewarding for the adventure and narrative/interactive experience than watching my numbers go up. I also think that calculating experience should be much simpler and faster than the LBB describes. I think my flat experience penalty house rule would remove much of the headache that the standard LBB rules add to experience calculation, while allowing character growth to be throttled as was originally intended. There would still be the issue of characters progressing beyond level 10 due to increased rewards due to strength of the character and their foes, but this is something I was not aiming to address at this point.

[tetramorph]

Nice, countingwizard.

Another way to approximate such a move is to make it a flat "next lvl means double the last XP you needed to lvl" rule, rather than the funkily changing rates of the original rules.

That makes getting to lvl 4 pretty do-able (as you like) with FM: 8K, MU 10K and CL 6K.

But it makes higher levels become relatively astronomical to achieve, e.g. lvl 10: FM 512K, MU 640K, CL 384K.

I'm trying this out with my new Wed pm game.

[countingwizard]

I analyzed tetramorph's method and compared the standard leveling rules (w/out xp penalties) and found that level gain remains unchanged for Fighting Men and Clerics until level 8, and from that point on it becomes increasingly harder to level up compared to the standard LBB experience charts.









Magic-Users are the only class actually effected by this rule change, since starting at level 5 it starts getting crazy hard for them to level due to their original experience charts using a non-standard pattern. For example, a Magic-User under the double-required-xp rule would level at about 80% the normal rate from level 5 to 6, 40% the normal rate from level 6 to 7, 30% the normal rate from level 7 to 8, and less than 20% the normal rate from level 8 to 9.



Using the double-the-xp-required rule, magic-users in particular will be penalized heavily starting at level 5, while everyone else gains experience at a very similar rate to a "no experience penalty" rule until level 8. These don't come close to approximating the effect of the original rules. 


This isn't to say that it is a bad idea. I think the more informed a DM is about the effects of a change in rules, the better their judgment can be.

[tetramorph]

countingwizard, that is an awesome and helpful analysis!

Here is something to throw in: I give my MUs access to spells by level. So a level 6 MU can cast a lvl 6 spell, if he can afford the book or can find the spell. MUs have access to spells more swiftly, but fewer spells. So a lvl 6 MU has access to one each of the spells lvl 1-6. They can memorize downward in value but not upward in value. So, a lvl 6 could memorize 6 lvl 6 spells, but only 1 lvl 6 spell. Make sense?

But what that means is that, although it is significantly tougher for a MU to make it to lvl 12, they can still cast "control weather" at lvl 6. So, for me, this tends to balance things out.

[Red Baron]

Feb 11, 2016 11:54:03 GMT -6 tetramorph said:

So, a lvl 6 could memorize 6 lvl 6 spells, but only 1 lvl 6 spell. Make sense?

Not entirely.

[tetramorph]

Red Baron , here is how I word it in my house rules. And, it should be noted, waysoftheearth worked very diligently in helping me to word it in an intelligible way!

Magic-user level indicates total spells able to be memorized per day and spell levels available. So a first-level magic-user may only memorize level-one spells; a sixth-level magic-user may memorize 1 spell each from spell levels 1 -6. A seventh-level magic-user may memorize an additional level-one spell and magic-user levels thereafter build sequentially. So a twelfth-level magic- user may memorize 2 spells each per spell level. A magic-user may memorize a lower level spell instead of a higher level spell but may not memorize a higher level spell instead of a lower level spell, e.g., a second-level magic-user may memorize 1 level-one and 1 level-two spell or 2 level-one spells, but not 2 level-two spells, etc.


Clerics are similar to magic-users in terms of spells but the number and level of spells available for clerics is equal to clerical level subtract one (lvl -1).

[derv]

tetramorph , I think Red Baron was really pointing out what appears to be a typo on your part.

Didn't you actually mean, "So, a lvl 6 could memorize 6 lvl 1 spells, but only 1 lvl 6 spell"?

[tetramorph]

derv, thanks, yes, sorry about the typo. Man, typos really mess things up when you are talking rules!

[Zenopus]

*bump*

Mar 26, 2015 21:41:58 GMT -6 Zenopus said:

Mar 21, 2015 19:40:34 GMT -6 Zenopus said:

Mar 21, 2015 17:23:29 GMT -6 @gronanofsimmerya said:

I'll be darned, it's not in there.

I'll tell you how Gary actually played it; after name level, each additional level was the cost of originally getting to name level.

a 9th level Patriarch needed 100,000 XP to get from 8th to 9th level, and an additional 100,00 if they wanted to go from 9th to 10th, etc.

A 10th level Lord needed 240,000 XP to get from 9th to 10th level, and an additional 240,000 XP per level.

An 11th level Wizard needed 300,000 XP to get from 11th to 12th level, then an additional 300,000 XP per level.

Combine this with XP from gold, and dividing the monster level by your level... that is, a 9th level Lord killing some trolls would get only 2/3 XP per gold piece (troll level/lord level, 6/9, 2/3) ... and you see that advancement, though not technically capped, effectively grinds to a halt. You start to need millions of gold to level up.

Thanks for the info gronan. I'd wondered about this before.

These numbers seem to fit well with the Alternate Hit Dice system in Greyhawk.

Fighters - 240,000 XP per level above 9th, +2 HP per level (= 120,000 XP per additional HP)
MU - 300,000 XP per level above 11th, +1 HP per level (= 300,000 XP per additional HP)
Clerics - 100,000 XP per level above 8th, +1/2 HP per level (= 200,000 XP per additional HP)
Thieves - 125,000 XP per level above 10th, +1/2 HP per level (= 250,000 XP per additional HP)

So Fighters need the least XP for additional HPs over name level, followed by Clerics, Thieves and then MUs, which all seems appropriate.

Not that we should be fussing over small HP increases at these levels.

I just noticed that the original Strategic Review versions of the Ranger (Summer 1975) and Illusionist (Winter 1975) conform to the same pattern pointed out by Gronan.

Rangers need 275,000 XP for name level (10th, Ranger-Lord) and then the same amount for each level after.

Illusionists need 175,000 XP for name level (9th, Illusionist) and then the same amount for each level after.

Mar 27, 2015 19:11:33 GMT -6 Zenopus said:

The Alchemist from Dragon #2 (Aug 1976) also follows this pattern, 150,000 XP for name level (9th, Alchemist) and then the same amount for each level afterwards.

Just came across this written by Glenn Blacow in Alarums & Excursions #15, October 1976:

ON EXPERIENCE POINTS REQUIREMENTS ... I went to ORIGINS II July 23rd-25th and talked with other DMs and with Gygax on the subject. You do need 240,000 EPs for every level of Lord over base, 300,000 for every Wizard level over base, and so on. It looks like demotion time for some characters...

This is merely confirmation of what was reported previously in this thread, but it's nice to have it stated in a 1976 source.

[cometaryorbit]

Mar 16, 2021 16:32:55 GMT -6 Zenopus said:

Just came across this written by Glenn Blacow in Alarums & Excursions #15, October 1976:

ON EXPERIENCE POINTS REQUIREMENTS ... I went to ORIGINS II July 23rd-25th and talked with other DMs and with Gygax on the subject. You do need 240,000 EPs for every level of Lord over base, 300,000 for every Wizard level over base, and so on. It looks like demotion time for some characters...

This is merely confirmation of what was reported previously in this thread, but it's nice to have it stated in a 1976 source.

That's cool to find.

I wonder what the writers & editors of those zines would have thought if you'd told them then we'd be looking for clues in them 45 years later?

[Zenopus]

*bump* for Malchor

I will also add that Gary's OD&D stats for Mordenkainen include a note that confirms that at 14th level MU requires 1,200,000 XP, which is the expected amount if each level after 11th requires 300,000 more XP.

[Zenopus]

The 1973 D&D Draft (aka "Guidon D&D") specifically states this rule on page 15:

Continued accumulation of Experience Points will eventually double the totals required to gain the above ranks, and this will then increase the level one step (12th, 10th, and 9th respectively), and further this progression can continue indefinitely

(The numbers were lower at this point: MU 200,000; F 150,000; Cleric 50,000)