Gaining experience - it's done via several methods. Let's review?
- Experience from Treasure: Self explanatory. There's treasure out there - you get it, and make it back with the treasure, you get 1 XP for every 1 GP value.
- Experience from Creatures: If you defeat a creature by will or weapon, you gain XP based of the difficulty of dealing with that creature.
- Experience from Construction: Constructing a stronghold meant to secure a domain nets you 1 XP per 2 GP spent.
- Experience from Domain Income: Up to a threshold based on your level, you gain 1XP/1GP over that threshold from earnings from the domain.
- Experience from Mercantile Income: You gain 1XP/1GP based off of profits above the threshold for your level from personally leading a trade expedition.
- Experience from Magical Research: If your per-month cost of research (new spell, new magic item, whatever) exceeds your threshold, you gain XP from the difference.
- Experience from Hijinks: This is equivalent to domain income for hijink-running classes - again, thresholds bound it.
- Experience from Spoils of War: Each participant in a battle earns 1 XP per 1 GP they receive in spoils (D@W:C pg 74-75).
- Experience from Command: Each commander in a battle gains XP equal to the difference between the XP value of defeated enemy units and lost friendly units.
All of these methods have something in common - they all include actions that directly interface into a particular subsystem in the game - be that plain old adventuring, domain-related activities, wilderness travel (mercantile ventures) or magical research.
Warfare is directly treated as adventuring; with the added hook of commanders receiving creature-based XP. Note that #8 - experience from spoils - is not bounded by a threshold - it's experience from treasure.
In fact, these boil down into basically five categories:
Experience from... | Doing | Threshold? | Notes | |||
Gaining Treasure
| Adventuring | N | Treasure must be brought back to civilization | |||
Spoils of War | N | Half of total spoils generally goes to commanders, total shared pro-rata | ||||
Defeating Foes
| Combat | N | Personal combat only | |||
Commanding | N | Gained from difference of units defeated vs. units lost | ||||
Gaining Profit
| Ruling a Domain | Y | ||||
Mercantile Ventures | Y | |||||
Managing Hijinks | Y | |||||
Magical Research | ...research | Y | Failed efforts do not gain XP | |||
Construction | Building a Stronghold | N | 1XP/2GP; XP lost if stronghold is lost |
Gaining Treasure is pretty straightforward - there's stuff someone has, and you defeat them and take it. So, also, is Defeating Foes - commanding mass battles takes on a "profit" motive in acting to balance a victory against what it takes to achieve it. One could, perhaps should, apply that to PCs leading mercenaries in quasi-mass combat as well.
Gaining Profit is varied in application, but in each case the character is assumed to be the leader of a larger group performing a task on his or her behalf, more or less - either simply living their lives to pay taxes (domain rulership), coming along on a trading expedition, or working as part of a hideout.
Magical research is something that gains XP in the act of creation of magical items or new spells; a very specific mechanic for a specific subsystem.
Construction, of a stronghold specifically, is an interesting one. It's a quasi-permanent piece of the character - the most direct result of the conceit that experience=level=power.
Autarch's Axioms presented a 'non combatant' XP progression just recently, for a lesser amount of XP (what coincides with 40% less XP for a fighter to gain level 2, and advancing by the usual methods from there) any given class or monster, evidently, can gain their class or monstrous HD and features while avoiding combat.
The tradeoff for that is that one's attack throws, saves, HP are decreased every few levels, and the outcome for a fighter, at least, is that they come out in all but HP looking more like a mage (HP looks closer to a d6 class).
Regaining one's combatant form is simple enough - regain the difference in XP (and only allocate XP to that) until you catch up with where you should be; then continue on from there gaining XP as a "normal" class.
It's an interesting idea, but makes me wonder about going one step further - allocating progression in various things by source of XP.
The first thing we do is redefine Character Level and HD as separate concepts.
HD, which we could rename but won't, is then actual combative skill - attacks, saves, hit points. That's easy.
Let's talk about Character Level though...starting with a simpler example.
Take a 9th level Venturer, one that hasn't built his or her hideout/stronghold yet. They have amassed, or amassed and lost, several fortunes, likely. They've been out adventuring, they've recovered valuable artifacts and piles of gems and coin, they've executed on trading opportunities.
On the theoretical average, they've gained 80% of their XP from treasure, and 20% from combat - that's 144,000 GP in treasure vs. 36,000 in combat XP. (HFH Venturer)
The venturer has several static abilities; bribery, diplomacy, navigation, etc; that do not increase by level. They do have one, however : Hear Noise, which increases in utility 5% per level.
What does it really mean to get better at Hearing Noise? What sort of experience leads one to be able to more sharply delineate one thread of sound over another? Once you've done whatever is required, what value is that success?
What about the thief that never picks pockets?
There's a certain level of bullshit here, really, it's a game and who cares - there's a point at which we have to give up. But once we've defined fighting capability as something that can be ignored, everything else lines up as a possibility for the same treatment.
Let's define a preliminary set of buckets for our Venturer that XP can go in - and for purposes of this experiment, I'm using the non-casting HFH Venturer, as magic skill isn't something I want to get into at the moment:
Autarch's Axioms presented a 'non combatant' XP progression just recently, for a lesser amount of XP (what coincides with 40% less XP for a fighter to gain level 2, and advancing by the usual methods from there) any given class or monster, evidently, can gain their class or monstrous HD and features while avoiding combat.
The tradeoff for that is that one's attack throws, saves, HP are decreased every few levels, and the outcome for a fighter, at least, is that they come out in all but HP looking more like a mage (HP looks closer to a d6 class).
Regaining one's combatant form is simple enough - regain the difference in XP (and only allocate XP to that) until you catch up with where you should be; then continue on from there gaining XP as a "normal" class.
It's an interesting idea, but makes me wonder about going one step further - allocating progression in various things by source of XP.
The first thing we do is redefine Character Level and HD as separate concepts.
HD, which we could rename but won't, is then actual combative skill - attacks, saves, hit points. That's easy.
Let's talk about Character Level though...starting with a simpler example.
Take a 9th level Venturer, one that hasn't built his or her hideout/stronghold yet. They have amassed, or amassed and lost, several fortunes, likely. They've been out adventuring, they've recovered valuable artifacts and piles of gems and coin, they've executed on trading opportunities.
On the theoretical average, they've gained 80% of their XP from treasure, and 20% from combat - that's 144,000 GP in treasure vs. 36,000 in combat XP. (HFH Venturer)
The venturer has several static abilities; bribery, diplomacy, navigation, etc; that do not increase by level. They do have one, however : Hear Noise, which increases in utility 5% per level.
What does it really mean to get better at Hearing Noise? What sort of experience leads one to be able to more sharply delineate one thread of sound over another? Once you've done whatever is required, what value is that success?
What about the thief that never picks pockets?
There's a certain level of bullshit here, really, it's a game and who cares - there's a point at which we have to give up. But once we've defined fighting capability as something that can be ignored, everything else lines up as a possibility for the same treatment.
Let's define a preliminary set of buckets for our Venturer that XP can go in - and for purposes of this experiment, I'm using the non-casting HFH Venturer, as magic skill isn't something I want to get into at the moment:
- Combat; self-explanatory.
- Trading; the mercantile network, bargaining and diplomacy
- Information gathering; hear noise (available as a proficiency termed eavesdropping in ACKS, and the name change fits this bucket), bonus languages, and read languages
- Traveling; either seafaring I or riding, plus navigation
As an aside, Hear Noise as eavesdropping paints a certain picture - while dropping those eaves, the venturer must also strive to not be obvious about it! It presupposes a certain level of guile must be employed - some of the same sorts of skills that move silently, hide in shadows, and disguise would require. It'd be easy enough to move that into a 5th bucket of "guile"...so let's do that.
Moving forward, let's assume the 5 buckets. At 9th level, all things being equal, our Venturer would have placed 36,000 XP evenly across the 4 skill buckets, plus 36,000 in the combat bucket. Let's entable that:
Now, a resounding "so what?" - or, given this, the Venturer that puts everything into Guile or splits it between Trading and Traveling; or, never fights - what happens to them?
I don't know yet, but I suspect this table is going to see quite a bit of change to rationalize wherever it is I end up on this - the Combat/HD bucket is much more likely to look similar between different classes of the same Fighting Value (barring tradeoffs, I expect), at a minimum, and I'll end up burning down the proficiency system in the process...
One more windmill.
Moving forward, let's assume the 5 buckets. At 9th level, all things being equal, our Venturer would have placed 36,000 XP evenly across the 4 skill buckets, plus 36,000 in the combat bucket. Let's entable that:
Now, a resounding "so what?" - or, given this, the Venturer that puts everything into Guile or splits it between Trading and Traveling; or, never fights - what happens to them?
I don't know yet, but I suspect this table is going to see quite a bit of change to rationalize wherever it is I end up on this - the Combat/HD bucket is much more likely to look similar between different classes of the same Fighting Value (barring tradeoffs, I expect), at a minimum, and I'll end up burning down the proficiency system in the process...
One more windmill.
It's an interesting idea. I'd like to see it in practice. As a player, however, I think I could break the system, despite the thresholds ... because the experience gain is arithmetical, whereas a well-run organization, reinvested, has the potential for geometric growth.
ReplyDeleteTo figure that out, I'd obviously have to know enough about your campaign, what you would let me invest in, what the break would be on investments, how much percentage I could expect to squeeze between import and direct retail pricing, or turn around on property, or various other angles on raising capitalization from NPCs ... which would depend on what you, DM, would let me get away with. With an initial investment of 20,000 g.p., however, and a strong projected enthusiasm on the part of some wealthy investors, with some useful skills contributed from my fellow party members, I'm sure we could put up some sort of interesting mass project, like a dam, a canal or something else that would ensure a regular, exorbitant exploitation flowing into our pockets.
You're probably safe as long as none of your players actually understands business ... but one g.p. per x.p.? I could make quite a killing.