For no reason at all last night, and idea came to me that I wanted to bounce off other players before I spent any time developing it.
The basic idea is to take the really smart 3.x concept of NPC classes (the commoner, warrior and so on) and define them a little bettler. As an adventure game, D&D only has rules for gaining experience from adventuring. However clever the idea of NPC classes is, it breaks down if you try to think about the local blacksmith becoming more proficient at smithing by going out and slaying goblins. Better yet, he ONLY gets more proficient by going out and slaying things.
The idea that occured to me was a recollection of the old edition way of giving xp for gold earned. The kernel of the idea here, then, is to make it so that the NPC classes earn xp for earning money rather than killing things. The only reason I would care is if it opened up an opportunity for the PCs to earn NPC levels for non-adventuring character building and I wanted to ask if that's something anyone here thinks players would be interested in doing.
Basically, I'd allow the PCs to make their profession or craft rolls or what have you and every gp earned that week would equal 1 NPCXP that could only be used for an NPC class level.
The end result would be that they could actually gain levels between adventures but only the chintzy NPC class levels. If you were given the chance, would you have your 4th level fighter take a free warrior level? Would you think of yourself as a hampered 5th level character or a slightly better 4th level?
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You earn XP for lots of things besides fighting.
In some adventures they award XP for negotiations, talking an NPC into doing something, and a variety of skills based checks.
If you decide to give levels to npcs by how successful of a businessperson they are then you open the doors to every tavernowner being a 20th level npc and every magic shop owner being up there also.
Just figure that some hard negotiating gave the shopowner a bit of XP, "Wow, can't believe I talked him into that deal and had him throw in some extra mithral to boot!"
Flavor baby, tastes good!
FH
I don't mean this in a negative way, but I personally believe you're overthinking this a little.
True, at heart D&D is a combat-driven game, and so most characters then gain their experience through the heat of battle. Combat-oriented classes like the Fighter aren't going to learn much about their trade unless they, well, fight.
But as for smithing and the like, the "adventuring" xp is a very catch-all term. It's merely a simplification, so that a busy GM doesn't have to sit down and factor out how much of a party's XP came from killing that monster, and how much came from building that cool sword. After all, D&D is a game whose whole basis is adventuring and heroism. If you wanted to sit around in a smithy cranking out swords all day, you might as well play WoW.
A character gaining experience in blacksmithing simply by adventuring may seem silly, but keep in mind that there are a lot of factors that have simply been reduced to make the game streamlined. For example: realistically a party of heavily-armed adventurers who are stuck in a dank, dark dungeon far away from the nearest town will at some point break or damage their equipment. In this case, they'd be forced to make desperate, rather slipshod field repairs to their gear to keep it in enough working order to get them out of the dungeon alive. As such, the aspiring blacksmith might have to come up with an on-the-spot hotfix for that torn strap on the Dwarven Fighter's platemail, or patch a hole in the Cleric's chainmail, lest it become useless. This may very well teach him a little something about his trade that makes it easier to repair the armor when real tools are availible, and so is factored in to the idea that the character will gain Craft Ranks when he levels up.
That being said, you as the DM always have full control over the rewards granted to your players. If you feel a player has put a particular effort into learning his craft, has roleplayed well, or even simply did something that sparked a good idea for your campaign, you can award him whatever experience you feel would be fair-- regardless of what the rules say.
But, if you did want to go ahead and give your players non-combat NPC levels, my personal take on it would be to water them down severely, remove any possible combat-role benefits, and give them out as "free" Trade Levels, that are not counted towards their "Adventuring" levels.
Bottom line, if I may shamelessly steal a line from Cap'n Barbossa, "The rules are really more of a guideline."
My friend is starting a Ptolus campaign soon where all of our PCs are gestaltet--but the second class must be an NPC class. I'm running a wizard/expert gestalt.
I hear the arguments and blame my own poor presentation of what I was trying to accomplish. It's not my intent to have my NPC experts earn xp during the campaign or run "adventures" with my players where they build axes and farm.
The only way I could think of using this idea is as a reward of sorts for players who try to find a place for their characters in society. In practice, it'd be like the 3rd level ranger who, after sacking the Lost Tomb of Proofrock, returns to the city and goes back to work as a bowyer. At the next game session, we find that 6 months have passed before the next plot hook rears up and the PC was able to earn some cash/NPCxp making bows and arrows.
If you were playing that ranger, and you sat down at the table to hear your DM say "you can have a level of expert if you want it", would you take it?
It's easy enough to roleplay that any given character has a day job he can return to, but if there could be a reward mechanic, would this be rewarding?
Mathematically speaking, a level 4/1 ranger/expert would still be a 4th level character, but he'd have extra hit points and skill points.
Bella Sara Charter Superscriber
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Someone suggested on another thread regarding NPC's that they should earn 1 xp per day. I don't have the books in front of me, but I believe that if you use that method, they'll hit level 2 after 3 years in a profession, level 3 after another 6 years, and so on. Seemed fairly simple and elegant to me.
Is a Lawyer a NPC class or is it a core class? ~grins~
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Mathematically speaking, a level 4/1 ranger/expert would still be a 4th level character, but he'd have extra hit points and skill points.
I certainly wouldn't complain if my DM gave me extra hit points, skill points, and class skills(?). Those things are fun.
My concerns would be mechanical: Would this affect the number of XP to gain the next level, the EL of encounters, non-favored class XP penalties, and the number of levels before the character would be retired?
Is a Lawyer a NPC class or is it a core class? ~grins~
Well, they seem to be commoner and commoner. 8-)
Realism and playability are inversely proportional; the more of one you have, the less of the other. This idea, though interesting on its face, goes way too far towards realism. Think of all the bookkeeping you’ll have to do the keep track of every NPC in your game, how much money they’ve made over the last month, leveling them up, etc. It could become a full-time job in itself, with no time for actually playing.
As a adjunct to that consider this. A businessman has a lot of money pass through his hands on a regular basis. But, not all of it is “his”. He has costs to cover before he can take any profit, or money he calls his own; the stuff he lives off of. He may have rent. There’s certainly inventory and stock to re-supply. There may be rent, insurance, taxes…and of course there’s payroll. He has to pay his people. Now you have to keep track of his gross business, minus his expenses and determine his net or profit.
How is his XP going to be calculated? Do you use gross cash through his hands or his net profit? What’s his profit margin/markup, etc? Very tedious, time consuming, boring, realistic…and unplayable.
I certainly wouldn't complain if my DM gave me extra hit points, skill points, and class skills(?). Those things are fun.
My concerns would be mechanical: Would this affect the number of XP to gain the next level, the EL of encounters, non-favored class XP penalties, and the number of levels before the character would be retired?
That's a valid question and one of the things I was holding off on working out until I got some feedback on whether or not players would even want the NPC class levels.
My first instinct was to say 'yes', the NPC levels do add to the PC levels (with the standard '-1' rule). The advantage would be that it's relatively easy to gain that extra boost with some simple yet appreciated character background development.
The tricky part is how to keep the XP tallies separate. If the levels added together for xp purposes, giving someone an NPC level, even with the bonus hit points and such, is like saying "Hah! Now you need 16,000xp to gain your next fighter level!"
My inclination now is to say that PCXP and NPCXP are two separate tallies so that a level 6 fighter still only needs 1,000 NPCXP to become a 2nd level expert (and a 4th level adept only needs 1,000 PCXP to become a 2nd level druid).
Think of all the bookkeeping you’ll have to do the keep track of every NPC in your game, how much money they’ve made over the last month, leveling them up, etc.
Let me clarify a bit by saying I have no intention of keeping track of xp earned by NPCs. They'll be allowed to level (or not) off stage if I really cared enough about that.
This is really just an attempt to add a new dimension to my adventurers' lives, not an attempt at economy simulation. At best it will help explain how the church elders learn new spells when they never go out orc-thwacking.
No, I wouldn't, unless it will have no impact on the rest of my adventuring abilities (i.e., when I gain another level and thus get more of the abilities I actually care about).
If the DM wants to give me 3 ranks in Craft (bowyer), then fine. I really doubt it's going to be a huge deal (or even a noticeable one) in the long run. In fact, all it really does is add a little bit of flair and character to your character, which is something that I encourage.
Also, regarding all the talk of XP floating around here:
It blows my mind that D&D still uses XP for killing monsters at all. How stupid is that?
"Ooo, I shot three trolls and learned more about the mystical secrets of the universe!"
"I've been hewing through orc bodies for two weeks straight, and now I'm the most elegant diplomat in the kingdom!"
Not to mention it leads to this situation that has come up more than once in my games:
"Man, we're just 200 XP from a level, let's go find something and kill it."
"I really want to craft this item, but I don't have enough spare XP. Let me go find something and kill it."
Despite the fact that one of these life-force stealing forays led to one of the most memorable encounters at my table (a mano-a-mano fight between a purple worm and a 7th-level gnome wizard in which the gnome won), I still despise the concept, yet it is a naturally occuring phenomena when killing things grants XP.
So don't do that! XP stands for experience, as in events one goes through in life. Therefore, I give no experience for killing monsters in and of itself. There is an adventure or an event before the party: complete it and get XP; fail and get little to none.
This leads me to advancing levels as seems appropriate (I do my best to be fair and considerate to the wants of the players) and more verisimilitude due to the players not having any clear-cut event give XP other than adventurering in some shape or form.
For ease, however, I do tend to calculate how much XP the party would have gotten from all the combats in an encounter, provided it's not purely roleplaying, and use that as a basis for my calculations.
Note that this is slightly different from simply assigning CR equivalencies to individual RP encounters. Those are always termd "ad hoc," anyway, which somehow seems to undermine their validity in my mind. Maybe it's just me.
I once ran an interesting 3.0 campaign where the starting characters had to be level 1 NPC classes. From a background/roleplaying perspective, it's a great tool. Even from a character-building perspective, it makes certain concepts easier to create (a dwarf cleric of Moradin who is actually good at smithing, for instance).
I'd recommend counting NPC classes as favored classes for all characters, but would still count them normally for determining character level. You still get increases in BAB, hp, saves, skills, etc.
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I have considered have all characters have an NPC level from the beginning. Everyone has to come from somewhere, and most characters don't come out of the womb as level 1 Rogues.
However, I understand what you mean about NPC classes and leveling. Accoding to general statements written throughout the DMG, DMG II and others, most NPCs will never advance beyond level 2. So who makes the masterwork and magic items? It can't be an NPC. They don't have the skills and feats. And the PCs rarely have the cash to make some of those magic items without selling off their other items. So are we left with the idea that "modern" magic items just don't exist? Are all items from lost tombs and battlefields from the ancients? If so what is the point in playing in a magical setting? Let's just take out magic all together and just play fighters with cool items they find.
What seems to be used most of the time is ex-adventurers. So, that means the PCs are NOT the elite after all. There's a bunch of these guys all over the place in fact. What sets the PCs apart then is when they finally hit Epic Levels and have not yet retired to own an inn, or make magic items, or make masterwork shovels. So until then, the PCs are just above average.
I mean afterall, when you read Conan stories, they are just littered with would be barbarian kings that give it all up and open a tavern instead. Wait, that isn't very epic and exciting!
My remedy is simple. XP is gained by overcoming challenges, whether combat or social or a trap or whatever. The most common challenge for PCs might be social, for example. An Inn owner doesn't get XP from every person that buys a drink. But he does get XP from arranging special business deals that are beyond the ordinary for him. He gets some XP for beaking up an exceptional fight.
In another example, an Adept learns from a master by overcoming challenges set forth. She levels. Then she goes out on her own. She becomes the village healer. She doesn't get XP for healling the scrapes and cuts the boys normally get, but she sure does get some XP for overcoming that epidemic that hit the village.
With this concept it explains how most NPCs are still limited to levels 1-2, but a few exceptional NPCs can move up to level 17 and make that prized magic item. And best of all, you won't have your PCs or you, trying to figure out how that Adept leveled; did she overcome beholders and Titans and such?
Would you take an NPC level?
Would you believe me if I tell you that I have?
Admittedly, it was the best way I could find to recreate an old 2nd edition character in 3.5.... But I have a character with 2 levels of Expert. But, to be fair, he has no business in combat. So it may not count.
But, as long as I couldn't see it as a penalty in any way, yes. I would take an NPC Class level.
But Saern has an idea I like better. Free ranks in "profession skills." (As opposed to only the Profession skill, which does fall under the category as well.)