I'm considering switching my game to an XP-less system of D&D. Under these rules, players will gain levels by completing certain story-appropriate goals, thus rewarding my players for staying on task. I've set the following level benchmarks after reading through the campaign. I'm wondering if they look about right to you out there.
Level - Goal
1- Start of the Campaign
2 – Completing the Vanderboren Vault
3 – Defeating the Lotus Dragons
4 – Completing Kraken’s Cove
5- Completing Vanderboren Manor
6 – Completing Tamoachan
7 – Defeating the Mother of All
8 – Completing Dark Moutain Pass
9 – Completing Fogmire
10 – Some point before the battle of Farshore (open-style adventure)
11 – Defeating Vanthus
12 – Completing “The Killing Field”
13 – Completing Golismortha
14 – About halfway through Taboo temple (large dungeon)
15 – Defeating Khala
16 – Discovering the Crimson Fleet Base
17 – Defeating Cold Captain Wyther
18 – Defeating Vanthus
19 – During Wells of Darkness
20 – During Enemies of my Enemy
21 – Just Before Entering Wat Dagon
I am doing the same and actually so far we hit the exact same points up to number nine in my campaign. It seems to be perfect.
I have been considering using this method as well, but I have a few questions on how certain xp issues are handled.
How do you handle the PC's spending xp on things like item creation and divination and the like?
What about raise dead and ressurrection where the PC is reduced to the midpoint of the previous level, do you just ignore it and play on?
Cheers!
I'm doing the same thing. The story goals make perfect benchmarks. As far as XP expenses, I have just been ignoring that aspect. It's not breaking my game.
Running this xp-less seams dead easy to me. Just read the recommended level for each gig, and make the players that level.
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How do you handle the PC's spending xp on things like item creation and divination and the like?
I am using a very similar outline as well. But I actually award xp. Imagine the OP's outline, but following each is the xp awarded:
1- Campaign Starts (0xp)
2- Complete Vanderboren Vault (1100xp)
3- Complete Lotus Stronghold (2200xP)
etc. etc
I throw in 10% over what is needed to raise a level. I may increase or decrease this depending on how much crafting is done/not-done.
If a party member dies and is raised, he loses xp as normal, and gains as given above.
If the WHOLE party, via crafting/dieing falls behind I can always increse xp in a chapter, run a side-quest, etc. If they get ahead, I can award less.
If you like the system but not sure your players will, tell them its like an MMO but instead of xp for killing mobs you get xp for quest turn in. My players like it better, and know they don't have to gon room-by-room extermination hunts. The game play changes from "clear 4 rooms, retreat, rest, repeat" to "Recon, Assault, Retreat, New assignment". When they are done with a dungeon, they are done.
How do you handle it if a player has to miss a major portion of an adventure chapter? Say one of your players has a new baby and needs to miss a few weeks. His character was level 5 and the rest of the party has moved on to level 6... how does he catch up without insulting the other PCs?
How do you handle it if a player has to miss a major portion of an adventure chapter? Say one of your players has a new baby and needs to miss a few weeks. His character was level 5 and the rest of the party has moved on to level 6... how does he catch up without insulting the other PCs?
I've been using a similar system of basing levels on the recommended levels of adventures I'm running and it's been so refreshing. (And for the record, we also skip ignore all XP costs).
As for this situation, it hasn't come up since I started going XP-less, but it did more than once when we were still doing XP by the book. With my particular group, everyone just assumed the PC would level up with the rest of them. They were just off on an extended side adventure (and extra grit for me to use for clues and such). It never entered the player's minds to have the other character be lower level if they had to legitimately drop out for a while.
Now, in both the early days of this group as well as my high school group way back, if we had someone who was just lazy about showing up (especially without telling us ahead of time), they wouldn't get XP for what they missed (or 1/2 XP, I forget). Usually worked to get them to show up regularly. But if someone has a legitimate real life excuse like a baby or crunch time at work, we wouldn't "penalize" them by having their PC fall behind the rest. They are already being penalized by missing out on the fun!
Other groups will vary, of course. That's just been how mine saw it.
As for XP penalties, I have always hated them and I ignore the the cost for items. I just handle abuses that they are supposed to prevent on the role playing side.
In my campaign the "dead penalty" has not come up because no one has been raised yet. (They have stayed very much dramatically dead. :)
For that I am torn between a) no level penalty at all or b) just have the character stay one level behind until half way to the next "level point".
Players hate being behind in level and the true penalty for dying needs to be through role playing, not rules wise IMHO.
As for players missing sessions I agree, missing out on the fun is penalty enough. Their characters level with everyone else, my players are mature enough not to get bitter about people getting levels that they did not "earn".
We don't use a level loss system for Raise Dead and similar spells. Instead, the character gains a negative level which cannot be removed through magical means. Each time the character levels up, he can additionally remove one negative level. I've also been letting them remove negative levels for completing character-development trials (such as when the warblade faced down his nemesis, leading to a brief flashback of the warblade's training.)
As far as XP loss from spells and item creation, I'm considering giving each caster a small pool of XP which they could spend at each level, similar to the artificer's creation pool in Eberron.
We also keep all the players at the same level, regardless of whether they show up or not. I know this probably won't work for many groups, but we've been playing together for a long time, and we know that if someone is missing a session, they've got a good reason. This was something we voted on as a group at the beginning of the campaign.
These are some excellent ideas gentlecritters. I shall steal them shamelessly and float them to my player groups.
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We don't use a level loss system for Raise Dead and similar spells. Instead, the character gains a negative level which cannot be removed through magical means. Each time the character levels up, he can additionally remove one negative level.
I use this system also, although it should be noted that these negative levels are "special" and cannot be removed by ANY means other than leveling.
Since this idea was floated/used by Andy Collins in his home campaign, I suspect something very similar to appear in 4E. Level loss is just a pain in the but, thats why negative levels were introduced in 3E, but why the kept the mechanic for resurrection I have no idea...