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I just thought I would share this, since magic item costs are frequently discussed here.
For the last 8 months I've been running a campaign where you pay to level up rather than use experience points.
The cost to go up a level is the difference in expected wealth between the level you are and the level you're going to (i.e. 1000gp, 2000gp, 3000gp, 4500gp, 5500gp, 7500gp, etc).
Every session that you adventure reduces the cost by a % rate given by this list (4, 3, 3, 2, 2, 2, 1, 1, 1, 1) - i.e. after 10 sessions you get your maximum discount of 20%.
The results - 5 out of 6 players chose to spend their money on levels rather than magic items for the first 4 levels. I think we may have just hit the break even point now at 5th/6th level - at least, players are thinking more about what to spend their money on. We still have one 6th level ranger in the party that doesn't have a magic weapon.
Just FYI.
Richard
Very interesting!
IIRC, in good ol' DnD you got one XP for each GP worth of loot you found, and this totally dominated the amount of XP gained from an adventure (you got rather less XP for killing things).
This made it make sense for the characters to finish the mission they were on by any means available to them, instead of "kill'em all" being the optimal strategy nearly always. "Incentives matter", economists insist -- not that players aren't bloodthirsty critters that will pick a fight even when it isn't a good idea.
I think your approach rewards a playing style that is more about creative problem-solving and less about being as effective a combat machine as possible, which is good to my mind. (Well, the 3.x guidelines was that you got XP for "overcoming challenges", loosely defined as the things that were between you and the mission objective (i.e., the loot), and that sneaking past the guards should be worth as much XP as killing them, but this required some thought to adjudicate and, being lazy, I was never consistent about it. And neither were any other people I played with, I think).
However I note that the characters end up underpowered compared to the DnD method, as the DnD method would have let them eat their cake (get the XP) and keep it (the gold) too. I presume your campaign is explicitly "low powered" (in scareqoutes since I find the default powerlevel of 3.x/PF to be ridiculously high)? Or do you give out more loot to compensate?
Also, I would love to hear more about your campaign: What it is about, and whether your players enjoy the alternative levelling mechanism or not.
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The campaign started out as a PFS-style free-form which migrated quickly to Carrion Crown. We've just started Carrion Crown part 2.
Broadly speaking, we like a level progression of approximately 1 level per 6 sessions. Because it all comes down to money now, this depends quite a bit on success and how money gets spent.
The players, of course, are entirely free to spend their money as they wish, which includes everything from how much they're prepared to spend on diplomacy checks and bribes, to personal magic items, "party" magic items and levels.
You are, of course, completely right on the incentivising thing. I think that bringing everything down to money creates a much more interesting backdrop against which to adventure. There is no point killing things if there is no reward in it.
Having said that, the campaign does have a couple of significant changes with regards to alignment which also influences behaviour. Alignment is basically a birthright, not a dictator of behaviour. It's "your stars", if you will, and all game rules work accordingly, but you can do whatever you like regardless of your alignment (and so can NPCs).
Piety, however, is a measurable quantity in the game, and it results in Geases which you must abide by if you want to maintain any divine related abilities (or just the good will of your church if you're not a divine character). In my experience I wouldn't say that geases have driven behaviour *very* much, actually, apart from making people much more in tune with their deities. Caiden Caylean, Iomedae and Pharasma are larger than life in the group, Calistria and Desna not so much. Sarenrae definately was for a while but that player's changed to Calistria now with a new character so that might play down a bit.
One other thing that's *very* different about my game, by the way, is that I run everything using my own software. Nobody rolls dice!
Richard
A lot of interesting ideas
But to be honest not a game I would be interested in playing
I like a high magic item worlds and not being able to roll my own dices would be a game killer for me .