3.5 AP Experience Progression


Product Discussion


Hey all, I've been running a group through Legacy of Fire and have come into a bit of confusion regarding my player's levels.

I was under the impression that the old APs were designed under the assumption of a leveling rate equivalent to the "fast" column of table 3-1 "Character Advancement and Level Dependent Bonuses".

The problem is now I can't remember or find where I got that information. Also, as I calculated out the party's experience gain throughout chapter 2 (to see whether I should use the set piece mini adventures from the back of the book)I realized that while they're only slightly ahead of the curve now, they would become increasingly over-leveled as the adventure continued.

On the other hand, It looks like using the "medium" column would leave them trailing behind level-wise.

Does anyone who's run through one of these 3.5 APs using updated Pathfinder rules have any advice on the subject?

P.S. It is a standard 4 player party, and my search-fu must be weak today because I could have sworn I've read something on this subject before.

Paizo Employee Creative Director

There were two things that the 3.5 OGL didn't allow anyone else to reprint: methods for generating ability scores and methods for handing out experience points. That's why we changed the XP rates for Pathfinder, and since we were changing them, we decided to also set a precedent for multiple XP paths. But beyond that, the rates at which XP apply level changes changed as well.

As it works out, the 3.5 XP progression works out, over the long term, to be even faster than our Fast track.

As a result, if you run a 3.5 AP using Pathifnder, you'll find your characters are slowly but surely starting to be left behind, even if you use the Fast track. Which means you'll need to either throw in some ad hoc bonus XP, or some additional encounters.


Cool, thanks alot for the clarification James!

I might just go with story based advancement track if that's the case.

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