Sunday, August 21, 2011

FLAILSNAILS non-cumulative XP (Article 3)

Since last week's release of the FLAILSNAILS cross-campaign rules one section has caused more confusion than any of the others. Here's the section:
Article 3 PCs will level up at a number of experience points appropriate to the system of the last adventure they played in before such time as they were eligible to level up in that system.
I must admit that I was asleep at the wheel when that was being knocked around in draft.  The following is intended as either as a clarification or correction, depending on whether I'm reading this right or not.

Article 3 Revised: No one cares how many total XP you've earned.  All we need to know is your level and how many XP you've gained since making that level.  If you level up according to the rules used for the current adventure you are playing, advance your character one level and zero out your XP.
So Morgan Ironwolf earns her two-thousandth experience point.  That's enough to make level 2 in Wessex.  She advances to level 2 and resets her XP to zero.  I often allow for advancement in the middle of the game and Morgan earns 232 more XP before the end of the session.  The next day Morgan is in Vornheim.  She earns a big ol' pile of XP, but whether she advances to 3rd depends on the chart for fighters in Zak's game.  Hopefully he'll have handy his own version of the charts below, which are the BX charts reworked to eliminate tracking total XPs earned.







Is everybody following my proposal? A few XP are bound to be wasted along the way if we zero out the totals at every advancement. You could instead subtract the XP needed from your current total. That's only slightly more complicated.  If you subtract rather than zero out completely, the charts above are exactly the same totals as the Expert rulebook, only expressed differently.

7 comments:

  1. Is this right?

    XP needed to level up is the XP difference between your current and next class level in the system being used for the game session. Current XP always resets to 0 upon advancing a level.

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  2. accepted. articles amended

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  3. Morgan Ironwolf changed sexes in one sentence:

    She advances to level 2 and resets his XP to zero.

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  4. I might be missing something here, but wouldn't it simply be easiest to express current XP at the end of each session as a percentage of that required to attain the next level? That way, when the character starts in the next game, in a new edition or system, you know how far along he is regardless of the chart points...

    So for example, if Morgan Ironwolf was in Wessex and leveled to level 2, then earned 232 XP, when the session ends, she's 232/4000ths (or 5.8%) along her way to 3rd level. Thus, if in the Drachenkopfheim campaign she next plays in the judge uses 3rd edition, she would start the game at 2nd level with 116 XP (needing 2000 XP to go from 2nd to 3rd in 3E).

    Say she earns 1000 XP, to end the session at 1,116 XP, which is 2nd level + 55.8%.

    She returns for her next adventure to Wessex, at 2nd level with 2,232 XP toward 3rd level.

    Seems this retains more of the value of experience earned... or am I missing something?

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  5. @james mishler

    Jeff left that idea out because it is already in the original FLAILSNAILS document.

    It also says, if everybody wants to be real helpful (and mathy), DMs could award xp in terms of a percentage gained toward the next level.

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  6. I get it, makes sense

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