Experience (D&D)

Unofficial rules compendium

Most of these options reduce the experience points earned, and thus results in longer campaigns. This might make the players too rich at higher levels; players are encouraged to update their gear and spend money on various expenses and one-shot items. If player wealth becomes too high, measures might have to be taken, such as a couple of "idealistic" adventures without monetary rewards.

Option - Alternate Experience Table

This option is used in Savage Tide

This version gives less reward for weaker critters.

Alternate Experience Table

Option - Party XP with costs & Compesation

This option is used in Savage Tide

The entire party has one xp figure shared by all. If a player expends xp to fall under the party average (being drained, paying xp costs, losing a level to resurection etc), a 20% xp compensation kicks in.

Option - Experience Compensation

This replaces the normal level-based experience gain. All experience gained is based on the highest level in the party. Those with less experience get a 20% bonus on earned experience at all times.

Option - Action/Drama Experience

This option is used in Savage Tide

Under this rule, action sessions and dungeon crawls give half experience, while investigative scenes, drama, and storytelling gives full experience, possibly with additional awards.

This keeps the drama sessions from being unrewarding, while the action sessions still give healthy doses of experience. Practice shows that intense action sessions still give more experience than drama sessions. It also slows overall advancement by about 30% from roughly 3-4 sessions/level to 5-6 sessions-level.

Option - Slow High-level advancement

This option is NOT used in Savage Tide.

Experience is handled normally up to level 4. Thereafter, the following experience table is used:

Relative Challenege Rating	-7	-6	-5	-4	-3	-2	-1	+0	+1	+2	+3	+4	+5	+6	+7	+8
Reward	100	150	200	300	400	600	800	1,200	1,600	2,400	3,600	4,800	6,400	9,600	12,800	19,200

This table is extrapolated from the level 4 experience table. The basic idea is that after level 4, advancement slows down; half rate at level 8, 1/4 rate at 12 and so on.

As an ancillary to the experience rule, to make players feel they are advancing despite the lower rate of level gain, one feat is granted for every level instead of the usual progression of one every third level and at level 1.

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