I think you get my point.
Experience Points in B/X are mental. They require tons of gold to level up, and we already saw in my article on the Fighter Revisited that I hate empty levels.
Milestone advancement is nice, but it lacks a certain amount of players getting rewards every session for surviving, being clever, or just bloody showing up. This makes it hard to feel progress or like things matter.
I admit I was torn and about to throw my hands up, but then my mentor came through!
Professor DungeonMaster saved the day with his DungeonCraft video D&D XP the Fast & East Way! Yes there are 3 different links there and you should click on them all. This man does great work and is a mentor to me even if he doesn't know it.
So after watching his video and thinking about it, I decided he was right, and this is how I went with it in the end;
XP is given not for slaying monsters or collecting treasure, but instead of accomplishing goals and overcoming challenges.
Accomplishing a goal is worth 1 – 3 xp.
• A 1-point goal might be retrieving an item from the goblin caves for a client.
• A 2-point goal might be rescuing the mayor’s daughter from being imprisoned in the bandit camp.
• A 3-point goal would be the level of saving an entire town from destruction but a dragon or summoned horror.
These goals often walk hand-in-hand with the challenges the party faces.
Challenges are rated similarly 1 – 3 but are measured on how taxing on the party it was.
• 1-point challenges might be defeating a couple of guards, convincing the merchant to give you the item to you need to accomplish the goal, or sneaking into a castle undetected.
• 2-point challenges are ones where the spectre of death, or worse hung close. Defeating a band of goblins, avoiding be put in the dungeon by the magistrate, or escaping said dungeon are all good examples.
• 3-point challenges are something to behold. They usually involve at least one party member dying, or multiple members being brought below 0 hit points, convincing the Arch Bishop to lend a unit of Templars to assist with the evacuation of a village, or convincing the King to send his army into the foothills to stymie the oncoming orc horde. 3-point challenges, like 3 point goals, should be epic and the subject of poems and songs.
It takes 10xp to level, always and once you level your XP resets to 0 and starts up again.
Once you have your 10xp and it is time to level, you stop gaining more XP until you do a Milestone Quest. This can be a special adventure that everyone partakes in for the party, or a singular one for a character who has reached 10xp before the others for whatever reason.
When players who are not at 10xp accompany a hero on their Milestone Quest, they gain +1xp to whatever XP they get for the session.
Players can and should suggest Milestone Quests and remember that the higher level the character, the more epic the Milestone Quest should be.
Next up we'll talk about Hit Points and how Healing works in Bastard Sword.
Until next time...
Andrew Collas
a.k.a. Celtic Viking, Grumpy Old Gamer, Bear
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/acelticviking/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/fantasyheartbreakergames/
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