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This variant replaces Table 3-2: Experience and Level-Dependent Benefits (page 22 of the Player’s Handbook) as a way of easing the GM’s job of adventure design and the task of experience-point calculation at the end of a game session.
Use the following table to determine when characters gain new levels, rather than Table 3-2 in the Player’s Handbook.
To advance to a new level beyond 20th, a character needs to gain double the amount of XP he needed to advance from two levels below his current level to one level below his current level.
For example, to advance from 20th level to 21st level, a character needs to gain double the amount of XP he needed to advance from 18th level to 19th level. Since he needed to add 500,000 XP to go from 18th to 19th level (1,800,000 minus 1,300,000), he needs 1,000,000 XP (500,000 × 2) to go from 20th level to 21st level (2,600,000 XP to 3,600,000 XP).
Experienced players may be alarmed—the XP totals on Table 6-13 are big numbers. But XP awards per monster are commensurately larger (see Table 6-14: Experience Award [Single Monster], below). Regardless of a character’s level relative to the rest of the party, he gets the same numerical XP award, so the math at the end of the night is a lot easier. Table 2-6 on page 38 of the Dungeon Master’s Guide is no longer used. Monsters just have f lat XP awards, which are divided up among the participants.
For example, a frost worm (CR 12) is worth 19,000 XP. If four characters defeat it, they each earn 4,750 XP (19,000 divided by 4), regardless of their level.
It still takes thirteen encounters or so to attain a new level. There’s still an automatic catch-up feature for PCs who lag behind the rest of the group; that 4,750 XP for the frost worm represents 8% of the experience points required to attain 13th level, but 14% of the experience points required to reach 11th level.
Table 6-14 gives the award for a typical monster of each CR, irrespective of character or party level.
For monsters beyond CR 20, simply double the XP reward for a monster of that CR minus 2. For instance, a CR 22 monster is worth twice as much as a CR 20 monster, or 620,000 XP.
GMs who use this variant gain flexibility in two areas: individual monster design and encounter design. Because you’re assigning specific XP awards to monsters, you don’t have to restrict yourself to the numbers that appear on the table. If you think a monster you’ve designed is CR 7-1/2, you can simply give out 4,200 XP for defeating it. At higher levels, the numbers on the table should suffice because it’s hard to discern a meaningful difference between a CR 18 monster and a CR 18-1/2 monster. But at lower levels, the flexibility is potent because you can fill in the gap between CR 1 and CR 2 (which otherwise represents a 100% power increase) and between CR 2 and CR 3 (a 50% power increase).
This variant also makes it easier to design encounters with mixed groups of monsters. Rather than combining monsters of different CRs, then consulting a table to figure out what the Encounter Level (EL) is, simply add up the XP award for each monster until you reach the XP total you want. For example, if you want to create an average encounter for 15th-level characters, put enough monsters in the encounter to total roughly 58,000 XP (the amount the PCs would earn for a single CR 15 monster).
As with the standard experience point system, the GM should closely watch the experience awards for large numbers of weak creatures, which often provide little or no meaningful challenge to characters.
CRAFTING MAGIC ITEMS If you use this XP system, note that the XP costs paid by characters to create magic items will represent a much smaller fraction of their total XP, and thus creating magic items becomes much less “expensive” overall. If you believe this to be problematic for your campaign, consider increasing the XP cost for crafting magic items as detailed in the table below. Magic Item XP Costs Market Price XP Multiplier 2,000 gp or less ×1 2,001 gp to 20,000 gp ×2 20,001 gp to 200,000 gp ×4 200,001 gp or more ×10 Table 6-13: Alternative Experience Point Progression Character Level XP Class Skill Max Ranks Cross-Class Skill Max Ranks Feats Ability Score Increases 1st 0 4 2 1st — 2nd 1,000 5 2-1/2 — — 3rd 3,000 6 3 2nd — 4th 6,000 7 3-1/2 — 1st 5th 10,000 8 4 — — 6th 16,000 9 4-1/2 3rd — 7th 24,000 10 5 — — 8th 36,000 11 5-1/2 — 2nd 9th 52,000 12 6 4th — 10th 76,000 13 6-1/2 — — 11th 110,000 14 7 — — 12th 160,000 15 7-1/2 5th 3rd 13th 220,000 16 8 — — 14th 320,000 17 8-1/2 — — 15th 440,000 18 9 6th — 16th 640,000 19 9-1/2 — 4th 17th 890,000 20 10 — — 18th 1,300,000 21 10-1/2 7th — 19th 1,800,000 22 11 — — 20th 2,600,000 23 11-1/2 — 5th Table 6-14: Experience Award (Single Monster) Monster CR XP Award 1 300 2 600 3 900 4 1,200 5 1,800 6 2,400 7 3,600 8 4,800 9 7,200 10 9,600 11 14,000 12 19,000 13 29,000 14 38,000 15 58,000 16 77,000 17 120,000 18 150,000 19 230,000 20 310,000 HOUSE RULE: XP BONUS POOL I use this rule to award bonus experience points to players based on clever ideas, roleplaying their characters especially well, and, frankly, entertaining the group. It’s a pretty easy rule to write, but can be difficult to adjudicate. Before running an adventure, I go through the text and highlight particularly difficult player-oriented elements. I make sure I know when they’re coming, and if anyone particularly distinguishes themselves during the solving of these problems, I put a check mark by the character’s name on a sheet. When someone does something particularly inventive or interesting in any situation, they get a check mark, too. In the rare case where someone really obstructs play, I might erase a mark. At the end of the session (I always award XP by session), I count up the total amount of XP to be awarded, and I total up the number of marks by each person’s name. I multiply the total XP award by 75% and divide that out equally (assuming everything else about the session was equal). The other 25% of available XP goes into a bonus pool. When I divvy out the XP in the bonus pool, I give the largest percentage of bonus XP to the character with the most marks by his or her name and the least to the character with the least marks. If possible, I try to make sure everyone gets some bonus XP, even though it might not be a lot, and I always tell players why their characters got any bonus XP. “Good job with that puzzle trap by the dungeon door,” or even, “Hey, great job roleplaying your character’s grouchiness when the high priest was healing everyone for free.” The whole group knows who is getting what percentage of the bonus XP, but I find, at least with my group, that everyone generally agrees with the awards. If you use this rule, it’s important to make sure not to show favoritism. When I first introduced it at my table, I actually made sure that I never gave the same character the highest bonus payout more than twice in a row. Basically, I elevated the bar for the PCs in the third session and tried to encourage others to strive for the higher payout. It has worked very well, but I can see how in some groups the competition might cause problems. —Ed Stark XP COSTS Spells with an XP component also undergo a change in this variant, since the costs for those spells are set using the standard d20 experience point rules. The table below gives a quick conversion to help calculate the XP costs for spells when using this XP variant. Simply multiply the normal XP cost by the multiplier given in the table to find the new XP cost for the spell. For example, the commune spell (a 5th-level cleric spell) normally costs 100 XP to cast. When using this XP system, it costs 200 XP, or twice as much. The wish spell, a 9th-level spell, costs ten times the normal amount of XP to cast (50,000 instead of 5,000). Use a similar formula to recalculate anything else that applies an XP cost. Divide the character’s level by 2 and treat it as if it were a spell level, using the table above to find the proper multiplier. Spell XP Costs Spell Level XP Multiplier 1st-3rd ×1 4th-6th ×2 7th-8th ×4 9th or higher ×10