[JLV]

I think that Steve has actually hit the nail squarely on the head.

If the root of the problem is how you *spend* XP, then by setting it up to award a lot of XP, you exacerbate the problem.

Sooo...there are two ways around the problem:

1) Significantly reduce the number of XP that can be earned for anything, either by eliminating things that earn XP, or reducing the number awarded, or some combination of the two.

2) Significantly increase the number of things that XP can be *spent* on.

Clearly, I choose number 2 for my solution (you spent XP to increase attributes, you spent XP to learn new talents, you spent XP to learn new spells, and you spent XP to learn new languages). Others added new attributes, or did other things similar to what I did (basically just spreading the number of XP wider in order to slow the approach to the issue).

However going with #1 would work too, and I don't think anyone has stated anywhere on this forum that they ever tried that! If I had to guess why, I'd guess it's because we never noticed attribute bloat as an issue until suddenly it was one, and then, rather than start a completely new game, we just figured out ways to make the Players spend XP for other things to delay the issue; whereas stepping back and looking at the game as a whole (clearly what the designer is doing here) shows other alternatives to solving the problem.

Edited to add: Actually, some combination of 1 and 2 would probably achieve complete resolution -- the problem might still technically exist in the system, but no one would ever live long enough to get there, regardless of what you did with your character. ;-)