[platimus]

Originally Posted by Skarg

That comment applies to the XP costs SJ last posted on the Experience thread. But the new ITL draft cut the lower-level costs steeply, and made the increasing costs double at every level. Now it'd be much more accurate to change "36 or 37" to "38".

Oh goodness...

Either way, the line about how at 36 or 37 points, you'll want to switch to buying talents (at 500 XP per talent point) seems like it is really out of scale with the listed attribute costs, which are only 800 XP for the 37th point.

You think it's off by 1 point and that is "really out of scale"? I don't know the background of the comment/thread but you may be right. In fact, I'll go ahead and say "You win" LOL The numbers in the statement should be bumped up 1 point so that it's not "really out of scale" LOL

Sorry to disagree so much, but it looks to me like the previous curve was nice and fit the description, but I'd characterize the new curve as "you blow through points 33-35 like they were barely there, then get the 36th and 37th points more slowly but probably don't think about talents but might get a good spell or two instead, or a wish. For the 38th point you've got about an even choice. The 39th point is quite expensive, the 40th even moreso, and 41 or 42 are extremely expensive. The later numbers are just there for there to be a number, but start taking years of play to get each point. So at 39 or 40 points, you probably stop getting attributes and just get talents, spells and wishes.

That's a fair assessment.

Personally I'd tweak it so players get to spend more time playing characters in the 35-37 range, and are thinking about learning more talents and spells instead of adding attributes at that point.

As GM, you can control much time players spend in their mid 30s with the way you dole out XP.

As a player, I WOULD be thinking about Talents and spells in my 35-37 range. I probably wouldn't actually save up for them unless it was something I thought would be more useful than the at-buff. I probably would wait until I was 37.

If there is a particular talent you think the group needs, you could always introduce an NPC that is willing to (a)tag along, (b)teach the talent at a reduced XP cost (because he's that good of a teacher), or (c)both.

One thing I'll say in favor of the current costs though is it is one change that actually makes things a bit harder on wizards, most attributes being so cheap compared to learning a spell.

Until you get 36 :)
I think it's a good balance actually. All spells are 500. I haven't thoroughly examined the Talents but most seem to be 1000 or 1500.

This get us to where we may be the two different sides of the same coin. I think the Talents/Spells are slightly too expensive. A 400, 800, 1200 scale would seem better to me. Maybe this is what you were driving at. I thought you were suggesting changing the at-boost scale. It seems OK to me but I think something like this wouldn't be awful either:
34th or lower 100 XP
35th 200
36th 400
37th 800
38th 1,200
39th 3,000
40th 6,000