03-22-2022, 01:10 PM | #61 | |
Join Date: Dec 2021
Location: Indiana
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Re: Alternate XP progression schedule
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03-28-2022, 07:00 PM | #63 |
Join Date: Jan 2018
Location: Sydney, Australia
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Re: Alternate XP progression schedule
The great unexamined idea in experience is exponential increase. Every now and then, whether it's every attribute point or every five, the cost to go up doubles.
It has all sorts of consequences I think are undesirable. Characters rush through the early levels, hardly getting to experience 32 points before it's gone for ever. But the higher levels they sit at for ages, their character development stalled, dreaming of new abilities they won't see for a long time. This can't, to my thinking, be desirable. Yet basically every time I hear people say, "I have a new XP system," it turns out to be exponential. There's generally no argument why it should be, it's just assumed this is how it should be, that all experience systems are exponential. Legacy sort of has one, that character development is less important later because people have come to love the campaign, but I think enjoying a campaign (during adventures) and enjoying character development (between adventuring) are basically separable activities. People enjoy both, and should get both, rather than being offered first one, then the other. Why do people use exponential increase? As far as I can tell, just because everyone else does. (In particular because D&D's original edition did, which is basically what everyone is copying. But original D&D assumed the XPs earnt would also increase rapidly, which according to Legacy guidelines-as-written isn't the case. Even in D&D, when they use a "milestone" experience system, progress is more or less at a constant rate.) My way of thinking about this:
I appeal to game designers to consider alternatives to exponentiation, and to ask themselves what they want to happen before they touch pen to paper. |
03-28-2022, 07:41 PM | #64 |
Join Date: Jun 2008
Location: Boston area
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Re: Alternate XP progression schedule
I think the tendency to exponential growth, at least at higher levels, is easily explained.
I want my player's characters to advance, but I don't want a bunch of supermen running around. The campaign is open-ended, so a planned advancement as you suggest is impractical. If they advance quickly for a while and then the XP costs go to exponential (except for new talents in TFT, of course), then older characters will be a lot better than newer characters, but they won't be invincible. Now, it might work out poorly once they reach 40 attribute points and thereafter gain literally every talent available at their IQ, but I suppose we'll see just how likely that is. At 500XP per point, talents aren't exactly cheap. |
03-29-2022, 07:55 AM | #66 |
Join Date: Jun 2008
Location: Boston area
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Re: Alternate XP progression schedule
That's linear, not quadratic. Perhaps you meant 4k for the third point? If so, the next point would cost 7000 pts.
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03-29-2022, 10:47 AM | #68 | |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Pacheco, California
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Re: Alternate XP progression schedule
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1+3 = 4, 4+5 = 9, 9 + 7 = 16, etc. So total number of attribute points scales as the sqrt of total XP. Current system scales as log total XP.
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03-29-2022, 02:31 PM | #69 | |
Join Date: Jun 2008
Location: Boston area
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Re: Alternate XP progression schedule
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Let's take the current system, which doubles for each new point after 40. Thus, the progression is 4000, 8000, 16000, 32000,... or, in other words, 4000 * 2^0, 4000 * 2^1, 4000 * 2^2, 4000 * 2^3,.... The total number of XP spent on attribute points is thus 4000 * (2^1 - 1), 4000 * (2^2 - 1), 4000 * (2^3 - 1), 4000 * (2^4 - 1),... This is what is meant by exponential growth, whether we mean the amount required for the next attribute point or the sum total to get to the next attribute point. Accordingly, using RAW and assuming that all XP is spent on attributes to simplify matters, AttrTotal = ceiling(39 + log(XPtotal - 4300)) where 4300 is the sum needed to reach 39 attribute points. Quadratic growth means that the growth is like a quadratic. Clearly, 1000, 2000, 3000, ... is not quadratic growth. There is no ellipse containing the points (40,1000), (41,2000), (42,3000). Those points are collinear. Per this rule, the sums required would be 1000, 3000, 6000, 10000, ... or 1000 * sum_{1 \leq i \leq n} i So, let's suppose that we were talking about actual quadratic growth. In that case, our sequence might be something like (returning to 4000 as the 40th point) 4000, 8000, 16000, 28000, .... where the nth point is given by 4000 * (n^2/2 + n/2 + 1). The total experience (after reaching 39) needed to reach a point is 4000, 12000, 28000, 56000, .... or, dividing by 4000, we have the sequence 1, 3, 7, 14, 25, 41, .... I don't know much about this sequence. It is not quadratic (that is, there are no quadratic functions which match these values). Given this, I doubt you're right that attribute value scales like the sqrt function as XP increases. It's totally possible, mind you, that I just am missing something. It's clear that the sequence you first put up can't be called quadratic -- not in any sense I know, anyway. But maybe there is some growth related to sqrt. I'm just not seeing it anywhere. Anyway, let me know if I am indeed missing something. Last edited by phiwum; 03-29-2022 at 08:06 PM. |
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03-29-2022, 04:23 PM | #70 |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Pacheco, California
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Re: Alternate XP progression schedule
Under my scheme:
32 point character: zero XP 36 point character: 10k XP 40 point character: 36k XP 48 point character: 136k XP So doubling the number of added points increases the total number of XPs by about four times. Hence quadratic. Under the current system adding two attribute points increases the total cost by about four times, hence exponential.
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