Monday, May 20, 2013

ACKS experience by the book

I was looking at the way ACKS handles experience point distribution by the book.  It runs something like this:

1) The Dungeon Haul
Total for Monster XP, and for Treasure XP (gold piece value brought home) is added up.  Then it is divided equally among all surviving PC's and Henchmen (with henchmen getting a half share).

The interesting bit:   you don't get Treasure XP based on how much of the loot you actually end up with, but rather your share of what the group takes.   This would tend to decrease squabbling over treasure and XP driven individual greed.   But, I like squabbling over treasure and XP driven individual greed.

2)  Magic Items:
Magic items work differently.  If you use it at all, then you never get any XP for selling it.   If you sell it for cash, then you get the XP value of the cash.  Presumably, the item must be sold more or less right away, and the XP value would be divided among the party, just like treasure XP from the regular treasure XP.   I've always hated when PC's want to sell magic items.  It seems dirty and wrong, so I really don't know how I feel about this.  The other factor is that it might be pretty hard to sell a magic item, especially an expensive one, since the chance of finding a buyer for a high-value item can be pretty low.  It looks like most permanent items are going to have at best a 25% chance of finding a buyer per month in our campaign area.

3) Scavenging Normal Items:
This is both better and worse than our traditions.  Normal equipment found scattered about or in the hands of dead enemies in our old ways were sold for 1/3 or 1/2 retail.   Under ACKS, they're at full retail (in the days without mass production that makes a certain amount of sense), unless there's something wrong with them, and there's almost always something wrong with them.  Yet, those defects won't lower the price more than 20-40% most of the time.

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