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Experience in Microlite75 Monster Mash Edition

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There is some discussion amongthe players in my group about experience points in the upcoming Monster Mash edition of Microlite75. About half the group wants to keep experience points like they are now in M75:

Characters get Experience Points (XP) when their party defeats monsters. Experience Points (XP) = Hit Dice of defeated monsters. Add +1 for each doubling of the number of foes. e.g.: 1 kobold (a 1 hit die monster) = 1 XP. 2 kobolds = 2 XP. 4 kobolds = 3 XP, 8 kobolds = 4 XP etc. Add +1 or +2 XP (GM’s discretion) if the foes have dangerous special abilities.

Characters also earn a GM-assigned amount of experience points for defeating traps, solving puzzles, excellent roleplaying, and the like. The GM should assign XP depending on the situation (usually from 1 to 5 XP). Characters can also lose up to 5 XP for generally ignoring their alignment or other very poor roleplaying.

Individual characters can also earn experience points from spending money found in treasures (or taken from monsters) in totally frivolous ways (e.g. wine, women, song, donations to a temple without getting anything in return, generic “training,” etc.). A character earns 1 XP for each 100gp so spent.

Add up the Experience Points (XP) of every successful encounter you take part in plus any earned from GM specials and treasure spent. When the total is equal to your Experience Base x your next level, you’ve advanced to the next level. Reset the total XP to 0 after advancing.

The other half of the group would like to see experience points more like 0e. That is, experience points would be more finely grained. instead of taking an average character 25 or so XP to advance to second level, it would take about 2000 XP. Experience would be awarded in larger quantities more like in 0e. For example, a single 1 hit die monster might be worth 10 XP and gold spend would be worth 1 XP per gold piece spent in a totally frivolous way.

This would be more like the original game and would allow the GM to be more exact in awarding XP, but it would make the numbers larger and make the experience system more complex. Which do you think would be better — the less complex Microlite method with smaller numbers or the more complex 0e method with larger numbers?

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Shane Mangus

Well, I guess a question needs to be answered before a decision can be made. Is this Monster Mash version of M75 supposed to be a Microlite game or is it a clone of 0e? I understand it is a mash-up of the two, but which end of the spectrum is the game going to lean the strongest? I hoped this would be a more fully fleshed out Microlite75 game with *some* 0e leanings, but in the end it is still M75. With that I would say keep the M75 experience scheme.

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Adam Thornton

Hm. I feel like, when I'm working with fractional experience points as I often do in Microlite 74, that I'm doing it wrong. But my players feel cheated if they get zero experience for an easy fight, which often happens.

But multiply that scale by ten (which puts you logarithmically right in the middle of the two proposed systems) and it should work quite well.

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Nick

I think that smaller numbers are better. The only reason to add two digits to the end of the experience point total is to make it look bigger. We're all big boys- we can add decimal places with smaller numbers to get the fine-tuning we want. You can be exactly as precise with smaller numbers as with larger numbers, but smaller numbers tend to be awarded in whole-numbered intervals. Few people will bother to award .5 XP, when they'd cheerfully award 50 xp in the larger-numbered method, and there's no real reason for that.

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