| “ | Experience Points...because you didn't have enough numbers to worry about. | ” |
| —Havvy | ||
GM: Alright players, with that last blow, the monster falls down dying.
Player1: I check for loot.
Player2: I stand guard in case anything becomes alert to its death.
Player3: Umm, how much experience do we get for this encounter?
GM: Erm, let me get out the Magic Item Compendium to roll for treasure. While he loots for treasure, you don't find anything. Okay, now let me see for experience. It was CR N...and lets see, you all leveled up last time so now the average party level is Y. Based on that, you get, umm...let me check the book....uh,
Books shuffle around the table.
Player1: Erm, what was the loot?
GM: I'm trying to find experience real quick, hold on!.
Experience systems exist to allow for allowing player progression through levels. There are two level systems; point-buy and tier. Point-buy levels are those such as World of Darkness and GURPS and any game where you spend experience to raise one part of your character. Tier based level systems are those where you gain a hodgepodge of bonuses at each level. DnD uses this system heavily. Rarely, a system will combine the two, and usually with disastrous consequences, but that is another essay. A key difference between point-buy and tier systems is that while experience is required during character creation for point-buy systems, they are not required for tier systems.
But are experience points required after character creation? That depends on many factors of the game. If the game is short, the definite answer is no. They get in the way of everything else. But what is short? For a quick paced game, 15 minutes is short. For a game where skill is objective, there is no definition of short. Ultimately though, we care about pen-and-paper games. Short for a pen-and-paper game consists of three sessions. Longer than that, and you have a reason have a level up somewhere in-between, but until then, the effort to create and update a character takes longer than the fun that will be utilized from it.
So, for short games, experience is a nuisance, best to keep out or you will lower the fun provided.
So, that still leaves the possibility of experience points for long games. But to answer whether experience points are needed in DnD, one must look at how and why experience points are used in general. By looking at role playing games such as Final Fantasy and World of Warcraft, we get these rules. In these games, experience is used to cause a grind. This grind is placed in so that the player does not ignore every minor challenge and run straight for the lore and bosses. It is also put in to make the player feel accomplished in having gained a level. More important, it is used to slow the game down so you cannot reach end-game in one sitting. Finally and most importantly, it is used to judge whether or not the player is ready to move to the next level.
Pen and paper games can be played at multiple paces, but of which, none of them surpass 'somewhat slow' in speed. And because pen and paper games are ran using an intelligent world controller, usually called the game master, there is already a method of judging whether or not the player may move on to the next level, or whether they need to. As such, those reasons are removed.
And in a pen and paper game, there is somebody there to make sure bad things happen if you ignore the normal enemies. The laws of cause and effect are not bounded by what can be coded, only what can be rationally explained, and more probable, rolled. The game master has the job of making sure that players are adequately challenged. They should know what is trivial to get past (like say, a brick wall) and what is not (like say, a wall made out of force energy). They design encounters based on this.
And what if the game master wants to create lots of challenges for a specific level of play? In this case, experience is detrimental, as it could lead to a level up to quickly. At other times, what if the game master cannot think of many challenges that are just right for a certain level of play. In this case, experience is again detrimental, as it causes a level up too slow. And, more probable with point-buy systems than tier based, what if the game master wants to create huge jumps in power, like those equivalent to level gains in DnD. In these cases, game master fiat is a better judge than the game master giving experience.
This also leads to less bookkeeping, removing a section almost useless during gameplay. Nobody cares that they leveled up while playing. They care between games, where they make changes.
Fiat is a wonderful system for games where you have somebody there to make judgements. As such, DnD should have used fiat.
And removing experience removes a lot of bad mechanics from games that try to interface them in other ways. DnD Crafting, Thought Bottles, Ability components, ect. If you have to trade experience for using your abilities, you are paying for it with every usage, which makes you level up later than others, which puts you below the wanted averages. Not good at all for designing encounters or the player!
As such, when playing pen-and-paper games, don't use experience. Keep the levels, but have the game master in control of what level the group is at. It is not something that accepts fine-tuning and enjoyment to be side by side.
