XP weirdness

General ACKS Forums General Discussion
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I’m finally sitting down and studying the core rulebook for the first time in preparation for a new campaign. I noticed two very odd rules concerning experience points, and wanted to hear what others thought of them. (The forum search feature is apparently broken at the moment, so please forgive me if these have already been done to death.)

The first is this paragraph:

If the party recovers magic items on an adventure, and sells them without using them, they receive 1XP per 1gp earned in the sale. If the characters use the magic items, they do not get any XP, even if they later sell them. (This is to prevent characters from using magic items to help them adventure, then selling the magic items for XP later, essentially benefiting twice from the same item.)

Here’s what I imagine a player doing with that: “Oh, cool! I found a nifty magic ring worth 10000gp! I’ll sell it to this merchant here, and get 10000gp and 10000xp! Yay! Now I’m rich AND more experienced! Hey, I could really use a magic ring, and I’ve got 10000gp burning a hole in my pocket. Not only that, but I happen to know a merchant who has a ring just like the one I want! He bought it this morning from a guy who happens to be me! Boom! Now I’ve got a nifty ring AND more experience. I love this game!”

(Yeah, I know: You can’t sell something for the same amount it costs you to buy it. But the point is that even losing a substantial portion of the gold, the XP is there for the munchkining.)

The second oddness is this paragraph:

XP is divided only among characters alive when the party returns to civilization, even if other characters were alive when the monsters were slain or the treasure was first found. Characters that are slain on an adventure, but are raised from the dead while still in the dungeon or wilderness, and are alive to return to civilization, do get XP.

So the party slays a whole family of dragons, not to mention a bazillion other creatures that stood between them and the dragons. They hauled away all the treasure their carts could carry, and they all lived. Joe the Strong really took a lot of damage, though, and they’re fresh out of healing. On the way home, half a mile from the edge of the wilderness, there’s a random encounter with a single goblin during which the goblin gets lucky and takes Joe’s last hit point. The goblin is thrashed by the rest of the party, but good 'ol Joe dies an ignominious death.

The party has a choice: Continue half a mile into town and pay a cleric to cast Restore Life & Limb, in which case Joe is robbed of all his experience from the adventure; or sit and wait until a passerby can be sent as a messenger into town to go get a cleric to come out and cast the same spell on the side of the road, allowing Joe to get his well-deserved experience.

How does that make any sense?

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B) I suspect that “half a mile from town” counts as “civilization”. That goblin probably shouldn’t even be there. Otherwise, I guess the point is that until you’re safe, you’re not safe. Probably houserule fodder.

A) That same character can take his 10,000 GP and buy an entirely different ring if he wants to. There’s nothing broken about that. He loses money and gains a ring. Plus, depending on where he’s selling it (market class), that ring might no longer be available. Yes, even if the merchant is right there, he might not be willing to sell it.

Unofficial answers!

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A) not with me as the GM

B) i interpret the rules as joe gets the XP from dragon and dragon treasure and all the monsters and their treasure in between, but he does not get xp from the goblin or the goblin’s treasure.

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Also, checking on it, there’s at best a 10% chance per month of finding a buyer for a Ring of Invisibility (33,000 Space Bucks), and just as slim a chance of being able to buy it back.

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Here's what I imagine a player doing with that: "Oh, cool! I found a nifty magic ring worth 10000gp! I'll sell it to this merchant here, and get 10000gp and 10000xp! Yay! Now I'm rich AND more experienced! Hey, I could really use a magic ring, and I've got 10000gp burning a hole in my pocket. Not only that, but I happen to know a merchant who has a ring just like the one I want! He bought it this morning from a guy who happens to be me! Boom! Now I've got a nifty ring AND more experience. I love this game!"

APM: This approach only works if the Judge ignores everything in the rules about buying and selling magic items. To wit, Adventurers can sell identified magic items found, discovered, looted, or otherwise acquired for the base cost to make the item. Adventurers can buy magic items for twice the base cost to make the item. In order to buy and sell magic items, the adventurer must be in a market of sufficient size. Assuming a ring of 10,000gp, in an average Class III town, there is a 25% chance to find a buyer per month, and then a 25% chance to find a seller per month. By the time the PC has sold his item, 2-3 months have passed, which represents 3-5 adventures in game-time. Then before he can buy a new one, another 2-3 months have passed. So after 3-6 months, the PC has lost 5,000gp and the use of a valuable magic item for 6-10 adventures. That's not a great trade in most ACKS campaigns, because the value of gold diminishes in value as you level.

So the party slays a whole family of dragons, not to mention a bazillion other creatures that stood between them and the dragons. They hauled away all the treasure their carts could carry, and they all lived. Joe the Strong really took a lot of damage, though, and they're fresh out of healing. On the way home, half a mile from the edge of the wilderness, there's a random encounter with a single goblin during which the goblin gets lucky and takes Joe's last hit point. The goblin is thrashed by the rest of the party, but good 'ol Joe dies an ignominious death. The party has a choice: Continue half a mile into town and pay a cleric to cast Restore Life & Limb, in which case Joe is robbed of all his experience from the adventure; or sit and wait until a passerby can be sent as a messenger into town to go get a cleric to come out and cast the same spell on the side of the road, allowing Joe to get his well-deserved experience.

How does that make any sense?

​APM: To be clear, you are critiquing the metaphysics by which pieces of metal turn into skill and knowledge because the pieces of metal don't turn into skill and knowledge for dead people? I shall endeavor to answer this. :-|

APM: First, let's look at why you get XP for gold in the first place. ACKS awards XP for GP because doing so creates incentives to explore rather than fight monsters; because it creates an easy way for Judges to spread "XP packets" throughout their sandbox; and because it allows us to tie increases in character power with increases in temporal power. But in order for XP for gold to make sense, it has to be tied to *successful* exploration. 

APM: So the question becomes, has a character succeeded if he died? As might be apparent from the horrors of the Tampering With Mortality table, ACKS does not subscribe to the view that dying and be restored to life is the same as not dying at all. In fact, dying is meant to be horrific and terrible in ACKS. In our playtest campaign, PCs are frequently retired because of the awful things they slowly become from repeated Restoration of Life and Limb. Not getting XP is part of the penalty for dying.

APM: In the case you mention, should the cleric come from town to raise the figher - and there's no in-game rule that says he would -- the fighter would have a penalty on his Tampering With Mortality roll because he's not being raised in a temple. So the trade-off is not so simple as "wait to get XP v. go into town". The real choice is whether the fighter's short-term loss of XP is worth the long-term cost to his body and soul.

APM: Finally, it's worth adding, that if you use the rules-as-written, ACKS is a brutal game. A heroic fighter really might die while on the escape from a dungeon and lose all his XP. In this sense, ACKS can have more of a Joe Abercrombie/George RR Martin in feel than some people like, and I reckon many people probably house-rule it to soften the painful blows.

 

 

 

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off topic @Alex: your answers are always insightful and enlightening, showing thought processes and what’s going on behind the scenes. Many things that do not seem logical at first, make sense after your explanationsand the above is another example of that. thank you for that.

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Wow, Alex. Thanks for the detailed and thoughtful reply. It really does put both situations into a much more sensible context.

This kind of thing is why it’s so awesome that a forum like this exists where rules can be questioned and examined PRIOR to houserules being created. Houserules short-circuiting these kinds of scenarios may seem to make sense at first glance, but when the scenarios are looked at by people with a more in-depth understanding of the rules it becomes obvious that the houserules stand a chance of breaking a non-obvious awesomeness of the existing system.

(And thanks go also to the others who answered. Alex gets singled out for most thoroughly explaining the reasons behind the existing rules, but all four answers gave good thinking points. This forum is wonderful!)

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Thanks for those very kind words! One thing I am proud of is that ACKS is a system, in the true sense of the word: An integrated whole. Space and time preclude me from explaining most of what went on behind the scenes, but when the opportunity presents itself I'm always happy to share what the thinking was.

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Thanks for the kind words, Mr. Grogg. I'm glad you've found the forum a good place!

And you are very right about house rules being easily able to break the game. One of the things we're trying to do with ACKS is "open up the operating system" as it were, with rules for custom classes, custom spells, custom proficiencies, etc., so that it's easier to add content without feeling like it has to be house-ruled from nothing.