In need of a Opinion 18: Expanding setting lore, EXP and level progression

[Leema Har'gachi]

I had just released the most recent up date to my playtest for the 3D's To Adventuring Darkness, Dragons, and Dimensions which you can get for free here to look at in details. https://www.patreon.com/posts/3ds-to-da ... =join_link

However, I actually hadn't written another "In need of a Opinion" spite the fact that this is basically the fourth one I have released since the last one. This is mostly because I've actually been splitting up the work in my RPG between the main playtest document available to everyone and the Subclass document available only to my $5 patrons and up and to be honest, while the previous two up dates where pretty substantial a large chunk of those up dates where dedicated to adding spells for use with the new subclasses and I understand that anyone reading this probable doesn't want to pay $5 to test out content, so I figure it by itself wouldn't be enough to warrant asking you guys to take a look and give me any opinions or idea you have that might help improve the game. Though with that said out of the 10 subclasses, I've current completed four: Sword dancer (which I had release for free and is still available in the downloads as a PDF), Druid (which is very much like the original 1st edition druid just with the unearthed arcana material there by default), Ranger (Function similar to how the did in 1st having weapon specialization like the fighter and their access to druid and magic-user spells. However, the rangers start out with giants and humanoids as favored enemy and then lets the ranger add new favored enemy once per level, and they have spell ranger spells that can be casted in either a druid or magic-user spell slot with their effect changing depending on the spell slot use. You can see the spells in the main playtest document.), and the Sorcerer which I was originally worried about when I started working on it because traditional draconic blood is the source of their power in most settings, though it would work with the setting since there is a lot of interspecies breeding going on in Dragon's Reign. But, I felt that would just make the class feel exactly like the D&D sorcerer and I wanted them to feel more unique. So I decided to create a setting wide back story where back 100,000 years ago before the dragonwar, sometime the human goddess of magic Mana Tessa Allitressa would sometime have sex with her human worshippers that she favors and even have children. So when the war had ended. the human goddesses have vanished, and humanity being enslave over the years all the interspecies breeding had led to many human, half-dragons, dragonsouls, and other species having traces of Mana's bloodline in them which would then occasionally manifest in the sorcerer ability to cast magic. This is just a compress version of the idea and the class has a lot of setting lore built into its mechanics. If you are interest in looking a the subclasses I will like it, but I don't expect any of to look at. Here is the link:https://www.patreon.com/posts/3ds-to-beta-3-77053434

One of the major none subclass updates relates to humans as I have filled out their description section except for religion (which is going to take a while since I will be explaining both the modern religion and the original religion of humans, basically even more setting lore), and homeland which is probable even more complicated since I literal made four tribes of humans in the physical description section and will have to explain both post and pre dragonwar homelands for them which might end up giving them the heaviest and expansive species description out of all the races.

However this update is actually all about Experience points and leveling up. So the three new sections are all in chapter 3 near the end of the chapter acting as expansions to the General advancement section. The first section titled Gaining Experience Points simply explains the possible sources of EXP as well as how the party earns it and how it is divided, no real biggy. The Next section is really important as if bring back a feature from AD&D that has been removed since in modern D&D. Bonus EXP Rewards, basically the additional experience point for high abilities is back, but some what simplified and also adjusted for balance. If your ability score that matches you classes prime ability has a 16 or higher, you gain a +30% bonus to the experience point given to that class, however the section does get a bit complicated when it comes to multiclassing and has a section for each type. So rather than go into the individual details I will just let you read that and just explain the thing that both classes share. The EXP bonus is added between all class that you have a 16 or higher in their prime ability and is then divided by the number of classes, this is shared between both gestalt and progressive multiclassing, also this bonus EXP is only applied to the EXP given to the class with the 16 or higher prime ability. This means the more classes you have the less Bonus EXP you get unless you have a 16 or higher in the prime ability of every class. Thus a tri-class gestalt character with only 1 prime ability 16 or above only get +10% bonus to EXP awarded to that class, but if they have 2 prime abilities of 16 or higher then its +20%. It doesn't slow your characters progression, but it does mean that trying to over multiclass as a progressive multiclass character can make things more difficult unless you go out of your way to deal with it.

The third and final new section title Leveling Up, explains how you level up. Which if you are familiar with 1st editions training system (which was suppose to be mandatory, but literally no one used). Basically character under 9th level when they get enough EXP to level must find a tutor to train them, which takes 1 week per level (using the level they are going to be when training is over and not their current level before training). In 1st edition gary had stated rules that if the character had been doing their job well that prior to training then it takes half time, but that is kind of hard to judicate. So, this is how I have change it: You subtract that class's prime ability's modifier from the number of weeks (minimum of 1 week for training). So a fighter with a 16 strength progressing to 5th level would only take 3 weeks of training to reach 5th level while a fighter with 5 strength would require 7 weeks of training to level up. I known a lot of modern players didn't like training, but the narrative significance of it had always appealed to me, it also give class like the magic-user time to use craft magical items and while classes with low EXP requirements are leveling up they can use the time to create items of use to the party and gain EXP to speed themselves up.

So would really love to know what you all think about this EXP system.