A second look at customized classes, Table 1: Base XP

The plan seemed simple enough.  Take Crabaugh's system and tweak it "just a little" so that it would spit out the xp tables in the B/X books if you plug in the seven existing classes.  I said, "I'll just reverse engineer the classes into their base components.  It can't be that hard". 

That was weeks ago.  

The brick wall that I kept running into was the unified base xp table.  I really wanted it to work, but the Thieves and Elves conspired against it.  Once I made the decision to let go of the unified table, everything fell into place rather quickly.

It was easy to see that the arcane magic used by Elves and MUs was costing them.  Their offensive spells cost them more than the helpful prayers of clerics.  In addition to that the versatility of spellbooks, sharing spells, and the potential to keep a library full of magical options seemed to put them up into a whole new tax bracket.

The thieves and clerics confused me though.  Their xp tables were obviously playing by different rules, but it took me long time to see what those two classes had in common.  Eventually I stumbled across a discussion online about how thieves were assumed to belong to a guild and required to fork over 10% of their gold, just like clerics donating to their churches.  I don't remember ever using that rule in play.  I wish I had my old B/X books so that I could verify it.  Labyrinth Lord seems to agree though, so I labeled their base xp as "10% tithers" and moved on.  It makes sense to me.  They pay their dues and in exchange they get some training from their peers.  It's also interesting to note that if they broke away from these organizations and kept their gold, thieves would need 1600xp for level 2 and clerics would have the same xp requirements as fighters.  I like that.

Clerics and thieves are also responsible for the Level 10+ section.  Thieves have lower xp requirements than clerics every step of the way until after name level.  At that point clerics need 100k per level and thieves need 120k... what the hell?  And don't even get me started about the dwarves.  I gave up, truncated the tables at level 9, and decided to just blame the rest on hit points.

... and that's where this three headed monster came from.

Table 1: Base XP

 10% Tithers    Standard     Base XP     Spellbook Users
0 ------------ 0 --------- Level 1 --------------- 0
300 -------- 400 ------- Level 2 ------------ 500
600 -------- 800 ------- Level 3 ---------- 1000
1200 ------ 1600 ------ Level 4 ---------- 2000
2400 ------ 3200 ------ Level 5 ---------- 4000
5000 ------ 6400 ------ Level 6 ---------- 8000
10000 ---- 12800 ----- Level 7 --------- 16000
20000 ---- 24000 ----- Level 8 --------- 25000
40000 ---- 48000 ----- Level 9 --------- 50000
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Level 10+
Add a flat amount to the total based upon hp gained
10% Tithers      Standard                 Spellbook Users
+100,000 --- +100,000 --- +1 hp/level --- +150,000
+120,000 --- +120,000 --- +2 hp/level --- +200,000
+130,000 --- +130,000 --- +3 hp/level --- +250,000

 

 Like many of the tables in this class building system, I don't really like it but it seems to work.  If I can find a way to simplify or improve it I'll go back and update the original post.