Try:

10. E3 = -62½ x (EL-3) x 1.4 ^ (3+D2)
where D2 = (EL-4) – Individual Char Level
and where D2 <0.

Using your example of a level 1 character confronting a single EL 1/4 creature (which usually come in larger groups, but never mind that):
D2 = EL-4-1 = -2-4-1 = -7
E3 = -62½ x ([-2]-3) x 1.4 ^ (3+[-7])
= -62.5 x -6 x [1.4 ^ -4]
= -62.5 x -6 x 0.26
= 97.5 = 98 xp.

Strange that I didn’t catch that when I was working the examples.

The other issue you raise is with #15, reducing xp for treasure. In order for a monk or paladin or other such class to comply with a vow of poverty, they must tythe their share of treasure received to their church or other such organisation, as dictated by the class. That doesn’t mean they can abstain from receiving more than their immediate needs and give the remainder to the other party members. In order to give their excess up, they first have to recieve it from the party loot. It follows that they don’t get extra xp for maintaining their vows; instead, they get a reduced xp payout for their share of the loot the same as any other character class. Once they have it in their posession, they can do what they want with it, even tythe it – or refuse to tythe it and accept the consequences.

Finally, I want to comment on the “wild woodland creature with 900gp” – quite often, creature designers will think of one specific kind of treasure which they associate with the creature; then this will be generalised in editing and discussion. An example might be bull elephants, which come with a substantial amount of ivory each. Ivory is considered a type of “gem” under the rules (or it used to be) so the treasure table for that general category gets pointed at in the stat block – leading to elephants with diamonds and rubies and whatnot. Plainly ridiculous, but the original intention was absolutely correct.

From that 900gp, I would subtract the value of the hide, the value of the carcass as meat, the value of any bones or horns OR the value of the head if stuffed and mounted, the value of any collectibles the creature swallows and/or creates, etc etc etc, and then be left with the true value of any valuables that might be found in the vicinity. If the total comes to less than zero, then I assume that I have overestimated the value of one of these subitems, and reduce it accordingly. That usually accommodates the “900gp”, or equivalent value, nicely. Sometimes, though, it doesn’t; rather than reduce the GP value of the treasure, though, you can get creative. Suppose the creature requires water with certain mineral salts regularly in order to survive; and that those salts can only be found in streams that are carrying flecks of gold, too few to make mining or panning profitable. These can then build up as nugget-like deposits within the creature, or gold plate it’s skull, or any of a dozen other things.

None of this is treasure handed to the PCs on a silver platter; they have to work for all of it, and if they try to claim all of it from every encounter they will quickly overburden themselves. They will curse your name even as the laud the realism of the campaign!
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For instance, as it is written, #10 doesn’t seem to work right. If D2 is negative, then 3-D2 is a large positive number. E.g, if we had a 1st lvl character kill a EL 1/4 monster we get 312.5 x 1.4^(3-(-2-4-1), which is 312.5 x 1.4^10! That’s 9039 exp! Even with the 1/4 penalty from #11, it’s a whopping amount for such an easy encounter. I think what you meant to do is have it be 1.4^(3-absolutevalue(D2)–i.e., 1.4^(3+D2) since D2 is always negative for #10–because those numbers seem to work out better.

Even with that correction, there are other things that seem a little odd. In both #’s 9 and 10, an EL3 creature gives absolutely no exp for the E3 portion of the exp calculation, though EL2 and EL4 both give exp, almost making EL3 encounters the worst to fight in terms of rewards vs risk.

I think you summed up most of the issues I have with your system in your statement, “[...] I can only assume that the problem is somewhere in my translation of principles into mechanics.” Everything you say makes sense on paper, but I can’t get certain things to work.

Essentially, out of your article, I think #’s 1, 2, 3, 11, 12, 13, and 14 are all keepers. 1, 2, and 3 have drastically reduced my prep time; 11 is viable and I see no problem in implimenting it. 12 is common sense, but its nice to have it out there as a house rule, and 13/14 helps with keeping PC’s in the spotlight (Although in solo campaigns, I often assign psuedo-PC’s to accompany the PC and give them full exp–the PC is usually going to outshine them anyways, given that the campaign is about the PC and I usually give them abilities that would be balance-breaking in a normal game).

I also think #15 is salvagable, but we need to throw out the idea that you get extra exp for passing on loot–monks with a vow of poverty would get twice the exp from every encounter (If I read it right) simply by denying themselves loot, leveling their character faster than the other PC’s and arguably breaking balance. While I agree that every experience point should be balanced by 10gp, giving an extra exp because you didn’t get the gp just doesn’t balance Types of character power. It’s like saying for every ten calories you eat of vegetables, you can eat a calorie of fatty foods (I know that’s not the ratio, but bear with me). If you said, “well, I didn’t get a chance to eat my vegetables today, so I’ll just make up the lost calories by eating 1/10 of what I would have eaten as vegetables as chocolate instead!” people would look at you like you were crazy! It’s just not a balanced diet!

In the same way, a character’s power is augmented by wealth, yes, and there is supposed to be that 1/10 ratio for the game balance to work as expected, but the two shouldn’t be convertable. What I think should happen, is that if a character doesn’t get the gp expected regularly enough, it should be recorded on their sheet as a “GP Defeciency” or something. The DM keeps tabs on where people’s deficiencies are, and when the PC’s save the town or something, the mayor rewards them with a magical item that just so happens to be roughly the amount of gp you haven’t recieved yet. On the other hand, if the party gets more gp than expected, then it takes away from that defeciency pool. If there is uneven distribution of gold (probably from a magic item) the PC’s should just redistribute the gold so that everyone gets an even share. If this can’t be done (or if the DM is just hiding the price of the object for plot reasons or some such) then the PC’s deficiencies should vary from each other to represent this, and perhaps the king awards three magic rings to four PC’s… and the one that got the awesome sword just has to skip out on the loot. Hopefully, a crafty DM can keep their defeciencies as even as possible, but if the loot is truly and completely random, then it can make things hard.

I’m sure there’s some error in my interpretation, too, but it would be interesting to playtest. Usually, I don’t hand out as much gp from encounters as the book says I should. Why would that wild, peaceful woodland creature carry 900 platinum on them? For PC’s to loot of course! No, it makes more sense to repay the PC’s later for what they didn’t get now.

Hope this makes sense, and again, I REALLY like what you are trying to do here, but I can’t make (all of) it work in practice.

Unfortunately, I never found the time to dig into the system and work out where the error lay. The logic seems correct at each step, so I can only assume that the problem is somewhere in my translation of principles into mechanics.

In terms of casualties, if there’s a principle concerning this in the DMG I was never able to find it. Most players are of the opinion that the reward should be divided amongst the survivors, for obvious reasons. Some GMs that I know – in the absence of a rule to the contrary – indulge this arguement. So far as I am concerned, though, if the casualties took part in the battle, they earned their share of the XP by doing so and then they died.

From the description of your forthcoming campaign, you should definitely check out “This means war!”.
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Also, is the missing final step applied to the total experience or just the base experience? I would assume total, but I assumed that the % bonus from number 11 applied to total, and you only applied it to the base in your example.

As for the treasure, it is dissapointing that it didn’t work out well. I honestly thought that was one of the better aspects of the system. Where exactly did the issue come up?

And yes, always penalize rorting the system–or simply metagaming for that matter. I also thought of another solution: Casualties. If the PC ever gets really annoying with his 300 CR1/2 bodyguards that he replenishes on a regular basis, you can just have them encounter a single wizard of the same EL. I think the massive area damage would teach the PC pretty quickly. Even so, simply dividing exp by the number of people in the party solves most of the PC army problems… most.

The whole reason I kept bringing up the skirmish idea was because in my next campaign (a one-on-one game) I am planning an early lvl battle between the PC and the army she joined and the enemy army. I actually have a lot of very low people on either side, so people are going to be dropping each round like flies on both sides–I’m trying to introduce the horrors of war to an otherwise innocent character–and I was wondering about something: lets say only the PC and three soldiers survive the skirmish; do I give exp as if the dead people on her side were a part of the party, or do I give it only as if the survivors were? My instincts say the first, but I can’t find anything to say so (or not) in the DMG at first glance through.

Yes, there are a couple of flaws with the system that I presented back then.

• The treasure value deduction doesn’t work properly, there is some conceptual bug in there. The idea was to subtract the gp value of the treasure from an encounter from the xp to be handed out, which was made a larger amount to compensate. This part of the article was written directly from my first-draft notes, as that part of the system had not been put to the test prior to writing the article; when I went to use it, the results came out all wrong. The idea was that you could independantly vary the amount of treasure you gave out according to circumstances and the amount of xp would ensure that the results were fair, but there is some horrid mistake somewhere in the calculations shown that I have never been able to track down. So, instead, I’ve had to resort to the much simpler method: subtract gp value of treasure from the xp awarded and forget the complexities built into that part of the system.
• Somehow, the final step – divide by the number of members of the party – got left out. It’s supposed to be there!

Where the system works, once you grasp it (as you have done), it works well – better and more accurate and wider-ranging than the book, especially if your campaign is to go into epic levels.

One use that I have found that isn’t in the writeup is to use the combined EL of the enemies to determine the amount of treasure, treating them as a single higher-level encounter and then dividing the treasure amongst the enemies. This means that the resulting treasure-load is commensurate with the party’s level and not with the level of individual creatures encountered. Or you can mix-and-match, giving two lots of treasure two ERs below the total indicated. This means that you can control the relative usefulness of items looted, and either encourage a larger and more diverse collection of smaller goodies or a smaller group of more powerful rewards – and either way, the PCs will earn what they get. The compromise point can be varied to suit the GM and the situation, something I find very useful.

On to the other “worst case scenarios” that you have raised: Armies. This system is not meant to accommodate armies, it’s for personal combats; I did another article – in fact, it had to be a series of them – on handling large scale combats called “This means War!”. But, if I were confronted by a PC-raised army, I would subtract from the xp award given to the PCs the xp award that was being distributed to the soldiers in their army. The fighting troops thus get the majority of the xp and the generals the leftovers.

For example, let’s say that there’s an army of 181 second-level characters. That makes them equivalent to a single 18th level character. Let’s oppose them with 4 PCs of level 6 and 181 first-level soldiers. The army are equivalent to one character of level 16 and the 4 PCs are equivalent to a single tenth-level character. More usefully, the PCs army is equivalent to 32 characters of their own (6th) level, for a total of 36 @ 6th – roughly the same as a single 16th-level character. You would expect there to be a substantial award for this battle, and for the PCs to do rather well out of it, even though they are letting the army do most of the fighting for them. I would work out the xp award for a level 16 party (PCs plus army) confronting a level 18 enemy and subtract from that the xp award for a level 16 party (the army) confronting that level – leaving nothing for the PCs. Bonus XP are a different story; Each PC’s share of the fight is one 36th of the total enemy, or just over 5 enemies of CR 2. Which works out to 1 enemy of CR 7 – so they would get a reasonable share of bonus XP, but not the huge payday they were expecting.

And that’s before I tack on any penalties for trying to rort the system!

First of all, I’d like to say I really like what I’ve used of the system so far! I’m a math geek, but even I made a funny face and scratched my head when I first looked at this. I had to scroll down and read your response to Revara’s comment and analyze how you calculated your example to truly understand not only the math, but the potential of this system! The fact that you can convert CR up or down by multiplying or dividing by the root of two cut down my preparation time by a LOT, and it allowed for mixing of individual CR’s while keeping track of it all. In fact, I can scribble it out on paper without a calculator faster than I could look up the old way on the tables! I also appreciate the treasure rules you added, because I hardly ever hand out appropriate treasure for a campaign–I tend to keep things low-magic.

Something I noticed though, is that you hand out exp based solely on the enemy EL and do not divide by the number of characters in the party, which comes out with very interesting results. (Yes I do know you have your Party Size Adjustment, but that’s a bonus rather than a penalty.) I’m not complaining, I’m just pointing out that this gives different results: I.e., exp is directly proportional to size of combat, unlike the original rules.

For example, if you had two 1st lvl characters duel each other, the winner (even if he recieved no treasure) recieves less exp than what the book would award (unless I’m miscalculating). On the opposite end of the spectrum, if you put a 1st lvl PC with a band of lvl 1 Warrior NPC’s, say ten of them, and pit them all up against an equal EL, you would be awarding a lot of exp to the PC not only because the combat itself had a higher EL, but because it is much much more than what the book estimated (In fact, the book estimated it to be LESS than the 1v1 duel earlier, when in fact your version pretty much gave a lvl up). But, you say, what does it matter if the results are skewed that direction? I have two reprecussions, one more dangerous than the other, but easily corrected.

1) Treasure. If the exp is more or less than what is predicted by the DMG, then you cannot use the DMG to produce treasure and expect correct results. This is because that 1v1 duel would probably give you more treasure than exp, and that (relatively massive) skirmish would give you only a fraction of the expected treasure if you simply took 10x the exp as the norm. This is because if the DMG expects the exp to be less, it gives less treasure, and if it expects exp to be more, it gives more treasure. When you change one and not the other, and provide a bonus relying on the relationship between the two, things get a little disproportionate. You can correct this by looking on the “expected” treasure chart and finding the closest entry and then roll up random treasure for that EL simply enough. But you don’t have to–you can play with it as it is and only use EL’s closer to the party EL, but either way, if your players figure out this oddity, then you come to…

2) Larger combat is encouraged. This means that a metagaming PC with a little wits can subtly hire a small army and march around with his “300 bodyguards.” The natural response is either to take away the army or pit the PC against another army. The first one is difficult to accomplish–a whole other discussion, perhaps–but the better option. If you start increasing the EL of the enemies to match, then the PC keeps getting TONS of exp from each encounter. Now, if you go by the strict rules of “1 lvl up per encounter cap” this keeps a lvl 1 from shooting to lvl 7 in one massive seige, but it means that a powerful lvl 24 PC who is willing to pay his mercs ALL of the treasure from the encounter, earning him even more exp, can essentially farm exp by hiring massive amounts of NPC’s and standing in the middle of the fight. No more worrying about exp components for spells, eh? Just enchant an army to do your will, or better yet, create the zombie apocolypse Necromancer style!

I know I’m taking “Worst case scenerios” and possibly blowing things out of the possible proportion, and if you keep things to a simple “You are adventuring with your three close friends. That’s it” then you don’t have to worry about it. However, because larger combat IS more rewarding,it makes familiars, animal companions, feats like Leadership, and anything else that increases the party EL at all much more valuable.

I hope I’m not ranting too much–I really do like the system! I just want some feedback and other opinions on what I’ve come up with. Who knows, I could have easily missed a step and everything I’ve said is nonsense because my calculations are wrong!

The CR seems to fit about right, with even as little a difference as 1 CR can make the fight seem ridiculously easy or very hard, at low levels atleast.

So, for example:
2 enemies of CR 3 is worth the same experience as 1.414 x 2 opponants of CR 2 = 2.828 opponants of CR 2 – usually rounded to 3.
5 enemies of CR 4 is worth the same experience as 1.414 x 5 opponants of CR 3 = 7.07 opponants of CR 3 – usually rounded to 7.
5 enemies of CR 4 is also worth 5 / 1.414 opponants of CR 5 = 3.536 opponants of CR 5 – usually 3 of CR 5 and one of CR 3.

So, if you have a party of 5 characters of 4th level, a ‘fair fight’ is 5 monsters of CR 4, or 3 monsters of CR 5 and one of CR 3, or 7 of CR 3.

I hope, although I’m writing more than 6 months too late, that you will answer :s