Experience Points and Devotions
Sauron poured all his hate, bile, and wickedness into the one ring - his very soul in fact - and in this newest game design idea I prepare to do the same…
Well, sort of.
Recently, I’ve been considering the role of experience points within the d20 system. As of now, there are basically two methods for using XP in Dungeons and Dragons, one, to advance in levels of a base or Prestige Class, the second, to create magical items. I’ve heard a great number of complaints about how both uses tend to aggravate players, and I believe the current system often falls short of the desires of both storytellers and players alike. In developing my third use for character experience, I needed to address the issues with the first two.
Class advancement has long been the primary role of the experience point system, and often gets the most flak for being broken, bad, or boring. The basic concept goes something like this: A character gathers life experiences as he faces dangers. The more dangerous, the more he learns. The more he learns, the better he becomes. By gaining experiences, you gain level, and each level brings a development of powers. It’s simple, and serves the purpose for with it was developed. Characters can choose to advance in base Classes, or if they meet certain prerequisites, Prestige Classes. Game Masters have the option of modifying what they give experience points for to reflect whatever it is that they and their players choose to make the focus of their storytelling sessions. I usually give just as many experience points for good role-playing and storytelling as I do for beating monsters and challenges. The reasoning is simple: As characters prove themselves to be the focus point of the heroic story we are trying to tell, these characters can become more powerful and impressive.
Now, one of the issues I’ve heard about the use of experience points for Class advancement results from the exponential rate of requirement to level up. In other words, you need a lot more experience points to go from level 19 to 20 then you do to get from level 1 to 2, even when you take into account the higher XP rewards usually gathered when facing challenges geared towards higher level characters. Now, the reason this is sometimes a problem is because it requires players to plot out the path their character’s will take in regard to Classes at an early stage, or risk becoming mired down.
For example, let’s say there is a Prestige Class called: Super Ninja. The various prerequisites for the Class (base attack bonus, feats, etc) can be reached in different ways. If your character was a Fighter, he would qualify at as early as 5th level. If he were a Rogue, he’d qualify at 7th level. If he were a Monk, he’d qualify at 10th level. For the purposes of this example, it doesn’t really matter what the hypothetical prerequisites are, only that certain paths allow you to take that first level of Super Ninja faster then others. Some player will, no doubt, wish to take levels in Rogue and Fighter to reach Super Ninja, and it may even be possible to be a Wizard and reach the Super Ninja prerequisites, but only as a high level Wizard, and only by wasting lots and lots of feats in the attempt to replicate all the things you would have gotten far cheaper if you had only trained in the proper Classes.
So, where does this leave us? Well, a wise player, who thought ahead and knew where he wanted his character to go, would start life as a Fighter if he indeed wanted to be a Super Ninja at some point in his career. That way, by the time his Character Level was 6, he’d already have had his first level in the desired Prestige Class. If, on the other hand, the player made the “mistake” of choosing to start his character’s life as a Monk, he’d have to wait until his Character Level was 11 (ten levels in Monk, one in Super Ninja) before he could start his path in the life of a Super Ninja. Since it’s a lot easier to reach 6th Level then 11th, we see that the Fighter path was indeed the correct choice for the would-be Super Ninja.
But not exactly. See, the Monk/Super Ninja does have a number of advantages to the Fighter/Super Ninja. The Monk/Super Ninja has several powers that the Fighter/Super Ninja does not, as he has five extra levels in a Class that may indeed be useful to his adventuring career. He will hit harder then the Fighter/Super Ninja. His saves will be better, as will his stats. In short, while it is true that the Monk/Super Ninja path is slower then the Fighter/Super Ninja path, it is not all at a loss - in fact, the end result is a character that reaches the fabled heights of Super Ninja-dom as a generally more powerful character.
So we see that picking the fastest route to a Class is great, but not necessarily all-important. This does not belittle the idea that good planning is without merit, but merely shows how you can salvage any choice in path so long as you are generally going in the correct direction.
Still, one can not deny that if your true ultimate goal is to become a Super Ninja, it’s a lot easier to gain that goal if you take the path of least resistance. In a game where gaining a Knighthood, Mastery of a Tower, or Regency is the passion of the characters, it makes sense to reward the powerful, rather then penalize them. If Regency were made into a Prestige Class, it would mean that characters of certain Classes that more easily meet the prerequisites would have more success as Regents as compared to more powerful characters that, while of higher level, coincidently failed to meet the prerequisites as of yet. The answer to this, it would seem, would be to merely rethink the choice of prerequisites for gaining the Regency Prestige Class - but this too is a mistake. Even if the prerequisite for the supposed Prestige Class was something any character could have even at the earliest levels (family birthright, for example), it would still mean that the 1st level Fighter would have an easier time gaining levels in the Regency Prestige Class as compared to a 20th level Wizard (or 20th level Fighter, Noble, or anything, for that matter). Merely because it takes a lot more experience points to rise from nineteenth to twentieth level then it does from first to second, the Prestige Class system truly fails when faced with a set of powers that should be easier to gain as a character grows in power. If I were a high-level character in the world, and I was offered a Knighthood that came with advancing powers that grew as a leveled up, I would expect to be able to advance through that Knighthood faster then a low-level character would. However, under the basic system, that would not be so.
I uncovered a solution to this problem while reading The Lord of the Rings again, contemplating the characters of great noble bloodlines in the story, (like Denethor, the Steward of Gondor, and Aragorn, the Heir of Isildur), and the nature of Sauron’s one ring. In the story, as in many myths, the great figures of the world pour their very essence into objects, places, and titles - and thereby breathed life into them - linking themselves forever to the fate of the thing that holds their passion.
If forced to recreate this under the mechanics of the d20 system, one would say that character’s such as Sauron were using the magical item creation rules for the game. Here, as the designers of the game wished to mimic, a character puts his own essence into the items he forges, spending experience points to create magical wonders. This is the second major use of experience points according to the basic system.
Here too I have heard many complaints. Players rarely seem to enjoy the idea of “wasting” experience points on the creation of items when those same points could otherwise be spent on improving themselves. This is, I think, understandable. My own major issue with the use of experience points to create items generally focuses around their use in creating temporary, or non-artifact quality, items. I love the idea of putting a part of your soul into a magic sword or one ring - but the idea of putting into a potion or scroll indeed seems a bit wasteful.
That aside, the idea of expending experience points in such a matter helped me think about these esoteric numbers on our character sheets in a different way. Suddenly, experience points were not just the record of how well we did against the challenges set against us in a story, but rather the representation of the power behind the characters themselves. They were the character’s soul, tangible, expendable, and able to be focused upon a task, mission, or career path (i.e. Class).
With this in mind I went about designing a major addition to the basic structure of a game using the d20 system - a new means in which to use experience points. At first I referred to them as “soul classes”, because they behaved in ways that were similar to Classes (powers that increased in levels) and because they involved the expenditure of a character’s soul in ways similar to the ways that inspired the basic idea of spending XP to make items. Under this new mechanic, a player can link their character to a Realm, Ideal, Role, or any number of other physical or esoteric concepts; and that thing will grow as the character grows. There will be a great number of different passions, like Prestige Classes, that focus on how different characters can devote themselves, and for this reason I have officially began referring to this mechanic as Devotions, which like Race and Class, will become an essential part of defining a d20 character.
Devotions come in several parts. Initially, there are several prerequisites that must be met before a character can choose to advance in a Devotion. For example, a potential Devotion Class might be the “Master of Towers”. This Devotion is suitable for any character that wishes to become a powerful magic user and ruler of a great Tower of Sorcery. To take levels in the Devotional Class, Master of Towers, a character must first be in control of a magical tower, and may also have to be a spell-caster of a certain level. With these requirements, it is possible to restrict powerful Devotions (ones that offer potent powers with each level of advancement) only to those characters who are powerful enough to have earned them, while simultaneously allowing the creation of other Devotions (say, Inn Keeper) that require considerably less notoriety within the world.
The next aspect of Devotions are the powers that they grant. Devotions that are more difficult to acquire (the Master of Towers) should offer great power, while those Devotions more easily obtained (the Inn Keeper) should offer lesser powers. Powers develop with each level acquired, and should never extend to aspects of the character that are unrelated to the Devotion in question. In no way should either the Master of Towers or the Inn Keeper need to have either of their base attack bonuses increase. The Noble Devotion, for example, would offer powers that increased the productivity of their homeland, not offer better saves for the character.
Thus far, Devotions seem very similar to Prestige Classes, with the exception that the powers offered by Devotions are more focused upon the nature of the character’s passion then the development of the character himself. The third aspect of Devotions are where they differ even further from their Prestige Class cousins; how advancement within a Devotion works.
If Devotional advancement worked the same way as Prestige Class advancement, we’d have the following scenario: The 5th level Wizard, Mike the Meager, has found an abandoned tower. He wishes to claim it and begin to take levels in the Master of Towers Devotion, which would allow magical effects within the tower to be much more powerful. However, the prerequisite for taking the Master of Towers Devotion is to control a tower and be at least a 10th level Wizard. Too bad for Mike the Meager, he’ll have to go out adventuring or spend long periods studying and come back later.
But his cousin, George the Good, a 10th level Wizard has found his own tower nearby, and has decided to take the Devotion of Master of Towers as well. He has met the prerequisites for the first level of the Devotion, so after some study and adventuring of his own, he is ready to spend his next character level (his eleventh) to gain the first rank in Master of Towers. Hurray!
Now, so far, so good. George and Mike are equally positioned here, George got the Devotion faster then Mike, but that’s understandable, because he’s far more powerful the Mike. Actually, Mike is really going to get the Devotion at the same time as George did in the grand scheme of things - that is to say, after he’s gone out into the world and done the same amount of adventuring and gathering of experience.
But along comes Arnold the Amazing. Arnold is a 20th level Wizard, and has seen so much wonder in the world as to make the gods weep. The land is going through a new age, however, and it is high time that he sequester himself away to a Tower of Sorcery and contemplate his navel like a good wizard should. He finds one near the other two, and claims it as his own, but there is a problem. While he certainly meets the prerequisites for the Master of Towers Devotion, he is so powerful that in order to gain his first level in the Devotion, he would have to slay a lesser god. Now, he is also powerful enough to do that - but it’s still rather awkward. Imagine being Arnold the Amazing, going to the local Wizard’s Moot, and meeting up with George the Good, well on his way to Mastering his Tower while you’re still looking for the easiest epic quest to finish before you go on your way.
This is the trouble with the basic Class advancement system. While it is a matter of personal opinion whether the 6th level Fighter/Super Ninja is better off then the 11th level Monk/Super Ninja, it is clear that the 10th level George the Good has a much easier time doing the same thing that the 20th level Arnold the Amazing wishes to do. In cases of pure Prestige Class training, even choosing the wrong path has some nice consolation prizes. Say we were talking about a 10th level Wizard that wants to take levels in the “Dark Wizard” Prestige Class versus a 20th level Wizard that wants to take levels in that same Prestige Class. True, the 20th level Wizard would have more difficulty gaining that first Prestige Class level then his 10th level counterpart, but at least he is clearly a more accomplished spell-caster. But in cases where the thing you are trying to level up is not directly related to your own powers - the incentives seem reversed. The Devotion is a thing of outward appearance, something that differentiates you from others, akin to membership in an elite club (the way, perhaps, certain Prestige Classes, like Arcane Archers, should have been treated). For these reasons, those characters of greater power should, logically, have an easier time advancing in those fields.
My first attempt at a solution was based on a method inspired by a few Prestige Classes, whereas gaining a level in the Devotion would instantaneous grant all the benefits of gaining a level in a given base Class. It was inspired, as I said, by Prestige Classes where each level grants some benefit akin to “+1 level to spell-caster Class”, only in the Devotion version, gaining a level in a Devotion would result in advancing in a base or Prestige Class in all respects, including base attack bonus, saves, increased spells and spells per day, and any other special abilities. Effectively, in every way but total experience points needed to advance to the next level, a character advancing in a Devotion would be leveling twice: once in their main Class or Prestige Class, and once in their Devotion.
For example, a 10th level Wizard attempting to level up in the Master of Towers Devotion would gain all the benefits of being an 11th level Wizard as well as a 1st level Master of Towers. In the same respect, a 20th level Wizard attempting to begin leveling up as a Master of Towers would gain all the benefits of a 21st level Wizard upon gaining the first level of their Devotion.
This is a partial solution. It lessons the pain of being an overly powerful character attempting to advance in something that their presence and prestige should make easier, but it does not eliminate it. George the Good will still have an easier time advancing in the ranks of the Master of the Towers as compared to Arnold the Amazing, if only because it’s easier for George to reach level eleven then it would be for Arnold to reach level twenty-one. True, in this version, Arnold is not strictly penalized for taking the Devotion, but he still moves slower then his less capable comrades.
The problem is that the d20 system is, at its core, all about delay of gratification. You are meant to work hard at developing a character; slowly unlocking secret powers as you go, becoming more heroic only after you reach given points in your epic story. My latest concept for working experience points as they relate to Devotions, while the simplest, seems best suited for this most unusual addition to the basic game mechanic - the only, that I can remember, that intentionally rewards powerful characters for the sheer fact of being powerful. At the same time, it does not “break” the system. Dungeons and Dragons characters are meant to be heroes, in the Classic sense of the word. This allows the greatest of them to affect the world in real and systematic ways, to extend their characters to the very playing field that the rest of the campaign rests in, and to do so while simultaneously reaping the benefit of character advancement.
Under this solution, Devotions will still require carefully designed prerequisites. These will be established to ensure that only characters of reasonable power, position, and authority have the ability to move forward with the passions that rule them. Advancement within a Devotion will vary in power greatly depending on the nature of the Devotion and the ease to which someone might make the prerequisites. Master of Towers are rare, but Inn Keepers, devoted as they may be to their businesses, are still a far more common and less powerful calling.
A character will advance within their chosen Devotion though a series of levels, much like they do in their Class, but on a tier of experience that is separate from the one they use for Class leveling. In this way, after a character reaches the prerequisites for a given Devotion, they can advance to the first level of that Devotion immediately. Thereafter, they advance level by level as if they were using the basic experience point table, from the bottom up. This means that to reach the second level of a Devotion, the character need only to gain 1,000 experience points - the required experience point total to reach the 2nd level according to the basic XP Chart. Furthermore, the experience points used to advance through a Devotion will not be deducted, and can also be used to advance through Classes.
This means that powerful characters, easily able to make the experience point totals required to rush through the lowest levels in the experience point chart, will be able to breeze through Devotions. Suddenly, that 20th level Wizard that decided to settle in a tower has no trouble becoming a Master far faster then his 10th level equivalent.
The only trouble I foresee is the possible need to include many half steps in this new design for Devotions. If Devotions are too easy to obtain, then we need to include enough steps to keep players interested, or else characters will master their Devotions far too quickly. On the other hand, if the prerequisites for Devotions are too high, then only the greatest of characters would be able to gain them, and then they would quickly breeze through the various levels that make up the Devotion in a matter of a few epic encounters. Balance is the key here, it would seem, but play-testing is required before I can move any further. It’s possible that forcing experience points to be spent on Devotions, like in the creation of magical objects, may make a slightly more balanced option. Although, that does seem to favor higher level characters who could afford to spend the experience on the Devotions. Or, It may be that I might have to create a separate experience point table for use exclusively with Devotions, although if this is the case I would only modify the minimum points required for advancement - I would want the source of advancement, experience points themselves, to remain true.
Well, sort of.
Recently, I’ve been considering the role of experience points within the d20 system. As of now, there are basically two methods for using XP in Dungeons and Dragons, one, to advance in levels of a base or Prestige Class, the second, to create magical items. I’ve heard a great number of complaints about how both uses tend to aggravate players, and I believe the current system often falls short of the desires of both storytellers and players alike. In developing my third use for character experience, I needed to address the issues with the first two.
Class advancement has long been the primary role of the experience point system, and often gets the most flak for being broken, bad, or boring. The basic concept goes something like this: A character gathers life experiences as he faces dangers. The more dangerous, the more he learns. The more he learns, the better he becomes. By gaining experiences, you gain level, and each level brings a development of powers. It’s simple, and serves the purpose for with it was developed. Characters can choose to advance in base Classes, or if they meet certain prerequisites, Prestige Classes. Game Masters have the option of modifying what they give experience points for to reflect whatever it is that they and their players choose to make the focus of their storytelling sessions. I usually give just as many experience points for good role-playing and storytelling as I do for beating monsters and challenges. The reasoning is simple: As characters prove themselves to be the focus point of the heroic story we are trying to tell, these characters can become more powerful and impressive.
Now, one of the issues I’ve heard about the use of experience points for Class advancement results from the exponential rate of requirement to level up. In other words, you need a lot more experience points to go from level 19 to 20 then you do to get from level 1 to 2, even when you take into account the higher XP rewards usually gathered when facing challenges geared towards higher level characters. Now, the reason this is sometimes a problem is because it requires players to plot out the path their character’s will take in regard to Classes at an early stage, or risk becoming mired down.
For example, let’s say there is a Prestige Class called: Super Ninja. The various prerequisites for the Class (base attack bonus, feats, etc) can be reached in different ways. If your character was a Fighter, he would qualify at as early as 5th level. If he were a Rogue, he’d qualify at 7th level. If he were a Monk, he’d qualify at 10th level. For the purposes of this example, it doesn’t really matter what the hypothetical prerequisites are, only that certain paths allow you to take that first level of Super Ninja faster then others. Some player will, no doubt, wish to take levels in Rogue and Fighter to reach Super Ninja, and it may even be possible to be a Wizard and reach the Super Ninja prerequisites, but only as a high level Wizard, and only by wasting lots and lots of feats in the attempt to replicate all the things you would have gotten far cheaper if you had only trained in the proper Classes.
So, where does this leave us? Well, a wise player, who thought ahead and knew where he wanted his character to go, would start life as a Fighter if he indeed wanted to be a Super Ninja at some point in his career. That way, by the time his Character Level was 6, he’d already have had his first level in the desired Prestige Class. If, on the other hand, the player made the “mistake” of choosing to start his character’s life as a Monk, he’d have to wait until his Character Level was 11 (ten levels in Monk, one in Super Ninja) before he could start his path in the life of a Super Ninja. Since it’s a lot easier to reach 6th Level then 11th, we see that the Fighter path was indeed the correct choice for the would-be Super Ninja.
But not exactly. See, the Monk/Super Ninja does have a number of advantages to the Fighter/Super Ninja. The Monk/Super Ninja has several powers that the Fighter/Super Ninja does not, as he has five extra levels in a Class that may indeed be useful to his adventuring career. He will hit harder then the Fighter/Super Ninja. His saves will be better, as will his stats. In short, while it is true that the Monk/Super Ninja path is slower then the Fighter/Super Ninja path, it is not all at a loss - in fact, the end result is a character that reaches the fabled heights of Super Ninja-dom as a generally more powerful character.
So we see that picking the fastest route to a Class is great, but not necessarily all-important. This does not belittle the idea that good planning is without merit, but merely shows how you can salvage any choice in path so long as you are generally going in the correct direction.
Still, one can not deny that if your true ultimate goal is to become a Super Ninja, it’s a lot easier to gain that goal if you take the path of least resistance. In a game where gaining a Knighthood, Mastery of a Tower, or Regency is the passion of the characters, it makes sense to reward the powerful, rather then penalize them. If Regency were made into a Prestige Class, it would mean that characters of certain Classes that more easily meet the prerequisites would have more success as Regents as compared to more powerful characters that, while of higher level, coincidently failed to meet the prerequisites as of yet. The answer to this, it would seem, would be to merely rethink the choice of prerequisites for gaining the Regency Prestige Class - but this too is a mistake. Even if the prerequisite for the supposed Prestige Class was something any character could have even at the earliest levels (family birthright, for example), it would still mean that the 1st level Fighter would have an easier time gaining levels in the Regency Prestige Class as compared to a 20th level Wizard (or 20th level Fighter, Noble, or anything, for that matter). Merely because it takes a lot more experience points to rise from nineteenth to twentieth level then it does from first to second, the Prestige Class system truly fails when faced with a set of powers that should be easier to gain as a character grows in power. If I were a high-level character in the world, and I was offered a Knighthood that came with advancing powers that grew as a leveled up, I would expect to be able to advance through that Knighthood faster then a low-level character would. However, under the basic system, that would not be so.
I uncovered a solution to this problem while reading The Lord of the Rings again, contemplating the characters of great noble bloodlines in the story, (like Denethor, the Steward of Gondor, and Aragorn, the Heir of Isildur), and the nature of Sauron’s one ring. In the story, as in many myths, the great figures of the world pour their very essence into objects, places, and titles - and thereby breathed life into them - linking themselves forever to the fate of the thing that holds their passion.
If forced to recreate this under the mechanics of the d20 system, one would say that character’s such as Sauron were using the magical item creation rules for the game. Here, as the designers of the game wished to mimic, a character puts his own essence into the items he forges, spending experience points to create magical wonders. This is the second major use of experience points according to the basic system.
Here too I have heard many complaints. Players rarely seem to enjoy the idea of “wasting” experience points on the creation of items when those same points could otherwise be spent on improving themselves. This is, I think, understandable. My own major issue with the use of experience points to create items generally focuses around their use in creating temporary, or non-artifact quality, items. I love the idea of putting a part of your soul into a magic sword or one ring - but the idea of putting into a potion or scroll indeed seems a bit wasteful.
That aside, the idea of expending experience points in such a matter helped me think about these esoteric numbers on our character sheets in a different way. Suddenly, experience points were not just the record of how well we did against the challenges set against us in a story, but rather the representation of the power behind the characters themselves. They were the character’s soul, tangible, expendable, and able to be focused upon a task, mission, or career path (i.e. Class).
With this in mind I went about designing a major addition to the basic structure of a game using the d20 system - a new means in which to use experience points. At first I referred to them as “soul classes”, because they behaved in ways that were similar to Classes (powers that increased in levels) and because they involved the expenditure of a character’s soul in ways similar to the ways that inspired the basic idea of spending XP to make items. Under this new mechanic, a player can link their character to a Realm, Ideal, Role, or any number of other physical or esoteric concepts; and that thing will grow as the character grows. There will be a great number of different passions, like Prestige Classes, that focus on how different characters can devote themselves, and for this reason I have officially began referring to this mechanic as Devotions, which like Race and Class, will become an essential part of defining a d20 character.
Devotions come in several parts. Initially, there are several prerequisites that must be met before a character can choose to advance in a Devotion. For example, a potential Devotion Class might be the “Master of Towers”. This Devotion is suitable for any character that wishes to become a powerful magic user and ruler of a great Tower of Sorcery. To take levels in the Devotional Class, Master of Towers, a character must first be in control of a magical tower, and may also have to be a spell-caster of a certain level. With these requirements, it is possible to restrict powerful Devotions (ones that offer potent powers with each level of advancement) only to those characters who are powerful enough to have earned them, while simultaneously allowing the creation of other Devotions (say, Inn Keeper) that require considerably less notoriety within the world.
The next aspect of Devotions are the powers that they grant. Devotions that are more difficult to acquire (the Master of Towers) should offer great power, while those Devotions more easily obtained (the Inn Keeper) should offer lesser powers. Powers develop with each level acquired, and should never extend to aspects of the character that are unrelated to the Devotion in question. In no way should either the Master of Towers or the Inn Keeper need to have either of their base attack bonuses increase. The Noble Devotion, for example, would offer powers that increased the productivity of their homeland, not offer better saves for the character.
Thus far, Devotions seem very similar to Prestige Classes, with the exception that the powers offered by Devotions are more focused upon the nature of the character’s passion then the development of the character himself. The third aspect of Devotions are where they differ even further from their Prestige Class cousins; how advancement within a Devotion works.
If Devotional advancement worked the same way as Prestige Class advancement, we’d have the following scenario: The 5th level Wizard, Mike the Meager, has found an abandoned tower. He wishes to claim it and begin to take levels in the Master of Towers Devotion, which would allow magical effects within the tower to be much more powerful. However, the prerequisite for taking the Master of Towers Devotion is to control a tower and be at least a 10th level Wizard. Too bad for Mike the Meager, he’ll have to go out adventuring or spend long periods studying and come back later.
But his cousin, George the Good, a 10th level Wizard has found his own tower nearby, and has decided to take the Devotion of Master of Towers as well. He has met the prerequisites for the first level of the Devotion, so after some study and adventuring of his own, he is ready to spend his next character level (his eleventh) to gain the first rank in Master of Towers. Hurray!
Now, so far, so good. George and Mike are equally positioned here, George got the Devotion faster then Mike, but that’s understandable, because he’s far more powerful the Mike. Actually, Mike is really going to get the Devotion at the same time as George did in the grand scheme of things - that is to say, after he’s gone out into the world and done the same amount of adventuring and gathering of experience.
But along comes Arnold the Amazing. Arnold is a 20th level Wizard, and has seen so much wonder in the world as to make the gods weep. The land is going through a new age, however, and it is high time that he sequester himself away to a Tower of Sorcery and contemplate his navel like a good wizard should. He finds one near the other two, and claims it as his own, but there is a problem. While he certainly meets the prerequisites for the Master of Towers Devotion, he is so powerful that in order to gain his first level in the Devotion, he would have to slay a lesser god. Now, he is also powerful enough to do that - but it’s still rather awkward. Imagine being Arnold the Amazing, going to the local Wizard’s Moot, and meeting up with George the Good, well on his way to Mastering his Tower while you’re still looking for the easiest epic quest to finish before you go on your way.
This is the trouble with the basic Class advancement system. While it is a matter of personal opinion whether the 6th level Fighter/Super Ninja is better off then the 11th level Monk/Super Ninja, it is clear that the 10th level George the Good has a much easier time doing the same thing that the 20th level Arnold the Amazing wishes to do. In cases of pure Prestige Class training, even choosing the wrong path has some nice consolation prizes. Say we were talking about a 10th level Wizard that wants to take levels in the “Dark Wizard” Prestige Class versus a 20th level Wizard that wants to take levels in that same Prestige Class. True, the 20th level Wizard would have more difficulty gaining that first Prestige Class level then his 10th level counterpart, but at least he is clearly a more accomplished spell-caster. But in cases where the thing you are trying to level up is not directly related to your own powers - the incentives seem reversed. The Devotion is a thing of outward appearance, something that differentiates you from others, akin to membership in an elite club (the way, perhaps, certain Prestige Classes, like Arcane Archers, should have been treated). For these reasons, those characters of greater power should, logically, have an easier time advancing in those fields.
My first attempt at a solution was based on a method inspired by a few Prestige Classes, whereas gaining a level in the Devotion would instantaneous grant all the benefits of gaining a level in a given base Class. It was inspired, as I said, by Prestige Classes where each level grants some benefit akin to “+1 level to spell-caster Class”, only in the Devotion version, gaining a level in a Devotion would result in advancing in a base or Prestige Class in all respects, including base attack bonus, saves, increased spells and spells per day, and any other special abilities. Effectively, in every way but total experience points needed to advance to the next level, a character advancing in a Devotion would be leveling twice: once in their main Class or Prestige Class, and once in their Devotion.
For example, a 10th level Wizard attempting to level up in the Master of Towers Devotion would gain all the benefits of being an 11th level Wizard as well as a 1st level Master of Towers. In the same respect, a 20th level Wizard attempting to begin leveling up as a Master of Towers would gain all the benefits of a 21st level Wizard upon gaining the first level of their Devotion.
This is a partial solution. It lessons the pain of being an overly powerful character attempting to advance in something that their presence and prestige should make easier, but it does not eliminate it. George the Good will still have an easier time advancing in the ranks of the Master of the Towers as compared to Arnold the Amazing, if only because it’s easier for George to reach level eleven then it would be for Arnold to reach level twenty-one. True, in this version, Arnold is not strictly penalized for taking the Devotion, but he still moves slower then his less capable comrades.
The problem is that the d20 system is, at its core, all about delay of gratification. You are meant to work hard at developing a character; slowly unlocking secret powers as you go, becoming more heroic only after you reach given points in your epic story. My latest concept for working experience points as they relate to Devotions, while the simplest, seems best suited for this most unusual addition to the basic game mechanic - the only, that I can remember, that intentionally rewards powerful characters for the sheer fact of being powerful. At the same time, it does not “break” the system. Dungeons and Dragons characters are meant to be heroes, in the Classic sense of the word. This allows the greatest of them to affect the world in real and systematic ways, to extend their characters to the very playing field that the rest of the campaign rests in, and to do so while simultaneously reaping the benefit of character advancement.
Under this solution, Devotions will still require carefully designed prerequisites. These will be established to ensure that only characters of reasonable power, position, and authority have the ability to move forward with the passions that rule them. Advancement within a Devotion will vary in power greatly depending on the nature of the Devotion and the ease to which someone might make the prerequisites. Master of Towers are rare, but Inn Keepers, devoted as they may be to their businesses, are still a far more common and less powerful calling.
A character will advance within their chosen Devotion though a series of levels, much like they do in their Class, but on a tier of experience that is separate from the one they use for Class leveling. In this way, after a character reaches the prerequisites for a given Devotion, they can advance to the first level of that Devotion immediately. Thereafter, they advance level by level as if they were using the basic experience point table, from the bottom up. This means that to reach the second level of a Devotion, the character need only to gain 1,000 experience points - the required experience point total to reach the 2nd level according to the basic XP Chart. Furthermore, the experience points used to advance through a Devotion will not be deducted, and can also be used to advance through Classes.
This means that powerful characters, easily able to make the experience point totals required to rush through the lowest levels in the experience point chart, will be able to breeze through Devotions. Suddenly, that 20th level Wizard that decided to settle in a tower has no trouble becoming a Master far faster then his 10th level equivalent.
The only trouble I foresee is the possible need to include many half steps in this new design for Devotions. If Devotions are too easy to obtain, then we need to include enough steps to keep players interested, or else characters will master their Devotions far too quickly. On the other hand, if the prerequisites for Devotions are too high, then only the greatest of characters would be able to gain them, and then they would quickly breeze through the various levels that make up the Devotion in a matter of a few epic encounters. Balance is the key here, it would seem, but play-testing is required before I can move any further. It’s possible that forcing experience points to be spent on Devotions, like in the creation of magical objects, may make a slightly more balanced option. Although, that does seem to favor higher level characters who could afford to spend the experience on the Devotions. Or, It may be that I might have to create a separate experience point table for use exclusively with Devotions, although if this is the case I would only modify the minimum points required for advancement - I would want the source of advancement, experience points themselves, to remain true.