XP gulf from massive GP rewards

So, I may have screwed this up from inception, first of all. I way over-rewarded my players. I'm a little impatient to see the mid-to-late game.

So my players found a clever way to de-curse some gold (they crushed it into powder and smelted it! Pretty clever!). This allowed them to trundle home with several tens of thousands of gold, which then got converted to XP (as you do).

Here's where the problem came in: They were all 1st level characters. Two spellswords, one cleric, and one vaultguard.

By the rules, a character can only ever gain one level of experience at a time from lugging loot back to town. As written, they will stop 1 XP short of the level after thier earned one.

So there was enough to get the elves to 7,999 XP (level 2 and 1 XP short of level 3) and the cleric topped out at 2,999. This is a five thousand xp gap.

Is this the intent of the rules? Because the cleric's player was not happy. 

Our fix to this was to plataeu the Elves at their second level and then bring everybody to that XP. Which... I mean, as far as patches go it was just OK. For the record if you're willing to let characters jump multiple levels per haul then it works alright.

If you're not worried about the players advancing too fast (In fact, it seems like you specifically WANT them to advance faster) then just disregard the rule about no multiple levelling entirely. Let them be level 3! Or 4! In fact, I'm unclear why you started at 1 if you didn't want to play 1.

I'd agree. No real reason to stand on ceremony. Let them have the levels; throw a group intent on stealing the gold at them, call it even.

Heck, I like that rule better - if you bring home enough GP that you'd level twice or more, in 1d4 (days/weeks/months based on market class maybe) someone will try and steal it from you. (result of the local thieves' guild carousing perhaps)

 

See this is why I love this game. I take the amount of GP I gave them, look at what level that would reasonably make them, then select some monsters and thugs with about that many hit dice and BAM, problem solved. :-D

As to why I started earlier: that was for player-impact. I've got a slew of 3.0-3.5/pathfinder players, and I wanted them to develop an appreciation for the terror of old-school level 1 so that the "minor" bonuses from leveling could be savored in their true significance. 

I certainly would not use the "one level at the time" rule for adventuring XP...

I really appreciate that the usual response around here is "that sounds like a great adventure" instead of "oh my glob, that's a big problem."

[quote="Azraele"]

See this is why I love this game. I take the amount of GP I gave them, look at what level that would reasonably make them, then select some monsters and thugs with about that many hit dice and BAM, problem solved. :-D

[/quote]

Ah - excellent addition. Divide the overage in GP by 4, and that's the amount of creatures by XP value that come a'lookin for your giant pile of gold.

...it kinda cries out for a custom wandering monster chart that's weighted in favor of reckless teenage dragons.

 

I've been thinking about this.  Technically, the XP limitation capping at 1XP short of a 2nd level gained only applies when gaining XP at the conclusion of an adventure, not to reserve XP.  If the cleric doesn't like that the 6000gp/XP they came back with only got them to 2999XP, they could burn it all on anonymous tithes, retire to a life of private prayer, and have a 5400xp character suddenly appear and join the party.

Now, this is pretty goofy, and I doubt anyone involved in a game wants too much more than either actual player desire to try a new character or several bad rolls on the tampering with mortality table to prompt retirement.  For this reason you're probably better off just allowing XP to flow through.  Consider the fact that the treasure tables are pretty well thought out to create the 4:1 ratio of treasure to murder XP, and it sounds like you tampered with that, so it stands to reason you should probably have to tamper with the XP caps. 

[quote="Jard"]

 Consider the fact that the treasure tables are pretty well thought out to create the 4:1 ratio of treasure to murder XP, and it sounds like you tampered with that, so it stands to reason you should probably have to tamper with the XP caps. 

[/quote]

Yeah no joke. I think this was just a case of my tendency towards Monty Haul creating an exception where none was intended to exist.

Again though, you gotta love a game where the way to fix it is just give it one more good break in the right place. :-D

Yeah, in a case like this, I might only cap the hirelings out at a 1-level gain and let the PCs go a bit crazy -- maybe even specify to them that it's a one-time exception because they were smart/cunning enough to work their way around the cursed gold to turn it into viable loot.

On the other hand, while the cleric has a sorta reasonable justification for his initial perception of unfairness, he does realize that he's still going to hit the next couple of levels BEFORE the elves manage to level up again, right?  Like sure, everyone's only 1 xp shy of 3rd level right NOW, but the Elves aren't going to see level 4 until they hit 16K xp, whereas the cleric will be around 11K by then which is just a grand shy of level 5. So even WITH all that "lost xp" he's still going to level up sooner than they are. Just my 2 cents for consideration, anyway.

I would let them get all the xp, but only let them advance one level per session of play.