EXP mods are stupid: A revamp of the EXP mod system

By KilledWithStyle, in Anima House Rules

Hey, if you are a GM like me (or perhaps a player searching for a better option) you have realized that races are awesome but EXP mods are stupid. I have argued with this problem for a while and for the longest time I had just been giving out EXP in gobs of where I wanted to campaign to end.

You see -5 EXP penalites begin to look WORSE than +1 level mods. Hell even -1 EXP penalties begin to look worse than a +1 level mod. It depends entirely on how much EXP is given per session, but eventually an EXP penalty character is going to be worse than a level mod character. (Sorry Pure Sylvain, you have it the worst)

So I decided to take a good look at the system. I argued that a -10 EXP penalty should be EXACTLY the same as a +1 level mod. The book creator never said what an EXP penalty to extra DP should be, but he DID say that a +1 level mod is 100 extra DP spent on powers. And I have just guessed that a -1 EXP penalty is the same as 10 extra DP. (or roughly around that) If it was 20 DP for every extra EXP penalty, a Duk'Zarist Nephilim would have a +1 level mod. Which it does not. If it was less than 10 DP, there would not be enough DP to make this worthwhile. There is my reasonsing behind EXP penalties and how much "extra" DP a race has.

So beacuse a level mod increases the EXP needed by 25 to get to the next level compared to the last, and my goal was to have 10 EXP penalty be exactly the same as a level mod, I came up with my factor of 2.5. Now if other Brilliant individuals want to assign their own ratio of EXP penalty to a +1 level mod, go ahead. If you know your excel, you can read through and figure out where I used that.

So with a +1 level mod, it takes 125 instead of 100 to get to level 2+1, and it takes 150 instead of 125 to get to level 3+1. This compounds over the levels. I just took that compounding effect and applied it to the EXP penalty.

Without further ado, I present to you the revamp:

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BxYiOqE1Mt0VOUFsSEF4LUNVUEk/edit

(click file -> download in google docs, as you cant edit it online)

The file is simple to read. You have 3 editable positions:

YOUR level mod:

YOUR EXP mod:

Average EXP per session:

Using these 3 values, my doccument will calculate for you the new rules for how much overall EXP you need as well as how many sessions it will take you. It will also calculate for you the number of sessions for the OLD system and how much EXP you really need before the EXP penalties kicked in.

If you play around with the values, you will quickly realize that the new system works much more logically compared to the EXP penalties.

So with a 0 level mod, -5 exp per session, and 20 average EXP per session, it would take you 50 Sessions to reach level 6 using the OLD system. Compare this to a +1 level mod, which would only take that person 44 sessions (43.75 actually) to reach level 6. REMINDER: a +1 level mod is SUPPOSED to be worse than a -5 exp penalty.

But with the new system, the above example would only take 41 sessions (40.6 actually) to reach level 6. So it is worse than no EXP penalty, but better than +1 level mod.

I have expanded this to work with any level mod and any EXP mod. The "compare this to" section is just a set of static level mods to compare to.

Also If after all this arguement your GM still does not do this. Get 3 CP worth of EXP bonus per session. It WILL be worth it.

I did use ONE house rule. If you go to level 15 on the EXP table, notice how it says each level beyond that is only +450. But all levels before that were increasing by 25 each. So the difference between level 1 and 2 was 100, but between level 2 and 3 was 125, and between level 3 and 4 was 150 (and so on.) I simply Extend this pattern beyond level 16. Thus it takes 475 EXP to reach level 17, 500 EXP to reach level 18, 525 EXP to reach level 19 and 600 EXP to reach level 20. (and so on.) I doubt your campaign will reach level 15+, but if it does there might be a difference between the two.