"Experience points" are honestly kind of a weird mechanic...

It's the experience gained from the characters experiences that cause them to grow stronger. It's not supposed to thought of as literal, and neither are damage numbers.
>If I stab someone with dagger X they take 3 damage, but dagger Y deals 4 damage. What is the in-world explanation for it being physically impossible to deal more damage than dagger X, yet simultaneously less damage than dagger Y? (dealing 3.5 damage is not possible)

This. Countless people go around this "only gaining experience from killing" thing anyway, either by also alotting players experience from other actions, or just levelling them up at certain intervals (end of each session, after each boss/story arc, etc).
I've never actually met someone who plays D&D in which the only method players earn experience is by killing.

Frankly I just go without using XP.

>xp is lifeforce and killing someone allows you to steal theirs
I've done this before, only it was fate rather than strictly lifeforce. Basically, there is a driving force behind each person's existence. Think of this as an indention in the fabric of reality kind of like a gravity well. The deeper the indention, the more of an impact it has on reality, and the more things it bends to its advantage. This is fate.

Well, when you kill somebody, the power of their fate is dispersed rather than destroyed. Most of it is spread so far and wide that it makes no discernible difference. However, a small but significant amount is absorbed into the fate of the person who killed them, like a tiny droplet of water merging with a bigger drop.

The more powerful/important the person you kill, the bigger the droplet you absorb. However, if you somehow manage to kill somebody much more powerful/important than you, your pool of fate will lack the "gravity" to capture more than a tiny amount of the dispersed power and a greater portion of it will escape you. You'll still grow in power more than if you had killed a less powerful/important person, but not by as much as if you, yourself had been more powerful/important. In D&D terms, this means that a 1st level character can't kill a god and shoot up to 10th level instantly.

I don't have to since I don't play a shitty system that gives XP for killing things.

>XP seems to be gained pretty much exclusively from killing for some reason
Have you tried not playing D&D?
Can't think of any non D&D-derived systems that do that.

>exp are something else
>something like execution points
>thinly veiled undertale thread

It's an abstraction. You don't really need an explanation or justification other than that. An RPG can never be a perfect in universe set of logical principles, it's always necessary to abstract stuff and go with what works.

Exp is an abstract mechanic intended to give meaningful forward progression for characters, a way to show a character gradually increasing in power over time.

If Experience Points had real life function you would only get experience for skills and abilities you actually used during each game, and furthermore the returns you got for investing in each skill would diminish over time to the point of being infinitesimal eventually, with learning new skills and diversifying your arsenal of abilities rather then trying to improve by meaningless little increments.
After volunteering I basically learned that experience and training isn't about doing something right, but instead about learning how NOT to do something WRONG, and eventually you get trained enough to stop doing things wrong anymore and all problems that arise are due to random chance or equipment or factors you cannot predict and thus no amount of training could ever circumvent them at any point.
Example; a designated marksman in our unit despite being like fifteen years older and much less physically fit then him and with supposedly less training on the subject could regularly outshoot several Green Beret soldiers and a Delta Force operative. This was not due to him being better trained or more experienced; he was just kind of naturally better at it and all three had effectively been trained in marksmanship to the point where any further training and experience had effectively become pointless and instead was something you did to keep your skills from deteriorating rather then to actually "improve" them any further. His natural ability put him infinitesimally ahead of them and no matter how much more combat experience they had over him (and they had a LOT more, our guy had been on all of two deployments and had seen almost no combat at all) it didn't make enough of a practical difference in either the shooting range or on a CBQ exercise course. He always shot better, period.

>XP can be used to improve attributes that had nothing to do with whatever you did to become "experienced"
this is because bookkeeping is a pain in the ass
systems like mekton zeta that track experience for each and every skill and even your attributes, and demands that the GM hand you out experience for these skills on-the-dot are irritating and only generate pointless bookkeeping
plus, not being able to upgrade something that you really want to upgrade just because you happened to not have a use for it last session is really, really dumb

>XP seems to be gained pretty much exclusively from killing for some reason
have you tried either not playing D&D or not playing with a terrible DM?

a little weird not to reward the kind of crazy cunning and shenanigans that would let you kill a god at level 1, isn't it?
that said, i guess if a player's that capable even without stats or if your campaign's that wacky, they probably don't need it.

GURPS uses character points, which can act either like generic XP points or as a sort of "training currency," as in you must have X amount of character points (X being the difference between the cost to purchase your current skill level, and the cost of the desired level) to start training up your skill (or just buy the level up right away). They are also used to "buy off" disadvantages that you gave your character at creation or acquired in some fashion.

Some GMs might use Character Points as a way for players to buy a good modifier, if they were going for a cinematic campaign.

They are awarded by the GM, usually at the end of a session. I typically give my players 3 Character Points just for getting through the session, however more are "earned" by good roleplaying.

>been trained in marksmanship to the point where any further training and experience had effectively become pointless and instead was something you did to keep your skills from deteriorating rather then to actually "improve" them any further.

So what, training and combat experience is useless? That doesn't make any sense at all.

stfu retard

No, not useless. It just has diminishing returns and becomes more of an "upkeep" thing in real life I guess you could call it.

Real life is not Dragonball Z, where if you keep accruing experience and shit your "power" increases over time; eventually you ARE going to stop improving both physically and in terms of skill in any meaningful way to matter how much you train and the rest of the difference will be made up by equipment and dumb luck.
It's actually a good explanation of why in D&D elves or long-lived races aren't automatically better fighters; say they train for a hundred years and a human trains for just ten at swordplay, but the human wins. This would be because as long as elves are basically humanoid physically (and in all D&D-inspired settings the physical differences that would require it to actually affect the way combat works is minimal at best) in effect their century of fencing practice just boiled down to "staying in shape" because they've already learned how to hold a sword, how NOT to hold a sword, and the various strikes the human body based on positioning of limbs, joints, and basic physics is capable of while remaining effective in actual combat against various opponents.

You COULD do the Tolkien thing and say "eventually they get so good at doing something it basically becomes magic" due to their extreme age, but you could also say "swordsmen when they train for fifty years straight sprout horny callouses that launch laser-shooting ICBMs at people during combat when they make hip-thrusting motions" and it's equally accurate because we literally have no comparison to that in anything resembling actual reality and thus literally any statement you could make along those lines is equally arbitrary and made-up.

Play OSR.

You get XP equal to gold spent. More money attracts more attention to you, which eventually results in you gaining political powers.

>I have killed twenty goblins with a fertilizer bomb, so now I can take two arrows to the chest before I get knocked unconscious

Sounds like a problem with shitpoints not a problem with xp

I chuckled

do it like fucking morrowind did, you spaz. You level up by increasing your skill in chosen major and minor skills. After increasing some ratio of major/minor, you gain a level. During the level up process, you designate three stats to increase. These stat increases have multipliers based on how often you trained skills related to that stat.

Sounds good, right? Nope, it becomes a tedious minigame to grind up the right number of skills not designated as major or minor to maximize your stat increases.

Don't use levels. Gaining experience in everything for doing something limited is not a great idea. Call of Cthulhu and the BRP only allow you to gain experience on skills used, which is far better. Or you should limit it to related skills. Sure, I defeated opponents using my sword, but I was able to gain a better tactical grasp of the situation (improve tactics skill rather than fighting for example).

or just riff it off of mouseguard/burning wheel so increases are based on the amount of success/failures you've earned.

This is such a non-problem.

>mentioning shitguard/retard wheel

dnd actually just gives exp for overcoming a challenge. you don't need too kill things to get it.
people just like to play murderhobos and murder is all they do.

even D&D doesn't do that.

This, I actually tried running a homebrew TES system with mechanics directly based on those in the games (a bit simplified and more suited for tabletop of course). Keeping track of when somebody levels a skill by using it, how many skills he have yet to increase to level up and what bonuses he gets on a level up was pain. Possible and even kinda fun with correct organization, but still really unwieldy and messy, especially with larger groups. And as user above said it almost requires min-maxing to make a somewhat strong character. This is really something that sounds good but doesn't work too good in practice.

if you've ever tried running a homebrew setting based on a video game you're a fuckin' retard

Only D&D babbys use XP/Level based systems.

Yeah, I guess. It was more of something I wrote out of boredom and my friends really wanted to try it in practice even though I told them it's not something that would work good. We actually had a lot of fun with it, but I agree. Unless you want a veeery crunchy game It's something than never works good.

3.5 pretty much does. As does 4e. And 5e, too.

Wrong! The correct answer was "you mad bro?"

>what is off-screen training

Well the only game I know of that actually gives XP for killing things is D&D, so this is just yet another problem limited to that broken game.

XP in general, though, represents growth as a character, and comes from having meaningful experiences.

Palladium does that too but it's generally minor compared to XPs for role-playing and good ideas.

Quests shouldn't grant experience points, they should grant financial and social rewards (treasure, allies etc.)

Fighting and physical training should provide xp as those actions make your character better at those activities.

3.5 and 4e specifically mention in the dms guide that xp is for overcoming obstacles. which can be talking your way out, sneaking past, just murder or any other way you can come up with.
the game allows murderhoboing but thats not all there is too the game if you want more.

dunno about 5e as i haven't played it.

It was taken from wargames, where a surviving battalion became more experienced through battle. D&D was conceived as a treasure hunting game, so when they tried to adapt this wargame mechanic, the points were awarded based on the gold piece value of the treasure you looted. (I think the idea was that you could spend or lose your gold, but you couldn't lose your experience.) That seemed odd, so they broadened the xp awarding system to include awards for doing what your role was designed to do, awards for defeating monsters or traps, and GM fiat awards for "good roleplaying" or good thinking. A game mechanic that made less and less sense the further it drifted, which has now made its way into all kinds of games.

Just do what KotoR 2 did and say that the PCs are freaks of nature that absorb the souls of their victims.

The will to power idea needs more Nietzsche.

This is why I like skill based leveling systems as opposed to stat based.

Rune Quest ma nigga.

Only combat encounters are rated with XP, so that usually equates to killing stuff.

>xp is an abstracted form of the way your character improves as you overcome challenges and become better at your chosen profession

woah that was hard

the level-up is a sudden epiphany as all your training and experience comes together, more than the sum of your XP alone

There was a copy pasta here once about xp being an unholy magic you gaind access to by selling your soul to outer godsi.e. players. You would become incredibly skilled impossibly fast but as a consequence everything and everyone you genuinely cared about would be in constant peril and eventually be destroyed or killed. this are free plot hooks after all

It's for overcoming the obstacle the encounter represents. Talking your way through, evading it, etc, these all count and should be awarded the full XP for the encounter.

I think OP more means, at least partially that in universe there's no explanation on how the characters get more powerful the way they do.

In books, movies, shows etc. a character can 'level up' mid fights by trying something new.
Maybe the wizard combines two of his spells to get something completely new or a warrior copies something he's seen before/improvises a new skill.

In games it's either you can or your can't. DMs can give you some leeway in that respect (letting a wizard shoot a single target fire ability at something flammable to turn it into an aoe effect) but ultimately (in most cases at least) wouldn't allow a person to use a new ability or skill without first spending points/leveling up.

I like this explanation.

Not everything needs an in-universe explanation. Abstractions for the sake of gameplay are perfectly fine, and they don't necessarily have to represent anything within the setting.

>In games it's either you can or your can't.

Many games have "I attempt something new" as a mechanic. +.5 has action points from Eberron. A more recent example, this is how you expand the use of your powers in Worlds in Peril. I think in M&M you can "bank" your points and spend them when needed because of this as well.

>+.5
*3.5

I can only hope that, with time, OP will realize how fucking stupid he is and improve.

I think it's closely tied into what the system's class levels are seen as. In 5e at least your characters are demigods and no one else has their skills.

>In 5e at least your characters are demigods and no one else has their skills.
A bunch of NPCs nab player skills. The assassin NPC has, for example, the Assassin Rogue's ability for ambushing, as well as stuff like sneak attack being spread around a lot.

The caster monsters have "xth level y" in their stat block, along with their spell list.

ABSTRACT.

That's a great way to do it IMO, and one of my favorite parts of Mouse Guard/Burning Wheel/Torchbearer

Here's your (You)

Explain to me how killing enough goblins translates to learning how to cast fireball.

People when train they get stronger
People when learn they get smarter

Experience is experience

Depends on the system, in some the amount of HPs you get when you level is almost negible, Anima BF for example, you start with 100+ life points as a 1st level character, and with each level you get between 5 and 10

Experience points haven't been anything that I couldn't accept as an abstract but by that criteria the best system for explaining XP have been Pendragon.

As knights are rarely called from their estates more than a few times a year either on their own quests or on orders of their liege they have plenty of time to train and hone their skills as knights.
During the Winter season knights may choose one of the following:

>Gain 1d6+1 points to add to skills that are knightly, nor raising any above 15,

>1 skill point to one increase one skill to a maximum of 20.

>Improve an attribute, trait or passion.
The attributes in Pendragon are, Size, Strength, Constitution, Dexterity and Appearance. A knight can not increase size after 21 and no attribute may be raised after 35,

However, as the knights gain glory after preforming great deeds for king and country they gain a glory bonus for every threshold of 1K glory they pass. This may be spent with almost no restrictions other than not increasing size and not increase attributes beyond human limits.

GURPS
skills aren't "leveld-up" through EXP, but through hours of training

The alternatives suck without exception.

May not increase size after the AGE of 21 and no attributes after they turn 35 would be more accurate.
Further correction would be that I intended to write: >best system for explaining XP that I have played is Pendragon.

With that, are our senses reliable enough to gather empirical experience of the world and learn from it or is experience deep in the soul?

Experience represents.... experience. Do more shit, get more experienced, apply it to other shit in your life and get better at it.

Pretty simple really in so far as you dont decide it has to be linked to the death of something. If your game only awards exp for killing, it gets more complicated, especially if theres utility skills can be ''bought'' with the exp.

go play MMOs and card games

Carl Miemban is fuck

Who is Carl Miemban?

>doesn't know who glorious CM is
>I look outside
>it's still summer
fuck

>Have you ever tried providing a canonical explanation for them?
No, because that's fucking stupid.

Have you ever Carl Patrick Miemban?

Literally incorrect. In the dmg it tells you to reward xp for non combat encounters.

DELET THIS

I just level up the characters as I see fit. It gets rid of the "I killed 15 peasants for no goddam reason, I level up" situations, and it encourages the party to act on what their character would do and what would benefit the party rather than to level up ASAP.

>Undertale is the only video game to have ever gotten meta or to ave put a twist on what could be one of the oldest RPG mechanics ever
no offense but... UT is the first thing I thought of too but... no

>The bloody bomb threw a fuckload of shrapnel around, I got hit a bit, but now I can tolerate pain better.

What are some other games that have done it?

There was a line in dialogue in KOTOR 2 that the main character was basically eating the souls of the people he was killing. (Like Nihilus) I thought it was neat.

Digital Devil Saga literally won't let your characters recover HP or gain experience until they have a breakdown and start eating their enemies(literal people at this point) after battles. Their rations do nothing.

You can gain extra experience by using devour moves on enemies. If you eat too many, you risk getting a status effect called stomachache which literally won't let you gain experience until it goes away.

In Darkest Dungeon it's your hardness, how thick a skin you've developed to terror, mortification, and combat.

if anyone has this copypasta, I'm keen to see it

i attempted to design a setting which would reward roleplaying rather than killing shit.

basically you identify some goals (big and small) when you create your character. working on small goals rewarded your character with a sense of accomplishment and purpose (vaguely similar to Advantage in D&D 5). achieving a major goal was the equivalent of rising to a new experience level, you get a bunch of points to spend bumping up skills and traits and maybe buy a new power / feat. this was supposed to be something like the universe actively rewarding you for fulfilling your destiny.

sounds cool except for when important shit goes down in game and your character needs to spend his money resurrecting a party member instead of investing in the shop he dreams of running or whatever. i would want to reward characters for doing that shit too.

oh well, might be worth trying to develop the concept further.

>XP seems to be gained pretty much exclusively from killing for some reason.
This has never been true in any edition of D&D ever and I don't understand where this comes from?

I think it's because exp is usually listed in the stat block of a monster and the idea that anything with a stat block can be killed. Also I guess the CR system has rules that relate to exp.

Most people just read "overcoming" a challenge as killing it.

I have not saved many images from Veeky Forums

But today I have what you require.

Persona does it best. The monsters and personas are the same basic things: multiple fragments of an ancient god come together to form a singular being . The only difference being that your persona is under your control while the Shadows are feral. Naturally, if a Shadow dies, it breaks down into those base pieces and they're absorbed into the nearest thing that can absorb them: your persona. This makes your persona stronger after it gains enough pieces to make some kind of modification to itself.

>Has there ever been a system that solves this problem?
Sword path glory do this
Skills have points, after X points you get an new level on the skill
But you dont automatically get XP, you roll to see if you get an XP on this skill.
The amount of time after you will roll is based on your stats and if you are training throught Individually Instructed Training also based on teacher, teaching hability stat.

The char stats also influence how much of the training was the effective training and how much was wasted because he was not paying attention of whateaver.

When the time yo MAYBE acquire a new level on the skill, you must roll to see if you will get a new level on the skill. The chance to pass is based on your stats, and there are 3 different chances, one for medical skills, other for physical and other for mental skills.

Gygax gave exp for gold in the original game. A bunch of retroclones revived the rule.

We're hung up on using the word "experience" to mean some kind of magic way of determining how veteran you are. Experience is just that, a numerical measurement of "how much you have done."

Best I've heard was an animistic setting where there was a little fledgling bit of godling spirit inside everyone. As you killed things, you absorbed their spirit as well. Eventually you turn into the demigods that are high level pcs this way.

Only reasonable post in the thread.

KotOR 2: You're growing stronger because you're feeding on the death of creatures that you kill and through your perverse abilities you are affecting the nature of your companions as well.

EXP is your experience....

The more wood you chop the easier it is to chop wood.
The more code you write typically the better you write code
The more shitposts you make the more freely the flow...
The more times you manage to not shit your pants the more confident you are that you're not going to shit your pants in public.