Yeah, yeah. So, I felt like bringing this up again. Here goes. Read the friggin' posts above this one, if you want to be clued in again
This is just an example for the purposes of discussion, to give more 'life' to the ideas. SO, was thinking, maybe a sample xp system would look something like this. Note that the cost to increase an attribute follows it in parenthesis. I'm not going into exact cost/exp ratios and such right now, as I wouldn't have any clue as to the exact attributes and their effects.
Level: 1 (300)
Experience: 300
Attribute:
Strength:.......1 (15)
Defense:........1 (15)
Agility:...........1 (15)
Initiative:........2 (25)
Dexterity:.......10 (5)
Health:..........40 (15) (per ten points)
Mana:...........40 (15) (per ten)
Dexterity: Just a though...should it be even possible to raise this, or somehow make it a composite of other stats, level, skills, and gear, kind of like it is now?
More details and possibilities regarding level:
Level could put a cap on attributes, forcing you to train it to raise attributes above a certain number. Raising your level would give you a bonus to 'a bit of everything', as it a symbol of general experience. Alternatively...Level could be removed entirely and your character could be simply the composite of all of your stats, skills, and spells. Speaking of skills and spells, they might look something like this:
Skills/spells:
Fencing:.......1 (15%)
Heal:............1 (25%)
Lockpicking:...0 (200)
Wait a second, wait a second...why are some with percentage and some just experience?
Well, I was thinking that you 'buy' the skill or spell with experience. But after that, it's usage is what levels up the skill! Also, X number of skills and spells would be available. To learn the others, you must use the skills or spells that are related to it (using heal to learn how to cast cure, for example).
OK, so, now we just kind of toss everything we just read out the window for a moment and start over. Isn't this fun? So we go back to something like...THIS!
Level: 1 (300)
Experience: 300
Combat Experience: 50
Magic Experience: 50
Adventuring Experience: 50
Attribute:
Strength:.......1 (15 CE)
Defense:........1 (15 CE)
Agility:...........1 (15 AE)
Initiative:........2 (25 AE)
Intelligence:....1 (15 ME)
Dexterity:.......10 (5 AE)
Health:..........40 (15 CE) (per ten points)
Mana:...........40 (15 ME) (per ten)
(Where CE is Combat exp, ME is Magic exp, and AE is Adventuring exp)
So, what's up with this? Well, in a particular battle lets say you did a lot of fighting, and valiantly slayed the creature with your sword/axe/mace/spear/butter knife. The reward might look like:
Experience: 15
Combat Experience: 5
But let's say you, instead, decided to kill the enemy with your glorious magic power (fizzled once or twice, but nobody saw). The reward might look like:
Experience: 15
Magic Experience: 5
What about adventuring experience? What, you want me to come up with everything? Looks like it might require the addition of new skills...or perhaps skills like leadership could be included here? Alternatively, things like using detect to find a new area, or picking the lock on a door for the first time, could gain you adventuring experience.
You successfully pick the lock on the door! You gain 15 adventuring experience.
Or something like that. Alternatively, the completion of quest goals could reward you with additional adventuring experience.
So, what's the general experience for, then? It looks like almost everything is covered! Well, general experience would allow you to raise anything - it would be experience you can use to fill in the gaps in your advancement. Say you prefer to use melee combat, but would like to dabble in magic without having to run to an easier area to use it in combat - you could continue your current level of fighting and put your general experience into magic. This would be representative of training in other areas. General experience is also the only type that can raise your 'level', giving you a boost to all of your stats and perhaps opening up new skills and spells, or raising a level-based stat cap (sound familiar?)
And if you didn't notice (or did) - yes, I snuck a new stat in there. Intelligence would be a modifier for magic damage. It may not need to be included, however, as there are other alternatives, such as using magic experience to raise the spell levels themselves, along with usage. But then we have the same situation we do now, where spell effectiveness will cap once the spell is levelled fully.
If I'm going too far into skills/spells, I apologize, since this is supposed to be a thread about experience
Speaking of skills/spells, the method of advancement would probably be the same in both systems. Wait, I told you to forget it, didn't I? Uhh.......
At any rate, the alternative would be to also allow the individual experience pools to level them up (as mentioned a few seconds ago).
THEN there's the issue of in-combat vs out-of-combat experience gains and skill advancement. If a skill can be used outside or inside of combat (heal, for example), should the expeirence gain on that skill be slowed to compensate? Should skills gain bonus experience if used in combat, to encourage said usage? Or should the issue not really be touched? what about non-combat skills?
Eh...I hope that's it. Maybe I should've split it into two posts