RPGs where you can convert gold to XP

[Vergil]

Are there any RPGs that just directly let you spend gold on experience?

[Acrux]

Basic OD&D had that as a rule, and AD&D carried it over as optional. Grognardia has a short article on using gold for xp, too. https://grognardia.blogspot.com/2022/06 ... ience.html

For CRPGs, I think there's a Skyrim mod that does this.

[Cipher]

Basic OD&D had that as a rule, and AD&D carried it over as optional. Grognardia has a short article on using gold for xp, too. https://grognardia.blogspot.com/2022/06 ... ience.html

For CRPGs, I think there's a Skyrim mod that does this.

Now that you mentioned it... native Skyrim does this somewhat, with the NPCs that train you. You are basically paying for 1 level up on a skill and a perk.

[rusty_shackleford]

Are there any RPGs that just directly let you spend gold on experience?

Any RPG that lets you pay for training. I think most Bethesda games? Arcanum, maybe?

[Vergil]

Now that you mentioned it... native Skyrim does this somewhat, with the NPCs that train you. You are basically paying for 1 level up on a skill and a perk.

Unfortunately training is even more gimped than in Oblivion. Still has the limited training per level and the total number of trainings for everything in Skyrim is smaller than just the number of long blade trainers in Morrowind.

[Manny V]

souls games

[Vergil]

souls games

Somehow didn't think about these. This is more of what I'm referring to as well. It's technically present in Elder Scrolls games but they don't have traditional experience systems anyway. I'm talking more like imagine if in something like WoW or Fallout you just went to a "experience vender" and spent 200 gold for 200 experience etc.

[ArcaneLurker]

Are there any RPGs that just directly let you spend gold on experience?

I think in Outward there is no experience and you just use money for skills, including passive stat boosts.

[Tweed]

Knights of the Chalice 1 and 2 do this. All level ups costs gold, no gold, no levels.

Or do you mean gold as experience? That's something else again.

[Tweed]

We need to properly and autistically define what you mean.

Gold to level: you gain xp and it costs gold to increase your level.

Gold as XP: gold is literally used as experience points.

Gold as training: gold can be spent to gain skills that could otherwise be learned in the wild. Or gold can be used to buy experience points towards leveling.

[rusty_shackleford]

Do any of the older D&D cRPGs use the gold-as-XP rule?

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Aselia the Spirit of Eternity Sword due to the setting which revolves around mana, which is the world's main resource and XP. The countries are fighting over territory to build extractors that harvest mana from the earth. The mana can be used to power/fuel their technology like toasters, but more importantly it can be infused into the Eternity Swords of the kingdom's spirits to make them more powerful, enhancing the country's military capability and likelihood to prevail. Every nation is in an arms race to acquire as much mana as possible to feed their spirits. Mana can be spent on constructing buildings like teleporters and training halls, but primarily you send a spirit to a training hall where it costs mana to train them up (them absorbing the mana into their Eternity Sword), and after one turn they level up. Technically, mana can be redistributed from one spirit but having them release all of the mana in their Eternity Sword, resetting their level back to 1 and refunding you all of the mana you invested into training them, but there is no reason you would ever want to do this as training/levelling your spirits as much as possible will always trump constructing buildings. Towards the end of the game when the mana in the earth has run dry and the mana apocalypses begins, you destroy almost all of your buildings except for your training halls and invest the last of your mana into your characters to level them as high as possible.




Guild Wars 2, sorta. Not actual level ups, but the hero points you need to buy abilities and traits. Hero points are normally acquired by reaching certain locations (sometimes difficult to reach) or overcoming a challenge (some of them very difficult to do alone) in the regular PvE maps. However, if you teleport into the the World vs World mass scale PvP gamemode, you will acquire WvW currency which you can then go to the WvW vendor and spend to buy hero points. So you can have a fully specced character without having ever cleared any of the hero point challenges, and be ready for endgame PvE content.

Yakuza 0: IIRC you can buy trainers to learn new moves, I don't remember.

[rusty_shackleford]

Knights of the Chalice 1 and 2 do this. All level ups costs gold, no gold, no levels.

Is this a house rule or an optional rule I forgot about?

[Vergil]

Feel like I recall a mod for Oblivion that did this as a way to try and "fix" the leveling system.

[Tweed]

Knights of the Chalice 1 and 2 do this. All level ups costs gold, no gold, no levels.

Is this a house rule or an optional rule I forgot about?

It was mandatory and then I think Pierre made it optional later.

[rusty_shackleford]

Knights of the Chalice 1 and 2 do this. All level ups costs gold, no gold, no levels.

Is this a house rule or an optional rule I forgot about?

It was mandatory and then I think Pierre made it optional later.

I meant in the 3.5e rules itself

[rusty_shackleford]

3.5e has the reverse: magical item creation costs XP, therefore you can go down in level.
I know Neverwinter has this implemented, other 3e/3.5e adaptations may also.

[Tinky Winky]

BG2. but I think it should be counted as exploiting in this case.

[Kalarion]

souls games

Somehow didn't think about these. This is more of what I'm referring to as well. It's technically present in Elder Scrolls games but they don't have traditional experience systems anyway. I'm talking more like imagine if in something like WoW or Fallout you just went to a "experience vender" and spent 200 gold for 200 experience etc.

Gold is xp in Tower of Time. Its only use is to be spent on training your characters to their next level. There is no xp, once you have the gold you need for your next level you just spend it at the appropriate training level.

[Norfleet]

3.5e has the reverse: magical item creation costs XP, therefore you can go down in level.
I know Neverwinter has this implemented, other 3e/3.5e adaptations may also.

You actually can't, the rules don't let you lose levels. If you don't have enough XP to create an item without losing a level, you simply aren't allowed to create the item. Being able to purposefully lose levels at will would be too exploitable.

[rusty_shackleford]

3.5e has the reverse: magical item creation costs XP, therefore you can go down in level.
I know Neverwinter has this implemented, other 3e/3.5e adaptations may also.

You actually can't, the rules don't let you lose levels. If you don't have enough XP to create an item without losing a level, you simply aren't allowed to create the item. Being able to purposefully lose levels at will would be too exploitable.

I must be misremembering then, that also makes it much lamer.

[Norfleet]

I must be misremembering then, that also makes it much lamer.

It has to be that way. Like I said, the ability to intentionally lose levels at will is massively exploitable. There were some MUDs that allowed this and you better believe I abused the unholy living **** out of it. You ever why "Negative Levels" replaced actual Level Drain? Cuz I abused the **** out of that, too.

[rusty_shackleford]

the ability to intentionally lose levels at will is massively exploitable

yeah I don't care

[Norfleet]

yeah I don't care

Maybe you don't care, but if you're gonna put it in a vidya game, especially one with multiplayer, you'd best be aware that people like me WILL abuse it.

[Demonic Fate]

3.5e has the reverse: magical item creation costs XP, therefore you can go down in level.
I know Neverwinter has this implemented, other 3e/3.5e adaptations may also.

You actually can't, the rules don't let you lose levels. If you don't have enough XP to create an item without losing a level, you simply aren't allowed to create the item. Being able to purposefully lose levels at will would be too exploitable.

Some examples of those exploits? I'm curious.

[Norfleet]

Some examples of those exploits? I'm curious.

Well, examples of how I did it in a MUD:

If you lose levels, you lose the HP/Mana you gained from levelling up. The thing is, the amount you gained from levelling up was based on your stats at levelup. So, if you levelled up with high Con and then lost the level with low Con, you lost less HP than you gained.

So yeah, I was ******* invincible.

You also would gain practices and trains when you levelled up again. These could be used to purchase more stats, and additional skills.

This meant I effectively could gain and then practice every skill in the game, becoming the typical all-skills-maxed god of a Bethesda game, before Bethesda games were cool.

Suffice it to say, the idea of being able to lose levels was an epicly bad one because of all the doors it opened.

[Demonic Fate]

Some examples of those exploits? I'm curious.

Well, examples of how I did it in a MUD:

If you lose levels, you lose the HP/Mana you gained from levelling up. The thing is, the amount you gained from levelling up was based on your stats at levelup. So, if you levelled up with high Con and then lost the level with low Con, you lost less HP than you gained.

So yeah, I was ******* invincible.

You also would gain practices and trains when you levelled up again. These could be used to purchase more stats, and additional skills.

This meant I effectively could gain and then practice every skill in the game, becoming the typical all-skills-maxed god of a Bethesda game, before Bethesda games were cool.

Suffice it to say, the idea of being able to lose levels was an epicly bad one because of all the doors it opened.

I meant in 3.5e D&D, since that's the rule you mentioned.

[Norfleet]

I meant in 3.5e D&D, since that's the rule you mentioned.

The exact ruleset isn't really important, just the effect it lets you do, specifically, in the context of a vidya, possibly with multiplayer (since no serious DM would let you do that and you can't do some midnight grinding to re-level). This is why it's not a thing in 3.5E. But what you could do, is, for instance, cheese random HP rolls (which admittedly people already do in single-player) or respec your character by losing all your levels and then taking new ones. Or any other game-specific exploits. For instance, I was able to create a character that would crash the server on contact, because I had a maximum hitpoint count that was subzero. This meant that every time I logged in, I would immediately die. Then I would respawn at the death room at my maximum HP, which meant I would immediately die again. Within seconds, the server would overload from the number of my corpses and go down in flames. Naturally, being able to take the server down at will was pretty funny. The exact ruleset (2E AD&D derivative) wasn't actually important. What was important is how ******* with core assumptions could break the game.

The point is not the specific ruleset. The point is that enabling this, in any ruleset, can cause some pretty ******* hilarious **** to happen in the context of a vidya game, especially with multiplayer, that expects numbers and players to be sane.

[Demonic Fate]

I meant in 3.5e D&D, since that's the rule you mentioned.

The exact ruleset isn't really important, just the effect it lets you do, specifically, in the context of a vidya, possibly with multiplayer (since no serious DM would let you do that and you can't do some midnight grinding to re-level). This is why it's not a thing in 3.5E. But what you could do, is, for instance, cheese random HP rolls (which admittedly people already do in single-player) or respec your character by losing all your levels and then taking new ones. Or any other game-specific exploits. For instance, I was able to create a character that would crash the server on contact, because I had a maximum hitpoint count that was subzero. This meant that every time I logged in, I would immediately die. Then I would respawn at the death room at my maximum HP, which meant I would immediately die again. Within seconds, the server would overload from the number of my corpses and go down in flames. Naturally, being able to take the server down at will was pretty funny. The exact ruleset (2E AD&D derivative) wasn't actually important. What was important is how ******* with core assumptions could break the game.

The point is not the specific ruleset. The point is that enabling this, in any ruleset, can cause some pretty ******* hilarious **** to happen in the context of a vidya game, especially with multiplayer, that expects numbers and players to be sane.

A simple "none" would have sufficed. But thanks anyway.

[Norfleet]

A simple "none" would have sufficed. But thanks anyway.

I mean, if you can get yourself de-levelled, you can do it in NWN. That's a 3/3.5 game. You're missing the point, though. It's not about the ruleset. It's about the exploits you can pull around the specific implementation of a ruleset in that specific game. Each implementation of the game will be different, but the ability to force a non-deterministic system or a deterministic system with inputs you control to run in reverse is always exploitable. Gain a feat, use it to solve a specific situation, lose it again and replace it with something more relevant to your interests, for instance. Or an entire class. The details aren't important. The point is, you let me do this, and I WILL find a way to break your game with it.