I am going to run a hexcrawl West Marches game soon, and as a way to motivate players to go exploring the wilderness, I thought I would bring back the old mechanic of gold being experience.

This is for D&D 5e.

What I noticed though was that you would need a fuck ton of gold to level up. In 5e, it takes just 300 experience to level up, which is 1-2 sessions. But for a party of 5 players to level up using gold, they need a whopping 1500 gp. Where are they going to find that at level 1?

So that makes me wonder how long it takes to level up in such games, be it AD&D or whatever other edition used this method. Was it common to just run into dungeons with 1500+ xp worth of gold (or whatever the equivalent was for level 2)? Or is it that leveling up required almost no experience? Or did it just take forever to level up?

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;995904I am going to run a hexcrawl West Marches game soon, and as a way to motivate players to go exploring the wilderness, I thought I would bring back the old mechanic of gold being experience.

This is for D&D 5e.

What I noticed though was that you would need a fuck ton of gold to level up. In 5e, it takes just 300 experience to level up, which is 1-2 sessions. But for a party of 5 players to level up using gold, they need a whopping 1500 gp. Where are they going to find that at level 1?

So that makes me wonder how long it takes to level up in such games, be it AD&D or whatever other edition used this method. Was it common to just run into dungeons with 1500+ xp worth of gold (or whatever the equivalent was for level 2)? Or is it that leveling up required almost no experience? Or did it just take forever to level up?

It took 'forever', from what I've been told.

Do you mean requiring gold gained to be the only source of EXP? Or as an added source? If it is an added source then in 5e thats a bad idea as the EXP system is geared with that not in mind. If you do that then add a 0 to all the EXP needed.

DMG Page 131 has an optional rule for adding downtime to gaining levels.
levels 2-4 = 10 days + 20gp
5-10 = 20 days + 40gp
11-15 = 30 days + 60gp
16-20 = 40 days + 80gp

so about 490 days and 980gp used up total just in level training. (Personally I think the fee is too small. Possibly multiply the listed fee by 10.)

I meant using ONLY gold to gain experience.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;995910I meant using ONLY gold to gain experience.

If it is the only way to level up, and no version of D&D does that. (That I can recall) then in 5e levelling is probably going to go slowly for the simple reason that treasure is alot rarer in 5e. You might want to adopt something like AD&D's system of selling recovered magic items for gold and converting that to EXP.

individual monsters have very little to nothing on them CR 0-4 have an average of 17 cp or 12 sp  on them. (30% and 30% chance.) only a 15% chance to have 10 gp on them. CRs 5-10 are the same pattern, but 1400 cp, 210 sp and a 10% for 70 gp and 15% for 140 gp.

You might be better off getting the PCs and players interested in rumours of lost cities or hired on to help reclaim a lost dwarven city for example. Adventure rather than gold.

So I ran this, basically.

I took the listed XP for monsters and reduced it to 10% of its original value, then I did the old chestnut of stocking dungeons with four times that new XP value's worth of gold.

Players leveled on average I would say every third session or so. I didn't have any significant hiccups.

Well okay, one; player character power curves are different than in old school play. They can kick serious ass out of the starting gate. Running it old school style, not a single player complained that they spent three sessions at level 1. But you've got to remember, old school style meant that a 2 HP thief got to be a viable character if played cleverly. The style that exists to allow such a character is very forgiving in the age of cantrips.

The way it worked in old school gold for XP games was, as you might expect, that you got a fuckton of gold.  So much gold in fact that looking at that style of game now I am tempted to reduce the gold by a factor of at least 10 and do likewise with the experience.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;995904So that makes me wonder how long it takes to level up in such games, be it AD&D or whatever other edition used this method. Was it common to just run into dungeons with 1500+ xp worth of gold (or whatever the equivalent was for level 2)? Or is it that leveling up required almost no experience? Or did it just take forever to level up?

It is not directly comparable. The Xp requirements were different, the slope of Xp requirements was different, the assumptions regarding # of people in the adventuring party (and thus splitting up the xp) are different, and the treasure output was different. Overall, it did take longer. Xp requirements to reach 2nd level initially averaged 2000 xp (I'm using oD&D here strictly to control the # of classes we're talking about, and because I have those books available), and roughly double every level (so, if all things were held constant, it would take as long to advance from 7th level to 8th level, as the entire time it took to get from 1st level through 8th. But everything else isn't held constant). On the other hand, treasure outputs, particularly as you start facing greater opponents (and, again for oD&D, you have to face greater opponents if you ever want to get anywhere, because as you go up in level, orcs only give you a fraction of the gold they have in xp), become downright crazy.

But let's look at a first level scenario* (oD&D) -- fighting orcs. Orcs are treasure type D. That gives you (ignoring the possibility of selling any magic items which come up) -- a 10% chance of getting on 1D8x1000 copper pieces (avg. 4500 cp-90 gp value), 15% chance of getting 1D12x1000 silver pieces (6500 sp-650 gp value), 60% chance of 1D6x1000 gold pieces (avg. 3500 gp), 30% chance of 1D8 gems (averaging 233.5 gp each) and 30% of 1D8 jewelry (averaging 3410 gp each). So your simple encounter with orcs (mind you, that could be 30-300 orcs) could net you .1(90) + .15(650) +.6(3500) +.3(4.5)(233.5) +.3(4.5)(3410) = 9+97.5+2100+315.225+4603.5 = 7125.225 gp (and thus xp). In 5e terms, that's a whole lot of levels for 4 PCs. Mind you, 4 PCs aren't going to be going toe-to-toe with 30-300 orcs, so you see just how much of an apples-to-oranges comparison the thing is?
*I am going to assume that I've made at least 1d4 mistakes in this, please feel free to point them out and I will edit/update to match

Mentzer Classic DnD suggests 5 sessions to level and giving out enough gold to get that rate. Which in high level Classic is a rather unlikely 20,000 or so gp per pc per session; 100k per session with a 5 pc group.

Actually it was usually pretty quick to hit 5th or 6th, then it slows down dramatically after 9ths (in AD&D at least, OD&D has much lower xp tables for high levels)

Yes, there was a fair amount of loot given. As a general rule, I put 3-4x the amount of treasure in a dungeon/level as the xp value of monsters

Quote from: Omega;995918If it is the only way to level up, and no version of D&D does that.

I thought older editions of D&D used gold/treasure for experience? Looks like some of them did based on the replies.

Regarding what everyone else said: I wouldn't ensure players get a set amount of gold/XP a session because I want to run it as a sandbox, so that's up to them. But I am curious what older games with this model looked like. It sounds like you did have to haul a ton of gold after all.

Quote from: Azraele;995920So I ran this, basically.

I took the listed XP for monsters and reduced it to 10% of its original value, then I did the old chestnut of stocking dungeons with four times that new XP value's worth of gold.

Hmm, that sounds like a neat idea.

So if there are 10 goblins in a dungeon, and each goblin is worth 50 XP... 500 XP / 10 -> 50 XP again x4, 200 gold?

Maybe it would make sense to just put the exact (roughly) amount of gold that is worth the experience. So if a monster normally gives 2000xp, then spread 2000xp worth of gold around. And do that for every monster, or enough.

Long story short, I want to run a 5e West Marches hexcrawl/sandbox game using gold for experience and I want to do it in a way that works, and I'm assuming the old ways they were done worked fine, so I want to find out about those. Or find out if they totally wouldn't work.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;996003I thought older editions of D&D used gold/treasure for experience? Looks like some of them did based on the replies.

All pre-2nd edition AD&D TSR-era D&D versions included awarding 1 xp for every gp (and 2e included that in the optional rules), with some variation on the exact rules (oD&D for instance, the award was a ratio of the monsters who guarded the treasure compared to the level of the party who got the treasure, so 5th level PCs defeating/bypassing 3rd level monsters would only get 3/5th of an xp per gp). That where the xp=gp moniker comes from (because overall it is a 1:1 ratio).

However, no edition has the official rules where the only way you get xp is by acquiring treasure. Each of them have a certain amount for monsters defeated, and possibly some other things (including a whole laundry list, again in the 2e optional rules).

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;996003Maybe it would make sense to just put the exact (roughly) amount of gold that is worth the experience. So if a monster normally gives 2000xp, then spread 2000xp worth of gold around. And do that for every monster, or enough.

That's certain an easy way to do it, and if the gp value also lines up with how much gold you think the PCs should have, then go with that. That might give the PCs a little extra gold, and thus get those suits of plate mail a level or two early. But 5e already has a bit of the 'after a certain level, gold doesn't mean anything except the xp you got acquiring it, right up until you are buying castles or armies or sailing ships' thing going on (and those are pretty easy to change the cost of, as a DM). So go ahead

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;996003I thought older editions of D&D used gold/treasure for experience? Looks like some of them did based on the replies.

They did, but gold was not exclusive source of experience. You also got experience for defeating monsters. The big rewards were in the experience for treasure though. So much so that it was well worth figuring out ways to bypass dangerous combat and just grab the treasures.

I have over 20K in treasure value on the first level of my current dungeon.  The minority of that is coin.  There's a lot of valuable stuff though.

PCs usually get around 5X the XP from treasure (of all sorts) then they do monster XP.  Selling a magic item is an XP mother lode, and it's often better to get to 2nd level than it is to be 1st level with a magic sword.

Also keep in mind that if you don't like the feel of lots of treasure (for whatever reason), you always switch to a silver standard for XP, and give out less treasure.  It's not a bad option if you want treasure to drive leveling, but also want the characters to stay relatively poor (in gold and items).  Really, anything will work, as long as you do some minor calculations and planning before you start.   The answer to your subject question is, "How fast do you want them to level?"