Anyone who has played the ADVANCED
DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS® Game for
any length of time has heard about, or
possibly played in, a campaign where characters
attain tremendously high levels and
wander about killing arch devils and making
friends with gods. These "Monty Haul"
campaigns, where characters are armed
with artifacts, M-16s, and Star Trek phasers,
are clearly abuses of the AD&D® gaming
system. They quickly grow stale as
either the ultra-powerful player characters
grow tired of defeating hoards of demons
and dragons in one afternoon, or the
DM runs out of new challenges.

However, an examination of the experience
system in the AD&D game shows how
some of these ?giveaway? campaigns start
and how one can prevent them. It seems to
take forever for beginning characters to
become 2nd or 3rd level, so the players
pressure the DM to alter the scope of the
game. This makes the game easier and
more fun, so the DM continues to-give
more treasure for facing weaker opponents,
and another Monty Haul campaign is born.

Once the players get past the lower levels,
these abuses are no longer needed, but they
continue because everyone is used to them.
Before long, the situation gets out of hand
and the Monty Haul campaign grows to
maturity.

Take Khalim, <a dwarven Vet,>
as an example of how difficult it is for new
characters to become 2nd level. Khalim sets
out from his mountain home to seek his
fortune. He makes it through the mountains
and forest to the nearest town without any
complications. Once there, he joins six
other beginning adventurers who are also
looking for a little excitement and monetary
gain.

They hear of an abandoned keep taken
over by a horde of goblins and other dark
creatures about a week?s travel west of the
town; they equip themselves and set off.
After several forays into the dungeon and
the trip through the wilderness to the
dungeon and back again, Khalim returns to
the town with a few new scars, enough
goods and treasures to give every member
of the party 680 gold pieces, and 2,135
experience points for himself ? enough for
him to become 2nd level.

The DM, who, although
relatively inexperienced, plays by the rules,
turns to p. 86 in the DMG and reads the
section on gaining experience levels. He
must examine Khalim?s actions and evaluate
how well he performed in relation to his
alignment. The number of weeks Khalim
must train depends on how well he followed
his alignment.

Khalim has behaved perfectly. He led his
party well, used his dwarven abilities to
detect a trap, and, while he never hung
back from a good fight, he made sure never
to attack anyone who might be of good
alignment. A rating of ?excellent? means
Khalim needs only one week of training to
become 2nd level. All he must do is find a
higher-level fighter who will train him. The
standard cost for training a 1st-level character
is 1,500 gp per week. If no higher-level
fighter is available, he can train himself, but
it will take two weeks and the materials
necessary will cost 3,000 gp. While grateful
that his performance was rated as excellent,
Khalim does not have 1,500 gp. He might
be able to serve as a henchman in exchange
for training, but that would split up the
successful adventuring party of which he is
a member.

Khalim is NOT as bad off as the cleric who
refused to heal another member because of
an earlier argument. He is so far off his
alignment track that he will have to receive
four weeks of training ? which will cost
him 6,000 gp, more money than these new
characters have ever seen. The cleric could
throw in his robes and live a very happy life
as a merchant if he had 6,000 gp.

Khalim's party discusses the problem and
decides to go out in search of more treasure,
knowing it will be a while before they will
all become 2nd level. The DMG (p. 86)
stresses that they cannot gain additional
XP while waiting until they
can pay for the training: "Once a character
has points which are equal to or greater
than the minimum number necessary to
move upward in experience level, no further
experience points can be gained until the
character actually gains the new level.?
When they find this out, the players in the
group become even more distressed.

To make matters worse, when they have a
chance to become 3rd level, the cost for
each week of training will be 3,000 gp. This
means that for Khalim to become 3rd level,
he will have had to pay 4,500 gp: 1,500 to
become 2nd level and 3,000 to become 3rd
level. Khalim has to acquire this much gold
? over and above any gold pieces that he
can translate into experience points ? to
?pay his way? to 3rd level. When he
reaches the experience-point ceiling for a
given level, he has to continue adventuring
to gather the gold to finance his training.

The time it takes for characters to collect
their training money is time wasted, in
effect. They cannot gain XP
-- even though they continue to use their
skills and may even have to risk their lives
— and any treasure they find will either
have to be sold to pay for their training or
for their daily upkeep; food, lodging, clothing,
spell components, and weapons take
some of their needed earnings. Only a
limited number of monsters exist that are a
fair match for a group of 1st-level characters,
so being stuck at 1st level becomes
repetitive and boring. It seems that, properly
played, a 1st-level character will not
reach 2nd level for a long time.

The DM, who sees that he is losing the
players' interest, realizes he must do something.
It is at this point that he takes the
first step toward a Monty Haul campaign.
Whether from the players? urgings to do
something and stop being ?unfair,? or as
the DM?s own idea, the next group of orcs
the characters kill happened to be guarding
a chest full of 8,000 gp, instead of the normal
copper or silver, and a magic item that
can be sold for additional gold. By some
coincidence, this is just enough money to
pay for everyone?s training.

This may not seem like a terrible transgression,
but when the characters need
training to become 3rd level, the DM will
have to give them more gold. Normally,
low-level characters should be given copper
and silver treasures so they will have something
to look forward to -- gold and magic.
Giving away gold and gems this early in the
game will disrupt its balance. If gold is
given away in large amounts, magic generally
flows much more freely as well, allowing
characters to grow ultra-powerful and
creating a Monty Haul campaign that
quickly becomes tiresome for both DM and
players.

How should a DM find a happy medium
between a game that is so difficult that it
drags and a game that is so easy it is not
worth playing? A simple change in the
frequency of character training can take
care of this problem, making the game
easier to play while still being realistic.

It seems a little unrealistic that characters
must train between every level. What does a
character gain between 1st and 2nd level?
Fighters do not gain a new weapon proficiency,
magic-users or clerics do not gain
new spells, and even monks do not gain any
abilities.

The only constant benefit of advancing in
levels is the gaining of new hit points. But
one does not ?learn? to have more hit
points as the result of training. In contrast,
characters can improve their lot in other
ways when they advance from one level to
the next ? ways in which they actually do
learn something, such as how to use a different
weapon or how to cast more powerful
spells.

When a character?s abilities are improved
or expanded from one level to the next, he
must receive instruction and training to be
able to master the new skills. But since new
abilities are not gained at every level, why
should characters have to train every level?
If a fighter does not have the opportunity of
attaining proficiency with a new weapon
between 1st level and 2nd level, why does
he need additional training with weapons he
already knew how to use? If practice makes
perfect, then he has just had a whole level?s
worth of practice in the weapons and abilities
he possesses.

The same goes for magic-users. A 1stlevel
spell caster with a book of six spells
cannot use any new spells when he becomes
2nd level, but he can use the old spells more
often. This extra number of spells should be
attributed to the practice he?s gained during
1st level, not to a one-week training period.

Characters should only have to undergo
training when they gain a new ability. For
lighters, thieves and monks, this would be
every time they gain a new weapon proficiency.
For magic-users and clerics, this
would be before the level at which they gain
the ability to cast a new level of spell.

Instead of training before every level,
fighters, paladins and rangers, who gain a
new weapon proficiency every three levels,
would have to receive training before becoming
4th, 7th, and 10th level. After 10th,
this training can be in the form of self-conducted
training and/or study, as the
DMG says. For fighters and paladins, 7th
level is also when they can start attacking
three times every two rounds, so the training
is doubly appropriate.

For thieves and assassins, this training
would be done after the character had accumulated
enough points to become 5th level
and again before 9th level. Training after
9th level can be done by the character,
without a teacher.

Unlike fighters, thieves and assassins
have abilities which do change at every level
? their chances to successfully complete
any of the special thieving abilities. Picking
pockets, moving silently, and the other
thieving skills are abilities that a thief has at
1st level. They become better at these functions
every level, as a fighter becomes better
with a broad sword each level, but they are
not new abilities. Training is only needed
when something new is introduced, such as
a new weapon.

Thieves and assassins can often receive
training at their guild. While many playercharacter
thieves wander too much to belong
to a guild, having a home base to
return to is always a good idea. In less
densely inhabited areas and small kingdoms,
fighters may have a hard time finding
another fighter of sufficient level to train
them, but often even the smallest city supports
a thieves? guild.

The monk, the other class that needs
training each time a new weapon is mastered,
should receive training after every
other level: at 3rd level, 5th level, 7th level,
etc. After 7th level, a higher-level monk is
not needed to train the character. Although
the monk does gain a number of other
abilities as he rises in level, these are not the
kind of abilities that can be obtained by
training. Some of the monk?s abilities are
made possible by his strong physiology, such
as immunity to diseases, poison, haste or
slow spells, and the ability to heal himself.
His other abilities come from his mind:
masking from ESP self-induced catalepsy,
resistance to telepathic and mind blast
attacks, and immunity to geas and quest
spells. These abilities come from the stringent
lifestyle a monk must adopt and maintain;
they cannot be taught per se.

Spell casters are a different story. Magicusers
and illusionists have very little use for
weapons; as they reach higher levels, the
need to clutch a dagger or a staff diminishes
even further. Clerics and druids, on the
other hand, depend on their weapons for
offense and their spells for defense.

Magic-users and illusionists need training
only before the level at which they would
gain a new level of spell. This means magic
users need training when they qualify for
3rd level, 5th level, 7th level, 9th level, 12th
level, 14th level, 16th level, and 18th level.
At 12th level and above, the magic-user can
accomplish the training on his own.

Illusionists must receive training when
they qualify for 3rd, 5th, 8th, 10th, 12th,
and 14th levels. Once they reach 10th level,
as it says in the DMG, illusionists do not
need a higher-level illusionist to help them
train.

Although clerics and druids must train
when they receive new weapons, as well as
when new levels of spells are received, the
frequency of training for them is not that
much greater than that for magic-users and
illusionists. It is the greatest for druids, but
this is because they progress in spell levels,
so rapidly.

A cleric should receive training before
becoming 3rd, 5th, 7th, 9th, 11th, 13th,
16th, and 17th level, and every four levels
after that. After 9th level, a cleric can study
without the aid of a higher-level cleric. A
druid must be trained before becoming 2nd,
3rd, 6th, 9th, 11th, 12th, and 13th level,
and does not need to be trained by a higherlevel
druid after reaching 12th level.

With this system of character training,
costs for training are still figured out as
shown in the DMG. The weekly cost of
training is the level of the character needing
the training multiplied by 1,500 gp. Characters
are still rated by the DM
as excellent, superior, fair or poor. Characters
who are rated superior or excellent are
still able to train themselves, though this
takes twice as long and costs twice as much.
This new system would make the game
easier and more fun, and characters should
be able to afford their training costs without
having to keep big bankrolls.

In this system, Khalim the fighter will not
need training until he is about to become
4th level. If he is rated as excellent, the
training will cost him 4,500 gp. To become
4th level, Khalim will need to accumulate
more than 8,000 xps in addition to the
training fee. It still won?t be an easy task to
come up with the 4,500 gp ? but under the
system in the DMG he would need twice
this amount to pay for all his training up to
4th level.

Even if Khalim does not save enough
gold to pay for his training while he?s out
earning experience points, he will only have
to ?waste? time before 4th and 7th level,
not before every level. And the DM won?t
feel obliged to make gold easy to find,
which lessens the chance of things developing
into a Monty Haul campaign.

The hardest challenge facing a character
may be finding someone to train him. Any
character who is training another one must
have successfully completed the training
period following the one in which the student
is now involved. This means a magicuser
training another to use 3rd-level spells
must himself be able to use 4th-level spells;
a fighter learning his fifth weapon (4th
level) must be trained by one who has mastered
his sixth weapon (7th level).

While fighters and magic-users of 7th
level might not be hard to find in many
campaigns, 12th-level magic-users and
10th-level fighters are probably rarer. High-level
magic-users tend to lock themselves in
their towers to develop spells and enchant
items. High-level fighters are often busy
protecting their keeps or raising armies to
fight for their lord. Since few schools exist
for high-level characters, player characters
often must seek out these busy lords and
wizards and convince them to train lowerlevel
characters.

This can set the stage for some interesting
adventures. A high-level <wizard> who
would rather spend his Time creating a new
spell might agree to train another <wizard>
in return for cleaning out a nest ov
harpies |or| anhkhegs that have been bothering
farmers on the western part ov his lands.
A fighter who that cannot afford to leave his
keep might be able to USE the services of a
lower-level fighter to perform some task in
return for his training.

Thus, the benefit of these different rules
about training extends into the campaign at
large ? keeping costs down by lowering the
amount of gold an adventurer needs to
advance in his profession, and keeping
interest high at the same time by providing
material for different sorts of missions that
those well-trained characters
? and able ? to take on.

MAY 1985


LETTERS

Training a-gain
Dear Dragon:
There was a sort-of omission in "Only train
when you gain" (issue #97). I liked the article;
however, there was a question that arose in my
mind after reading it: How does a character gain
levels between those periodic training sessions?
    Kirk Thierbach
    Novi, Mich.
    (Dragon #102)

If you accept the premise of the article and
want to use the system it sets forth, then you have
to abandon the concept of ?between levels? at the
times when training is not mandated. All that?s
required for a character to gain a level in such a
case is to simply amass the requisite number of
experience points. However, experience points
earned during an adventure are generally not
actually awarded by the DM until the adventure
is over, when accumulated points are doled out to
each member of the party This prevents a character
(and properly so) from going up a level in
the middle of an adventure, and does build in
some sort of ?between levels? period ? even if
it?s only to get a good night?s sleep and stock up
on supplies before heading out again.

Is this fair to a character who starts a long
adventure needing only a few points to make the
next level? Well, maybe not ? but who said the
next adventure had to be a long one? It might be
possible, and would certainly be in the best
interests of the party, to undertake a brief expedition
intended to earn enough points to boost the
character to the next higher level.

No matter how you handle this, the rule in the
DMG should still apply: Once a character has <link>
accumulated enough points to qualify for the next
higher level, he is not able to officially record any
more XP until that level is actually attained ? in
other words, until the acquisition of the new level
is officially logged between adventures. -- KM