Unifying B/X's XP Tables

NOTE: This post is filled with a lot of digital ink spilled over the design of early D&D. If you want the unified XP tables and don't care about any of the theory, just skip the opening paragraphs.

Coming from the perspective of modern D&D, B/X has some immediately noticeable divergences, most notably: the variable XP tables, race-as-class, and those wacky five saving throw categories. There's more differences, but you have to dig a bit deeper to find them.

As I understand the history of D&D, variable XP tables were ditched during the transition from AD&D to third edition in order to facilitate multiclassing. There were rules for it before, but like everything in AD&D it's a giant complicated mess that even my autistic brain doesn't want anything to do with.

While not exactly the most precise, there are design principles in early D&D. These principles are the reason we have the variable XP requirements in the first place. They're there for "balance," as weird as that may sound. A lot of people associate that term with modern D&D with its preoccupation (and oftentimes failure) with making sure no one class or ability overpowers another and that encounters are scaled to match an adventuring party's capability. This too exists in early D&D.

Dwarves are like Fighters but with some added benefits (better saving throws and chances to detect dungeon tricks) so it costs more XP to level up. Halflings don't have access to the wide variety of weapons that Fighters do, nor do they have the tough eight-sided hit die, but they have a variety of sneaky tricks at their disposal. So overall, it's a net zero effect and they level up at the same rate as Fighters. An Elf is basically a Fighter and a Magic-User (a holdover from OD&D and a better implementation in my opinion) so they cost an insane amount of XP to level up, 4,000 experience points to reach level 2. The Thief has a paltry d4 hit die and their only draw is their "Thief Skills." So to compensate, they level up faster than everyone else. And the Cleric levels up faster than the Fighter for some reason.

I don't mind the variable XP requirements and the last time I ran an osr (a hack of LotFP), the Thief player was delighted to hear that they'd be leveling up much faster than everyone else in the party. However, I like math and the balancing that results from variable XP is...kind of artificial so I'm happy to try my hand at unifying the XP tables while not rewriting the system from scratch.

"But Top Hat," I hear you say, "didn't some osr bloggerman write up a unified theory of XP progressions for B/X? Why not use that instead?" To that, I have two responses.

1. As much as I love it, B/X isn't a perfectly tuned machine. You can fudge the numbers. 
2. I might be using that post to "double check" my math in a followup post.

Based on some back-of-the-envelope math I did in a TextEdit document (don't ask), Clerics and Thieves are roughly half a level ahead of Fighters, Magic-Users are about half a level behind, Dwarves are slightly less than a third of a level behind, and Elves are basically a full level behind. And as an additional note, I didn't come up with all of this myself. I was helped in part by some kind grognards on the internet, you know who you are.

THE CLERIC

The way this holy warrior class advances faster than the normal warrior never made sense to me. You can bump them up to a Fighter XP progression and no one will notice, it's not until 13th level that they're a full level ahead of their secular counterparts. If you want to make yourself feel better, get rid of their weapon restrictions. Tie it to their specific religion and let the cleric atone if they break the taboo.

THE DWARF

Bump them down to the Cleric's attack progression. Boom. Done.

THE ELF

This one is trickier. You can bump them down to Cleric attacks, but that still leaves their spellcasting abilities to deal with. However, because the fey spellswords are, on average, a level behind, you can just delay their spell progressions by one level. After all, we plan on shifting Magic-Users down to a Fighter's XP progression next. They'll start off knowing zero spells (maybe a few cantrips if you give those to Magic-Users anyway). They can earn their keep at level 1 with their reduced surprise chances, secret door finding abilities, immunity to ghoul paralysis, "darkvision," and ability to use scrolls and wands. If that seems too overpowered, you can just chop off whichever one of their abilities you're least fond of (I'd go after darkvision).

THE MAGIC-USER

In my opinion, the spellcasting ability afforded to Magic-Users isn't too powerful. Their spells and spell list is very limited and it's not until 11th level that they're lagging a full level behind Fighters. However, we can't just handwave it, after all, Magic-Users do get pretty powerful at later levels. This is in part due to how they start gaining multiple new spell slots per level starting at 7th level. So an easy fix is to not let this happen and leave all the lower level spell slots at a maximum of 2. 

Disclaimer: not mine, entirely too neat and professional looking

Or you can give them a spell progression as shown above. This gives lower level Magic-Users a bit of a boost but heavily clamps down on higher level casting power.

THE THIEF

These sneaky bastards are also tricky. You can bump up their hit die to a d6 and maybe boost the chances of their Thief Skills by a little. You could also take a cue from AD&D 2e and allow the player to choose where they allocate their skills or steal the Specialist from LotFP. The last suggestion is so clever I wish I'd thought of it myself but alas I did not. Thieves now attack and save as one level higher. Basically, your THAC0 improves from 19 to 17 at level 4 rather than level 5 and so on. It's a small but meaningful boost that reflects their speedy advancement under the original rules.