Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder...

...or so they say.

I've been neglecting the blog this week in lieu of working on my S&W setting...which turned into another rules tweak, which turned into a proofreading session, which has taken much of my free time this week. I've got a couple of updates to the race list I need to get written up, and I want to go into the various human races that live in the setting as well.

As I'm going through the D&D Gazeteers mining the heck out of them for ideas, I've come across the forgotten (at least by me) Shaman class. I've got several animal atavistic-centered societies and thought it may make a good additon to the classes I have for the players in my hack of the S&W rules. Which brings me to my next idea...

I understand the reasoning behind the differing XP Progressions. (For those of you on the G+ Swords & Wizardry community, +Brett Slocum brought up this very topic today.) I've been batting around the idea of having a 3E style single progression table for all classes. I've always taken a very free and loose attitude towards XP. I hand it out as I see fit, and not necessarily because the rules say how XP should be handled. Magic-Users are fairly weak in the early levels, but they quickly grow into very powerful characters. However, that power is finite, being tied to the number of spells they can memorize. Plus, a fighter (or even a ranger, barbarian, or paladin) can "bring their A game" to bear in combat at all times (unless they are subject to some spell or curse that is). They are wholly viable on the battlefield no matter how long the battle laasts, no matter how badly they've been pounded, so the power level issues may actually come out in the wash. I haven't crunched any numbers on this, just eyeballing it. Has anyone done this in early editions? How did it go? Was the party wholly out of whack, or was it even noticed?