Carnifex
SasqWatch
I simply adore the low level adventures, romping through a bunch of goblins, kobolds, orcs, etc is a lot of fun!! Makes me want KoTC two even more.
You don't need the guide (I'm assuming you mean the first half of it) to succeed, but it will certainly help avoid some mistakes. If you don't like having to restart your game because you made some bad decisions that you need to correct, it could help you avoid the need. For example, there's a completely insane number of spells in the game, and in the first half of the manual, one of the sections highlights what the more important spells to get might be, and discusses why.@stringray - would you say you need to read that manual to really succeed? I played the earlier version (including after some extra XP gathering activities were included above ground), and just ended up being overwhelmed a lot of the time. I did struggle through some of the earlier iterations, but eventually resorted to editing in healing potions and whatnot since you could hardly sleep anywhere (and camp fires often only allowed 1 sleep etc). Is that still the case? And the super high gold cost of leveling... I never minded the tokens. I never min/maxed characters - just chose some in my mind sensible complementary ones and then started.
Currently, in Challenge (Normal) difficulty, there is no gold cost for leveling. It's only a thing at the higher difficulty settings, or if you were to manually toggle it on for some reason.
Not that I know of, but this game is very far from being strict OGL. Lots of things have been modified and added, generally with the goal of making for a better computer game, I suppose. Gold cost for leveling is one of the stranger additions, because I don't see how it makes for a more fun game, but maybe that was your point...Why would there be a gold cost for leveling? Is that in the PnP version of OGL 3.5?
I always found it interesting that the AD&D PHB said on the topic of training; "…but none of this is suitable to gaming. It is, therefore, discarded and subsumed as taking place on a character's 'off hours.'" But then the AD&D DMG says to grade the performance of the character over the course of the last level to determine how many weeks (1-4) training will take and also has the cost equation, "Level of trainee character x 1,500 = Weekly cost during study/training."
Some later editions made the time and cost of training into optional rules, which I much prefer over the presentation that sends mixed signals.
5th edition also presents training to gain levels as a variant rule (found in the downtime activities section of the DMG), with time and cost based on tier (2nd-4th; 5th-10th; 11th-16th; and 17th-20th) instead of the actual level number itself.