People have different ways to do leveling. Some DMs don't track XP and have players leveling up after important events.
A group I very very briefly played with (1 session, decided not to join them any more, house rule of going to the toilet en-masse would be fine, but only the last person being allowed to flush was a bit too much for me... and a few other things) solved this by the DM having 1on1 sessions for the character's individual questlines while the party was officially on downtime. I didn't get to have one as I quit right away as mentioned, but from what the DM told me, it seemed to have worked pretty well. Gave the characters some additional depth and made the players develop things like family, relationships, business interests, etc. One of the characters was a date (as in the fruit) farmer, another was a member of a noble faily and there was a lot of plotting involved in who's going to be the new patriarch, etc. It seemed fun and if I ever end up DMing a cool, stable group where it'd feel like it makes sense, I'd like to give something like that a shot myself.
Bizarre
it's some guy in poverty who count every cents, 6 guys going to toilet will crash his budget, i am probably right...I seen people in shops, millenials and such counting every euro, youth are in deep poverty with shitty low wage jobs .
Differential XP requirements for leveling by class are part of every edition of D&D since the beginning.
Demi-human level limits has also been part of every D&D edition since the beginning, as an imperfect means of limiting their power.
Gary Gygax should never have introduced the general concept of multiclassing for demihumans, which makes them far too powerful and desirable for players, but instead left as options only specific combinations in keeping with the identity of a demihuman race, such as elves being fighter/mages.
This began with the monk character class introduced in Supplement II: Blackmoor, but the monk class was excluded from AD&D 2nd edition. Admittedly, the tournament idea is a bit too setting-specific, not something that necessarily makes sense for a DM's own campaign world.
Weird notations are a vital component of any prestigious RPG.
Introduced in AD&D 1st edition as an imperfect means of giving a boost to fighters; not a great idea, since it requires 18 strength for a fighter to receive that boost, which is randomized over a considerable number of extra categories between normal 18 and 19.
Stat requirements were introduced in Supplement I: Greyhawk for the paladin class. Gary Gygax introduced an alternative attribute score generation system in Unearthed Arcana precisely to answer your objection.
Part of every edition of D&D since the beginning.
Druids were the neutral alignment subclass of clerics, providing an alternative to lawful alignment (i.e. good) clerics and chaotic alignment (i.e. evil) anti-clerics, in original D&D with its single-axis three-alignment system.
That association of nature with neutral (in AD&D's two-axis nine-alignment system, "true neutral") alignment still existed as late as the 1994 Planescape campaign setting.
Monks appeared in Player's Options: Spells & Magic along with Crusader and Shaman classes. There was also a version that appeared in Greyhawk as well. They were in The Scarlet Brotherhood supplement.
Druids were the neutral alignment subclass of clerics, providing an alternative to lawful alignment (i.e. good) clerics and chaotic alignment (i.e. evil) anti-clerics, in original D&D with its single-axis three-alignment system.
