Overcoming environmental challenges should grant XP. But then the environment becomes part of the strength of the opponent. Of both teams fought opponents of the same level of strength, then they should get the same XP. It doesn’t matter who took more bruises doing it.
If you really want to get realistic about how much one learns in terms of XP... you could do what some CRPGs do and give characters less XP for repeats of the same thing. That is, the first time you fight orcs you learned a lot vs. never having met them. By the time you've fought them 20 times, the relative amount of new knowledge you have after that fight is much less.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
If you really want to get realistic about how much one learns in terms of XP... you could do what some CRPGs do and give characters less XP for repeats of the same thing. That is, the first time you fight orcs you learned a lot vs. never having met them. By the time you've fought them 20 times, the relative amount of new knowledge you have after that fight is much less.
That’s represented by the increased XP requirements per level. When you’re 1st level, an Orc’s worth of HP is relatively significant. When you’re 5th level, that same amount of XP is barely pocket change worth bending over for.
If you really want to get realistic about how much one learns in terms of XP... you could do what some CRPGs do and give characters less XP for repeats of the same thing. That is, the first time you fight orcs you learned a lot vs. never having met them. By the time you've fought them 20 times, the relative amount of new knowledge you have after that fight is much less.
And honestly, even this is silly in terms of any type of learning and experience. You can lift 200 lbs once and break your back and not gain anything, or you can lift 150 lbs 20 times and do this 3 times per week and really gain strength. And you can read a PhD thesis out of your field once, and not learn anything, or read the right textbook a number of times and learn something new at each read as knowledge builds inside you.
I don't get it, are you arguing for him or against him?
You can lift lesser weight to increase muscle mass but after some point it will stop increasing unless you increase the weight.
Once you understood the thesis, rereading it will not give you additional insight.
Which is what he was saying. It's just different scale.
If you really want to get realistic about how much one learns in terms of XP... you could do what some CRPGs do and give characters less XP for repeats of the same thing. That is, the first time you fight orcs you learned a lot vs. never having met them. By the time you've fought them 20 times, the relative amount of new knowledge you have after that fight is much less.
And honestly, even this is silly in terms of any type of learning and experience. You can lift 200 lbs once and break your back and not gain anything, or you can lift 150 lbs 20 times and do this 3 times per week and really gain strength. And you can read a PhD thesis out of your field once, and not learn anything, or read the right textbook a number of times and learn something new at each read as knowledge builds inside you.
I don't get it, are you arguing for him or against him?
You can lift lesser weight to increase muscle mass but after some point it will stop increasing unless you increase the weight.
Once you understood the thesis, rereading it will not give you additional insight.
Which is what he was saying. It's just different scale.
I'm arguing against. D&D is on the basis that you need to increase the weigh each time because it's the novelty that brings experience. I'm saying exactly the opposite. Repetition builds muscle. Of course, once you have that muscle, you have to move to the next step to gain more, but repetition is more important than the novelty for any gain.
But his point was exactly the same. That the more you do of the same, the less effect it brings and it approaches 0.
You said it yourself - once you have built your muscle, you need to move forward. That is the equivalent of stopping getting exp for the same enemy.
Or do you agree with the principle but not the scale? As in, it's silly if you stop getting exp after 20 orcs but OK if you stop getting exp after 100 orcs?
I started my current campaign using milestone. I switched (back) to XP around the time the PCs hit 3rd level. I found I had trouble deciding when to level them and ended up just calculating out the XP anyway, so why not just use that?
there is no mechanic in D&D 5e that allows a party that nearly died to get more XP for defeating a monster than a party that barely took 5 damage.
Why should they? Why should that party get extra credit for not doing as well as the other party? That would be horse poopy.
Because, IMO, the harder the challenge you overcome, the more you learn from it and the more "experience" you gain for later situations. Obviously, if their having a more difficult time is their fault or the fault of the dice (by running into traps, failing multiple saving throws and attack rolls, choosing to use their powerful features and spells against minions, etc), they obviously shouldn't get "extra credit," but a party who used their enginuity to pull out of a situation that was almost a TPK because of environmental factors, monster positioning and ambushes, and other similar situations should be more rewarding than a party just completely dominating the combat like it was no problem.
If they fought the same opponent, then no, they don’t. It shouldn’t matter how hard the fight was, only how strong the opponent was.
Honestly, I am surprised that people are still trying to find in game reasons for XPs. First, in real life, it's been proven time and time again that you learn more from our mistakes than from your successes, that is assuming that you are capable of learning, which often requires putting yourself in question. There is no basis for "more difficult makes you learn more", it's just that in general if you repeat the effort you will gain more because of repeated effects and D&D goes exactly the other way, it rewards one off big dangers. And being clever and finding the solution on one problem will certainly not make you more inventive, that comes from failing a number of times and still trying to find another solution.
And, I sorry, Sposta, but while the above sentence is absolutely true in game terms, it makes absolutely no sense in terms of actual learning and progression.
XPs and levels are completely artificial, they are a purely a game mechanic that has absolutely no grounding whether in general life or even in the genre. Because of the dramatic effect, heroes will gain new powers during the confrontation with the BBEG, not after it when they have vanquished him and gained "the XPs".
So now that we have established they they are a purely artificial mechanic, you have to consider the implications for the game. Note that, in our discussions, the XPs are always presented as rewards to the players, not the characters. You want to reward the player for bring clever, or reward the player for roleplaying his character well. And this is where I think it's wrong, it sounds too much like teaching, too much like the DM, in his generosity and wisdom, agreeing grudgingly that the players have not been too bad and giving them a pat on the head and a sweet for having player nicely according to his wishes, and for being clever (but of course, never as clever as he is himself).
Note that all this has a strong grounding in D&D history, by the way, because in the first editions, the XPs were in the reward section of the DMG. I have even dug out the Basic D&D sentence because it's really funny now: "Did you notice that you get a lot of experience for treasure, and not much for killing monsters? It’s better to avoid killing, if you can, by tricking monsters or using magic to calm them down. You can sometimes avoid the risks of combat. But you will have to fight many monsters to get their treasures "
Note that I'm not saying that there is something inherently bad in this, in many ways this was more an adventure game than a roleplaying game. But even at that point in time, a lot of people started to really play it as roleplaying and these kind of rewards seemed silly. For example, I don't think that anyone still gives experience for gold, when it was the main source in the first editions.
What I'm saying here is that, twist it all you can, you will never find a correct interpretation of what XPs mean in the world of the characters because they are much too abstract and artificial, so every justification that you think you can find will seem pointless to others and you will never reach an agreement anyway.
What I'm more concerned about is the effect on the game, because I think it's wrong to keep dangling carrots in front of players as if you were at best a teacher, when the only thing that the game should be about is playing it collectively for fun. This is how you get powergamers, this is how you get players being adversarial to the DM and its monsters, this is how you actually generate confrontations. Of course, most DMs are wiser than this, from experience, and defuse all these mechanisms through other tricks, but if you acknowledge Levels for what they are, there is an easier solution, one that is not only in line with the genre but also avoids all these little temptations that can make the game deviate, if ever so slightly.
I think you’re insistence on telling me that I do it wrong and should do it your way instead is silly.
I don’t have any of those ******* problems. If you do, maybe it’s because you have shitty players and a lousy DM.
But what the DMG never suggests is using XPs as individual rewards for specific actions by a specific player, which for me is even worse.
I think not doing that is a mistake. Please, keep telling me I’m wrong and don’t know what I’m doing when I have been doing it this way for almost 30 years and don’t see any problem with it.
I just use milestone leveling. My campaign is a heavy story, 75% on rails, campaign. Milestone leveling lets me make sure the characters are the level I want for the part of story they are in. Also, it makes leveling up a reward for working through a 'chapter', or sometimes 2-3 chapters, of the story, whether that involved a lot of combat, or a series of challenges, or just a large patch of diplomacy and intrigue where they shaped the world in a major way without killing stuff.
"You want to reward the player for bring clever, or reward the player for roleplaying his character well. And this is where I think it's wrong, it sounds too much like teaching, too much like the DM, in his generosity and wisdom, agreeing grudgingly that the players have not been too bad and giving them a pat on the head and a sweet for having player nicely according to his wishes, and for being clever (but of course, never as clever as he is himself)."
I'm not trying to be offensive here, I'm just curious. Do you give Inspiration in your game, or is that being patronizing too?
What do you do with players that are consistently attentive and participate versus players who are disruptive, don't pay attention, avoid the encounters or sabotage the plot?
Do they all milestone level at the same time?
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"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
What do you do with players that are consistently attentive and participate versus players who are disruptive, don't pay attention, avoid the encounters or sabotage the plot?
I play D&D with the former and do not play D&D with the latter -- that is what I do.
Why would I want to play a game of D&D with people who don't seem to want to play it? Why would I play with people who are sabotaging my plot?
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
What do you do with players that are consistently attentive and participate versus players who are disruptive, don't pay attention, avoid the encounters or sabotage the plot?
Do they all milestone level at the same time?
I can't answer for the others, but my games don't really have any plot to sabotage. It's free-roam and any goals the PCs have are their own. This cuts down on my work because all I need to prep are maps, items, plus a few monsters/characters, and just improvise the rest.
I used to plan big linear story arcs, but all it takes is Grobo the Goblin killing one NPC to derail the entire plot. Why bother? I don't want to punish the PCs for not playing my DM rail shooter. Maybe if I ran hack 'n' slash megadungeons I would use XP but for something like an exploration or intrigue campaign it seems awkward to guesstimate the equivalent roleplaying or stealth XP for a given monster encounter every time.
As for disruptive or inattentive players, I would probably just ask them to try a bit harder next time, and if it's still a big problem afterwards just ask them to leave.
I prefer milestone because it allows you to keep it in line with were the players are at in the story. I used to use XP, but my players leveled up to quickly, and when the climax came around, my characters were to powerful and easily defeated it. With milestone, you can make sure this won't happen.
I've used both but prefer XP for 99% of my games. I just have to be pay attention and track what happens with XP. Milestone does the work for me but I lose some control. My most recent vid is about this exact thing.
Milestone is way better, it frees players from the urge to kill stuff just to advance when cleverness or diplomacy could have been employed, and it frees the DM and players from making messy calculations which don't contribute anything to the gameplay, or manufacturing growth for social encounters and puzzles.
You may find yourself playing days of social interaction, or doing time skips where an assigned level of growth happens, there's some excitement tied to approaching each level with exp, but it's a superficial excitement that's geared around gameplay logistics rather than engagement with role playing.
As a solution for your problem, you can just give them the exp and freeze level ups. Leveling up usually happens during the magical healing period called long rest, but even if you allow them a long rest, you can assign them some sort of gate which they need to achieve before lofty levels of power are accessed. If it deviates to much from what you've already established, you can just level with the players and tell them that the campaign expectations benefit from withholding level ups until you've reached a checkpoint.
You should not throttle exp, if the players are facing repeated deadly encounters, they should be progressing quickly, it's one thing to delay receiving rewards, it's another thing to deny rewards proportionate to the challenge. If you want to set some hard caps on progress, you could play epic level 6, or 12, where growth just caps off, otherwise they can just pool up exp until the next long rest/ gate point, then rubber band to the level they've attained.
I prefer milestone because it allows you to keep it in line with were the players are at in the story. I used to use XP, but my players leveled up to quickly, and when the climax came around, my characters were to powerful and easily defeated it. With milestone, you can make sure this won't happen.
I used to run into this kind of thing, mostly due to my own inexperience and lack of confidence as a DM. It doesn't happen to me nowadays, or if it does (the PCs overpower an encounter), I just roll with it and move on. I chalked it up to one or many of the following.
D&D isn't a Novel (or I'm Not the Author)
I would view my campaign as a story and the PCs as characters in it. I would design adventures along a story-like narrative, typically without consciously thinking about it. That led to times when the PCs weren't doing what I expected, and to such a degree that I hadn't prepared for it. It was very stressful, because I also tried hard to avoid railroading. I came to understand that if D&D is a story, the DM isn't the one writing it. The players are. The DM mostly just sets up the plot situations.
Handing Out Too Much XP (or, rather, Handing it Out Too Frequently)
I used to award XP for largely anything the PCs did. I no longer do so. The PCs only get XP for overcoming encounters that I set up in the adventure to be XP-awarding. Killing random NPCs nets them nothing. I don't award XP for a social encounter unless it's a case where the PCs are using skill checks to bypass combat (e.g. using persuasion to get past some guards they would otherwise fight). The PCs get no XP for, say, convincing an NPC to spill his guts about the location of the hidden treasure. The PCs' reward is... they now know the location of the hidden treasure! It unlocks a new adventure path, which will surely contain a number of XP-awarding encounters.
Not Doing the Math
Calculating XP is math, no doubt about it. But it's also pretty unambiguous. If you know your PCs' XP amounts, you know exactly how much XP each one needs to get to the next level. When setting up XP-awarding encounters, make sure you don't have more XP in the pipeline than is needed to get them to whatever point you want them at when they reach the climax. Frankly this is really simple, and the only danger is that they won't get enough XP if they miss or skip or avoid some of the content. If that happens, and you really need the PCs to hit a certain level, you can give them a bonus bit of XP as a kind of "quest award" like you might see in WoW. Or you could throw them into the climax underprepared and hope the dice are kind. Or otherwise let them know they might want to go back and find the stuff they missed to bring them up to level.
Sure, it's harder to predict this if you have a very open sandbox style game, but in that case you don't really have a pre-planned climax either.
As a solution for your problem, you can just give them the exp and freeze level ups. Leveling up usually happens during the magical healing period called long rest, but even if you allow them a long rest, you can assign them some sort of gate which they need to achieve before lofty levels of power are accessed. If it deviates to much from what you've already established, you can just level with the players and tell them that the campaign expectations benefit from withholding level ups until you've reached a checkpoint.
You should not throttle exp, if the players are facing repeated deadly encounters, they should be progressing quickly, it's one thing to delay receiving rewards, it's another thing to deny rewards proportionate to the challenge. If you want to set some hard caps on progress, you could play epic level 6, or 12, where growth just caps off, otherwise they can just pool up exp until the next long rest/ gate point, then rubber band to the level they've attained.
I didn't meant to imply that the situation I found myself in is a problem because its not. I've been very transparent with my players about my intentions, and why the "combat" Xp has stopped. I am a firm believer that Xp should be given out when the players overcome the problem of the session, be that by violence or otherwise. If they resolve the problem of the session they will get the same Xp that they would have gotten if they had killed the thing.
We also haven't been able to play since I posted this thread so the lack of growth feeling hasn't happened because the game hasn't happened, and since the narrative event that will get them to the next level is happening on the 31st (We ending the arc with a spookoween session) it has become an nonissue.
Overcoming environmental challenges should grant XP. But then the environment becomes part of the strength of the opponent. Of both teams fought opponents of the same level of strength, then they should get the same XP. It doesn’t matter who took more bruises doing it.
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If you really want to get realistic about how much one learns in terms of XP... you could do what some CRPGs do and give characters less XP for repeats of the same thing. That is, the first time you fight orcs you learned a lot vs. never having met them. By the time you've fought them 20 times, the relative amount of new knowledge you have after that fight is much less.
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
That’s represented by the increased XP requirements per level. When you’re 1st level, an Orc’s worth of HP is relatively significant. When you’re 5th level, that same amount of XP is barely pocket change worth bending over for.
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I don't get it, are you arguing for him or against him?
You can lift lesser weight to increase muscle mass but after some point it will stop increasing unless you increase the weight.
Once you understood the thesis, rereading it will not give you additional insight.
Which is what he was saying. It's just different scale.
But his point was exactly the same. That the more you do of the same, the less effect it brings and it approaches 0.
You said it yourself - once you have built your muscle, you need to move forward. That is the equivalent of stopping getting exp for the same enemy.
Or do you agree with the principle but not the scale? As in, it's silly if you stop getting exp after 20 orcs but OK if you stop getting exp after 100 orcs?
I started my current campaign using milestone. I switched (back) to XP around the time the PCs hit 3rd level. I found I had trouble deciding when to level them and ended up just calculating out the XP anyway, so why not just use that?
I think you’re insistence on telling me that I do it wrong and should do it your way instead is silly.
I don’t have any of those ******* problems. If you do, maybe it’s because you have shitty players and a lousy DM.
I think not doing that is a mistake. Please, keep telling me I’m wrong and don’t know what I’m doing when I have been doing it this way for almost 30 years and don’t see any problem with it.
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I just use milestone leveling. My campaign is a heavy story, 75% on rails, campaign. Milestone leveling lets me make sure the characters are the level I want for the part of story they are in. Also, it makes leveling up a reward for working through a 'chapter', or sometimes 2-3 chapters, of the story, whether that involved a lot of combat, or a series of challenges, or just a large patch of diplomacy and intrigue where they shaped the world in a major way without killing stuff.
Lyxen said:
"You want to reward the player for bring clever, or reward the player for roleplaying his character well. And this is where I think it's wrong, it sounds too much like teaching, too much like the DM, in his generosity and wisdom, agreeing grudgingly that the players have not been too bad and giving them a pat on the head and a sweet for having player nicely according to his wishes, and for being clever (but of course, never as clever as he is himself)."
I'm not trying to be offensive here, I'm just curious. Do you give Inspiration in your game, or is that being patronizing too?
<Insert clever signature here>
What do you do with players that are consistently attentive and participate versus players who are disruptive, don't pay attention, avoid the encounters or sabotage the plot?
Do they all milestone level at the same time?
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
I like both, depends on the dm, my dm is more mechanical, xp for every situation. Milestone is more fluid.
I play D&D with the former and do not play D&D with the latter -- that is what I do.
Why would I want to play a game of D&D with people who don't seem to want to play it? Why would I play with people who are sabotaging my plot?
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
I use milestone XP for most of my games but I do loosely keep track of XP as well but don't use it for level-up decisions vs story beats.
I can't answer for the others, but my games don't really have any plot to sabotage. It's free-roam and any goals the PCs have are their own. This cuts down on my work because all I need to prep are maps, items, plus a few monsters/characters, and just improvise the rest.
I used to plan big linear story arcs, but all it takes is Grobo the Goblin killing one NPC to derail the entire plot. Why bother? I don't want to punish the PCs for not playing my DM rail shooter. Maybe if I ran hack 'n' slash megadungeons I would use XP but for something like an exploration or intrigue campaign it seems awkward to guesstimate the equivalent roleplaying or stealth XP for a given monster encounter every time.
As for disruptive or inattentive players, I would probably just ask them to try a bit harder next time, and if it's still a big problem afterwards just ask them to leave.
I prefer milestone because it allows you to keep it in line with were the players are at in the story. I used to use XP, but my players leveled up to quickly, and when the climax came around, my characters were to powerful and easily defeated it. With milestone, you can make sure this won't happen.
Brendan
I've used both but prefer XP for 99% of my games. I just have to be pay attention and track what happens with XP. Milestone does the work for me but I lose some control. My most recent vid is about this exact thing.
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Milestone is way better, it frees players from the urge to kill stuff just to advance when cleverness or diplomacy could have been employed, and it frees the DM and players from making messy calculations which don't contribute anything to the gameplay, or manufacturing growth for social encounters and puzzles.
You may find yourself playing days of social interaction, or doing time skips where an assigned level of growth happens, there's some excitement tied to approaching each level with exp, but it's a superficial excitement that's geared around gameplay logistics rather than engagement with role playing.
As a solution for your problem, you can just give them the exp and freeze level ups. Leveling up usually happens during the magical healing period called long rest, but even if you allow them a long rest, you can assign them some sort of gate which they need to achieve before lofty levels of power are accessed. If it deviates to much from what you've already established, you can just level with the players and tell them that the campaign expectations benefit from withholding level ups until you've reached a checkpoint.
You should not throttle exp, if the players are facing repeated deadly encounters, they should be progressing quickly, it's one thing to delay receiving rewards, it's another thing to deny rewards proportionate to the challenge. If you want to set some hard caps on progress, you could play epic level 6, or 12, where growth just caps off, otherwise they can just pool up exp until the next long rest/ gate point, then rubber band to the level they've attained.
I used to run into this kind of thing, mostly due to my own inexperience and lack of confidence as a DM. It doesn't happen to me nowadays, or if it does (the PCs overpower an encounter), I just roll with it and move on. I chalked it up to one or many of the following.
D&D isn't a Novel (or I'm Not the Author)
I would view my campaign as a story and the PCs as characters in it. I would design adventures along a story-like narrative, typically without consciously thinking about it. That led to times when the PCs weren't doing what I expected, and to such a degree that I hadn't prepared for it. It was very stressful, because I also tried hard to avoid railroading. I came to understand that if D&D is a story, the DM isn't the one writing it. The players are. The DM mostly just sets up the plot situations.
Handing Out Too Much XP (or, rather, Handing it Out Too Frequently)
I used to award XP for largely anything the PCs did. I no longer do so. The PCs only get XP for overcoming encounters that I set up in the adventure to be XP-awarding. Killing random NPCs nets them nothing. I don't award XP for a social encounter unless it's a case where the PCs are using skill checks to bypass combat (e.g. using persuasion to get past some guards they would otherwise fight). The PCs get no XP for, say, convincing an NPC to spill his guts about the location of the hidden treasure. The PCs' reward is... they now know the location of the hidden treasure! It unlocks a new adventure path, which will surely contain a number of XP-awarding encounters.
Not Doing the Math
Calculating XP is math, no doubt about it. But it's also pretty unambiguous. If you know your PCs' XP amounts, you know exactly how much XP each one needs to get to the next level. When setting up XP-awarding encounters, make sure you don't have more XP in the pipeline than is needed to get them to whatever point you want them at when they reach the climax. Frankly this is really simple, and the only danger is that they won't get enough XP if they miss or skip or avoid some of the content. If that happens, and you really need the PCs to hit a certain level, you can give them a bonus bit of XP as a kind of "quest award" like you might see in WoW. Or you could throw them into the climax underprepared and hope the dice are kind. Or otherwise let them know they might want to go back and find the stuff they missed to bring them up to level.
Sure, it's harder to predict this if you have a very open sandbox style game, but in that case you don't really have a pre-planned climax either.
I didn't meant to imply that the situation I found myself in is a problem because its not. I've been very transparent with my players about my intentions, and why the "combat" Xp has stopped. I am a firm believer that Xp should be given out when the players overcome the problem of the session, be that by violence or otherwise. If they resolve the problem of the session they will get the same Xp that they would have gotten if they had killed the thing.
We also haven't been able to play since I posted this thread so the lack of growth feeling hasn't happened because the game hasn't happened, and since the narrative event that will get them to the next level is happening on the 31st (We ending the arc with a spookoween session) it has become an nonissue.
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