I am going to be DMing my first campaign in a few months. The group is finishing up LMoP and we decided to run Storm King's Thunder. I'm super excited and got the campaign guide so I can start studying and preparing.
One small "issue" (it's not an issue for any of us as far as playing goes) is that we rarely have the whole group together to play. We are a group of fathers who are cool with people needing to miss a session for family reasons. Our current issue has been with XP management for folks who have been away for a session.
Our current DM grants people half the XP gained while they were away, which isn't the worst, but it doesn't solve the problem of everyone being very uneven. I think my solution for this will be to grant levels based on objectives. I've seen some folks throw this around before, where instead of giving XP based on killing a bad guy or group of bad guys, you just level up the group when they finish a larger set of objectives. This way if they decide to go off on a tangent, it's still an objective they are looking to tackle and can be included in the decision to level them all up.
Now that may not sound like it solves the initial problem, but for folks who are away, I can come up with a reason they are missing and assume they are off handling some other objective of their own. Then everything sort of works out evenly.
The problem I have is I've never run a campaign before. I've been a player in a few and they've all been XP for killing bad guy based. Is there a tutorial or maybe some DMs who can explain how they award XP for objectives and maybe how that would work in Storm King's Thunder? Thanks!
You can work by quests: retrieving that object, saving those people, infiltrating that stronghold and gaining crucial information for the plot. Each accomplishment awards the party of a certain amount of XP. For published adventure like Storm King's Thunder, I would suggest to go by chapter. At the end of each, there is a suggestion about the level each character should be in order to go in the next chapter.
Honestly I think I would just say everyone gets XP even if you aren't present. Especially if you aren't comfortable with a more objective, story model for XP. There isn't a major difference in leveling everyone up automatically and granting XP to everyone equally.
I've considered 75% with a limit of being only one level behind the 2nd lowest PC Level.
I am about to run my own campaign also. It's been a while since the 80's since I ran one. However, I never enjoyed trying to figure out experience points and who got what. After watching some YouTube videos and such to review on how to run games, several people mentioned awarding based on session attending, milestones, and so-forth versus primarily awarding based on killing monsters. So, I finally came up with my own way of how I will level up characters based on a 10-point/level system versus awarding experience points and will cut down on the math. I feel this will increase attendance, better roleplaying, and make players think about killing a monster or enemy versus capturing for information gathering and so forth.
Characters only gain a level for every 10 points they acquire.
The person will actually rise to the next level at the next session they play. Again, this helps to promote attendance. If a character has to be played as an NPC due to a player not being there, then that character remains at the lower level until the player is able to attend.
1 point per session attended.
If the player not there, they don't get a point.
Even though they may be absent, as long as their character sheet or stats are available, their character can be played as an NPC by another player or the DM. They don't receive credit for not being there but their character doesn't just suddenly vanish from the action either and can benefit from any treasures acquired.
This helps to encourage attendance on a regular basis.
1 point per accomplished goal and 1 or more points for completing a milestone
The goal/milestone to be reached is decided by DM and
It isn't necessarily shared with the group until at the time it is awarded.
Example: A goal may be to clear out a temple haunted by an elven lich or recover a stolen magic ring. A milestone may be accomplishing 3 specific goals such as 1) recover a stolen map, 2) use that map to find the tower of Dralic, an ancient high mage of ages past, in the mountains, & 3) Recover Dralic's spell book and return it to the Guild of the High Mages in Sarduun. Each accomplished goal would be worth a point but once the spell book was returned, they could receive 1 or more points for completing a milestone, let's say in this case, due to the difficulty level of the final goal, they receive a point for each goal and then 3 extra for completing all of them for a total of 6 points.
1 point for good roleplaying:
This is a DM judgment call.
For example: Tom plays a thief, Sansibar who has been assigned to steal a particular item from Yuanti tribe. But he has a phobia regarding snakes. Someone that actually plays that whole adventure out with that in mind would receive 1 or more points by the end of that adventure.
1 point or can choose to take a 1d4 bonus instead and add that roll to ANY other roll for an Amazing Action, an ingenious plan, & etc.:
Again, it's a DM judgment call.
If take the 1d4 bonus, they roll it immediately and whatever number they roll can be applied as a bonus to ANY future roll down the road. However, they must call out its use prior to the roll. It is applied above and beyond any other bonuses, they may have already in play at the time.
Example: A mage comes up against 3 ORCs and she is down to one magic missile attack. But she realizes that above them is a precarious loft with a stack of crates on it. She aims for what she believes to be the weakest beam in hopes it will all come down on her attackers. Whether she succeeds or fails, the DM may award her, if she survives, a point for the ingenious use of a magic missile.
DM will keep track of the points which is easier than trying to add up all the XP for each aspect of the night's adventure and then doing all the math to determine who gets what.
So, using the above system, let's say to date, Tom is currently playing a 3rd level thief,...
Attends 3 out of 6 sessions = 3 points
Was awarded 1 point for good role-playing in 1 session = 1
The team accomplished all three goals over the 6 sessions = 3 points
They also accomplished 1 milestone that was somewhat challenging = 2 points
He was awarded for a really great courageous action in single-handily defeating 4 muggers in the defense of an elderly couple. Tom decided to take the 1d4 bonus. So, he rolled a 1d4 and got a 2. That means he can apply a +2 to any future roll of his choice. But he must call it prior to making the roll.
That means, Tom earned a total of 9 points which means he is 1 point shy of leveling to 4th level. If he had chosen to take the extra point instead of the 1d4 bonus, then he would go to 4th level for the next session.
I believe this encourages people to attend on a regular basis and encourages greater role-playing and for players to have their characters actually participate in the adventure versus hanging back to not get hurt, to come up with ideas and solutions, and to force them to make the hard decision of whether or not they should really kill that Orc versus capturing to interrogate him first.
I hope this helps some make leveling easier work for you as a DM and helps others play a more interesting game for all.
I've been playing a tabletop game (not D&D) with friends that is now in it's 21st year (real time) of the same campaign. We aim to play every Monday, but real life means that there are probably only 35-40 games a year these days and for sure, not everyone can make every session.
We all love playing and decided way back that we wouldn't penalise anyone XP for not being able to attend - after all, we all WANT to be there and playing, so not being able to attend the game session is penalty enough! Adding an XP penalty onto someone's character as well seemed overly harsh to us.
For D&D games that I play these days, I very much use story awards - for me it makes everything much simpler. There's less book keeping for the DM and players. With XP awards I found I would get a situation where an incidental encounter on the way to a dungeon might trigger a major level-up for a couple of characters, so they suddenly want to spend time sorting that out and it would mess up the pacing of the session.
One game that I run fairly infrequently, one of the players can only make about a third of the sessions. That's ok though, we're all comfortable with that and I worked out a "plot-related" reason for it, in that his character keeps being sucked back into some mysterious void, that's related to the campaign bad-guy. I make absolutely sure that his character is the same level as the others - how miserable would it be to only be able to play every few months and then find that your character is massively underpowered compared to everyone else?
Anyways, that's a bit of a brain dump of experiences rather than a structured post.
i do this to be fair to my players. we all get together to play D&D for relaxation and enjoyment. it's punishing to be the guy who had to miss a season or two because of work/family/other important life stuff. then coming back and having less EXP than everyone else.
to keep it fair and even we keep everyone at the same exp total. (except for the occasional time we give someone like 5 more EXP than everyone else and level them before the rest of the party for fun.)
another thing you could consider is a catch up mechanic. you could have someone be gone for a while then come back, or be new. they could start at a lower level, and you as the DM plan for them to catch up level wise in one or two seasons.
I am going to be DMing my first campaign in a few months. The group is finishing up LMoP and we decided to run Storm King's Thunder. I'm super excited and got the campaign guide so I can start studying and preparing.
One small "issue" (it's not an issue for any of us as far as playing goes) is that we rarely have the whole group together to play. We are a group of fathers who are cool with people needing to miss a session for family reasons. Our current issue has been with XP management for folks who have been away for a session.
Our current DM grants people half the XP gained while they were away, which isn't the worst, but it doesn't solve the problem of everyone being very uneven. I think my solution for this will be to grant levels based on objectives. I've seen some folks throw this around before, where instead of giving XP based on killing a bad guy or group of bad guys, you just level up the group when they finish a larger set of objectives. This way if they decide to go off on a tangent, it's still an objective they are looking to tackle and can be included in the decision to level them all up.
Now that may not sound like it solves the initial problem, but for folks who are away, I can come up with a reason they are missing and assume they are off handling some other objective of their own. Then everything sort of works out evenly.
The problem I have is I've never run a campaign before. I've been a player in a few and they've all been XP for killing bad guy based. Is there a tutorial or maybe some DMs who can explain how they award XP for objectives and maybe how that would work in Storm King's Thunder? Thanks!
You can work by quests: retrieving that object, saving those people, infiltrating that stronghold and gaining crucial information for the plot. Each accomplishment awards the party of a certain amount of XP. For published adventure like Storm King's Thunder, I would suggest to go by chapter. At the end of each, there is a suggestion about the level each character should be in order to go in the next chapter.
Well that's easy :) If it tells me where they should be then I can sort of base things off that. Thanks!
Honestly I think I would just say everyone gets XP even if you aren't present. Especially if you aren't comfortable with a more objective, story model for XP. There isn't a major difference in leveling everyone up automatically and granting XP to everyone equally.
I've considered 75% with a limit of being only one level behind the 2nd lowest PC Level.
I am about to run my own campaign also. It's been a while since the 80's since I ran one. However, I never enjoyed trying to figure out experience points and who got what. After watching some YouTube videos and such to review on how to run games, several people mentioned awarding based on session attending, milestones, and so-forth versus primarily awarding based on killing monsters. So, I finally came up with my own way of how I will level up characters based on a 10-point/level system versus awarding experience points and will cut down on the math. I feel this will increase attendance, better roleplaying, and make players think about killing a monster or enemy versus capturing for information gathering and so forth.
Characters only gain a level for every 10 points they acquire.
The person will actually rise to the next level at the next session they play. Again, this helps to promote attendance. If a character has to be played as an NPC due to a player not being there, then that character remains at the lower level until the player is able to attend.
DM will keep track of the points which is easier than trying to add up all the XP for each aspect of the night's adventure and then doing all the math to determine who gets what.
So, using the above system, let's say to date, Tom is currently playing a 3rd level thief,...
That means, Tom earned a total of 9 points which means he is 1 point shy of leveling to 4th level. If he had chosen to take the extra point instead of the 1d4 bonus, then he would go to 4th level for the next session.
I believe this encourages people to attend on a regular basis and encourages greater role-playing and for players to have their characters actually participate in the adventure versus hanging back to not get hurt, to come up with ideas and solutions, and to force them to make the hard decision of whether or not they should really kill that Orc versus capturing to interrogate him first.
I hope this helps some make leveling easier work for you as a DM and helps others play a more interesting game for all.
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D&D Beyond FoundersHey magoula,
I've been playing a tabletop game (not D&D) with friends that is now in it's 21st year (real time) of the same campaign. We aim to play every Monday, but real life means that there are probably only 35-40 games a year these days and for sure, not everyone can make every session.
We all love playing and decided way back that we wouldn't penalise anyone XP for not being able to attend - after all, we all WANT to be there and playing, so not being able to attend the game session is penalty enough! Adding an XP penalty onto someone's character as well seemed overly harsh to us.
For D&D games that I play these days, I very much use story awards - for me it makes everything much simpler. There's less book keeping for the DM and players. With XP awards I found I would get a situation where an incidental encounter on the way to a dungeon might trigger a major level-up for a couple of characters, so they suddenly want to spend time sorting that out and it would mess up the pacing of the session.
One game that I run fairly infrequently, one of the players can only make about a third of the sessions. That's ok though, we're all comfortable with that and I worked out a "plot-related" reason for it, in that his character keeps being sucked back into some mysterious void, that's related to the campaign bad-guy. I make absolutely sure that his character is the same level as the others - how miserable would it be to only be able to play every few months and then find that your character is massively underpowered compared to everyone else?
Anyways, that's a bit of a brain dump of experiences rather than a structured post.
Hope it helps though!
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i do this to be fair to my players. we all get together to play D&D for relaxation and enjoyment. it's punishing to be the guy who had to miss a season or two because of work/family/other important life stuff. then coming back and having less EXP than everyone else.
to keep it fair and even we keep everyone at the same exp total. (except for the occasional time we give someone like 5 more EXP than everyone else and level them before the rest of the party for fun.)
another thing you could consider is a catch up mechanic. you could have someone be gone for a while then come back, or be new. they could start at a lower level, and you as the DM plan for them to catch up level wise in one or two seasons.
cheers,
Moltari