I'm a fairly new DM getting ready to run a new campaign where I'll be building encounters for the first time (I've ran some of the published adventures before but this will be my first time building encounters). It's a homebrewish world set in Faerun that we'll be doing in person.
I'm going to have 6 characters. In reading the rules on encounter building I know I need to use the next lowest entry on the Encounter Multipliers table (or 0.5 for a single monster). My question is about awarding experience to the party after. If I throw a single orc at them (not a balanced encounter, I know, just using it as an easy example), that orc is a CR 1/2 or 100 XP (but counted as CR 1/4 or 50 XP for encounter building because I have 6 characters). Once they defeat it and I'm awarding XP to the party for the encounter do I divide 100 XP by six, or would it be 50 divided by six since I have so many characters. I think it should be 100 but wanted to check to be sure before our first session. Thanks in advance!
The dnd encounter builder helps with this but I think it would be divided by the players. You might want to consider exp for non combat stuff as well otherwise you might be encouraging muderhubos as the players will quickly learn only killing counts.
as for encounter balancing, the CR is a rough guide but not very good. Aiming for monster level based on CR so they can’t one hit kill then taking action economy into account. If one monster is big and scary but only has one attack vs 6 players it will die quickly because it’s one attack to 6. Two or three lower level monsters is a tougher fight because even although the monster are weaker it becomes 3/6 attacks.
Although the CR is adjusted a bit by the fact that you have more than the average number of players, that doesn't necessarily need to affect the XP they grant... it's just a quick shorthand in design to help you plan out encounters. Keep in mind that the more players are involved in combat, the more each creature's XP will be diluted since it has to be split among more creatures. So each player is already getting less experience per orc than they would if it was a smaller group.
Also... for everyone's sake, just round up to the nearest 100 when calculating XP. It makes it a lot easier for players to keep track of their current xp, and rounding up also helps to compensate for any moments outside of combat that should have probably awarded XP, just in case you missed any opportunities for that.
I'm a fairly new DM getting ready to run a new campaign where I'll be building encounters for the first time (I've ran some of the published adventures before but this will be my first time building encounters). It's a homebrewish world set in Faerun that we'll be doing in person.
I'm going to have 6 characters. In reading the rules on encounter building I know I need to use the next lowest entry on the Encounter Multipliers table (or 0.5 for a single monster). My question is about awarding experience to the party after. If I throw a single orc at them (not a balanced encounter, I know, just using it as an easy example), that orc is a CR 1/2 or 100 XP (but counted as CR 1/4 or 50 XP for encounter building because I have 6 characters). Once they defeat it and I'm awarding XP to the party for the encounter do I divide 100 XP by six, or would it be 50 divided by six since I have so many characters. I think it should be 100 but wanted to check to be sure before our first session. Thanks in advance!
The dnd encounter builder helps with this but I think it would be divided by the players. You might want to consider exp for non combat stuff as well otherwise you might be encouraging muderhubos as the players will quickly learn only killing counts.
as for encounter balancing, the CR is a rough guide but not very good. Aiming for monster level based on CR so they can’t one hit kill then taking action economy into account. If one monster is big and scary but only has one attack vs 6 players it will die quickly because it’s one attack to 6. Two or three lower level monsters is a tougher fight because even although the monster are weaker it becomes 3/6 attacks.
Although the CR is adjusted a bit by the fact that you have more than the average number of players, that doesn't necessarily need to affect the XP they grant... it's just a quick shorthand in design to help you plan out encounters. Keep in mind that the more players are involved in combat, the more each creature's XP will be diluted since it has to be split among more creatures. So each player is already getting less experience per orc than they would if it was a smaller group.
Also... for everyone's sake, just round up to the nearest 100 when calculating XP. It makes it a lot easier for players to keep track of their current xp, and rounding up also helps to compensate for any moments outside of combat that should have probably awarded XP, just in case you missed any opportunities for that.
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RAW is that adjusted xp is only used for filling out the encounter and daily budget, not for actual xp gain.