So there was a thread about awarding XP in a particular situation, which quickly became a discussion about the problems that come about in-game due to XP-style advancement, and why we were all using Milestones instead.
While not all people agreed with my position, my position was that if you give full combat XP, but give less XP for non-combat solutions ( persuasion, intimidation, deception ), and don't really award XP at all for the really cool things that Player-Characters do outside of direct conflict ( the Rogue that disables that trap and saves the party from being immolated, that Wizard which casts Water Breathing on the party so they escape the bad guys and avoid a TPK, the Barbarian which intimidates the vital clue out of the NPC ), you're really pushing your players toward the murder hobo camp, since violent solutions are the solutions which have the most reward, and humans have a tendency to give you the behaviors which you measure and reward.
My thought then was that this made Milestone leveling better - since it rewarded Players for solving the story, regardless of whether or not they used violent, or non-violent means - Players were free to use creative solutions, not just a sword.
I'm no longer sure that's true.
I suspect that we place Milestones at the end of major story beats, but not a lot of attention is necessarily paid to whether or not the Players succeeded, or failed. In fact, I don't think I could, because the story that the Players create is never the one I think they're going to go down, so I can't say "OK, they'll reach a milestone when they rescue the Princess", because 2 sessions later they could be involved in something totally different that happened on their way to rescue that Princess.
Perhaps I'm just a crappy DM when it comes to Milestones - but I suspect that when people say Milestone, they're really referring to Session Based advancement, or Story Based advancement ( but as just noted, you really can't do Story Based in an open narrative ).
And thinking on that, I think that might be just as broken as awarding XP for some story-advancing behaviors and not others - because it's not tied to Player success or failure, at all.
Maybe the solution is to revert to XP based advancement, but base XP rewards on the successful execution of skills, since I don't think it can be applied to particular plot events ( at least not for me with an open narrative style ), and I don't think it should be tied to "just showing up".
The Party gets XP for combat. The Barbarian gets extra XP out of the combat if/when she uses her abilities creatively, effectively, and in character ( that's making choices as the character, not speaking as the character ) in that combat. The Barbarian would get an XP reward for Intimidating that NPC as well. The Rogue gets an XP bump for picking that lock. The Wizard gets an XP bump for saving the party with the Water Breathing. Whenever someone successfully and creatively exercises a skill - when there is a risk, or a cost - that's experience.
How those creativity/skill bumps scale compared to combat XP, depends on your style emphasis as as DM. Maybe you want a combat heavy game, so the creativity/skill XP rewards are minor. Maybe you want to de-emphasize combat, so you cut combat XP in half, but make skill/creativity bumps pretty significant. That would be up to you and the type of game you want to create. What you reward your Players for is directly linked to the behavior and style you want in your campaign.
I know that in Critical Role, campaign #1 - Matt Mercer kept a list of Player names, and ticked off check-marks whenever the Players did something notable - and that became XP rewards. I also noted that Vox Machina leveled up unevenly. I know that he doesn't do that now, and has move to Milestones - but to be honest, he doesn't need an incentive program for his Players to be creative with their skills and solutions.
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Some of this depends on how competitive vs cooperative you want your players to be. I know some other game systems award xp or equivalent based on skills used but that's not really a d&d thing (in 5th edition).
There may be a problem of a player wanting to use their skills to solve a problem one way getting frustrated by another player diving in to use his skills to solve it a different way. Think the rogue who wants to stealth and lockpick his way into a manor only for the barbarian to kill the guards and smash the door down.
Personally i believe that if you use the standard xp awards then it should be awarded in full for defeating or bypassing enemies, which may or may not mean killing. The milestone award system (which I prefer just because it's less book-keeping) should be based at convenient story points after a suitable number of encounters regardless of "success" or "failure". These terms are a bit nebulous anyway in d&d and XP does stand for 'experience' points, not 'success' points!
First reason is indeed to let my players approach situations the way they want. If I'd give XP for everything they'd automatically look for the most efficient way to gain as much as possible of XP. Now that might not be the case right away, but in due time players would do that even when its totally against their preferred playstyle. It is just psychology. Have seen it more then I can count in regards to game design and sports over the course of my life. So whether someone disagrees or not doesn't really matter since its pretty much a fact by now.
I don't use it at the end of a story "beat" either. Of course I know the red line of the story and what content is coming in the near future. This allows me to have a reasonable timing of when I'll grant that level up. The way I've setup my content I don't care if my players go one way or the other or spend several sessions on some side content. Just as in real life... Training and getting better at something doesn't happen at steady intervals either. You have long periods where you train and do whatever you can, but can't breach through a plateau. Then there is a period where progress happens more rapidly. This way I'm not worried if my players spend 2 months at lvl 3 and then go to lvl 5-6 within 1 month of play. I just create my region with content that keeps in my mind my players are lvl x. As long as they stay in that region they won't level. If they decide to spend a lot of time on side content or "de-rail" that is their choice. On top of that... the earlier levels are usually more fun and challenging as well. Which makes it even easier for my group to stretch those levels out as much as I like.
I also prefer milestone for creating my (combat) encounters. Usually when I try to make interesting encounters with the XP-budget... well its extremely limiting. I often run out of XP-budget before my players even got anywhere noteworthy. Meaning that if I use xp budget my players would barely have interesting encounters and level up way to quickly as a result. With milestone I can make encounters anyway I see fit without having to worry about anything else. As a result... When players are not present for a while due to whatever reason. They won't fall behind since there is so much XP they would've gotten otherwise that its still the same level as the rest.
Players completing tasks/challenges is rewarded with loot, alliances and such instead of XP in my book.
I wouldn't give extra rewards for proper RP/creativity. Maybe in the very rare case an inspiration die, but that is it. Its just too much busy work and book keeping. As DM's we already have enough to keep track of as is.
What I think? I think, as usual, you're overthinking it. Making things more complex then they are. Giving yourself more work over nothing.
I'll add that, although as a DM you are free to experiment with whatever system you like, there can be consequences to changing the way XP works.
A XP-for-skills-used system can, depending on your adventure, players and their character classes, result in more outgoing players or those with certain classes getting all the glory, getting the xp, levelling earlier, getting more powerful and completely overshadowing other players who will get frustrated at being left in the dust.
Opinion of a newbie DM here, discretion advised ;)
I love Matt Mercers approach to deal with good RP / good solutions that players come up with. If he thinks a player did something memorable, he makes a mark at one players name on his sheet. If it's really astonishing, he gives out two or three marks. At the end of the gaming day, every mark is worth 25 XP * level number. This makes RP worth the players attention, as they may get some boosts of XP, despite not dealing with combat itself. Plus, it's easy to do on the fly.
For combats, I'm going with XP for now. Most often, I don't give the players XP until the end of the gaming day, while I'm tracking the XP on my sheet. Thus, they may not even realize which encounter gave them how much XP (maybe this only works with new players, since veterans can retro-calculate everything). In our game, every success (non-combat or combar) means the players earn the full XP for the encounter (let's say 1 BBG and 3 guardsman, currently allied with the BBG, approach the party. If they persuade the guardsman that the BBG is evil and he surrenderes, because he gets way outnumbered, they get full XP for the encounter. If they, however, escape themselves, because they get overrun by the encounter, they get little to no XP). If they did not defeat the encounter, but only postpone it, having the BBG run away and they have to face him later again, they get a part of the XP (they defeated an encounter, but did not solve the dramatic question "can they stop the BBG before he ...").
The only thing I don't like about milestones and keeps me from using them, is that they feel stationary. Minor victories don't mean anything and maybe players only head for the BBGs, leaving henchmen and branches of the dungeon aside, because they expect it not to give them XP at all, losing their ressources for the final encounter of the dramatic question.
I really dislike successful skill use XP awards. The last game I played in where we had them was a 3.5 game but I think the same issues would apply.
Some characters are better at many more skills than others, it's not a level playing field.
It encourages players to look for ways to make a skill roll as often as possible. Roll playing is not role playing.
Some skills are used far more commonly than others. Players either end up with "useless" skills or they metagame to optimize skill picks for xp gain and everyone has similar skills and everybody wants to compete for each possible skill use.
It makes for more accounting work.
It makes level advancement happen out of step, breaking session continuity. After long enough the little differences add up and one player starts leveling up 2 fights before every one else, then another player falls a fight behind the main pack, etc, etc till people are not even leveling during the same session any more.
Don't get me wrong, I don't give XP to an individual if he single-handedly defeats an encounter. Still a team game, everyone get's the same for encounters. It's only really outstanding ideas and performances that I reward for that single player (to reward good RP and ideas). Everything else is team XP.
Moreover, if a player wants to exploit the system, they definetly can. If they want to farm XP, get minmax stats and be the only one in the group capable of something, I believe no system can heal that issue.
Hope y'all are having a pleasant holiday today ( and all season ).
Some fantastic feedback here! Thank you, eveyone.
Let me address the points ( if I can ).
First of all, a few caveats, which you may - or may not - agree with
I don't think awarding XP for trying but failing is a good idea. It takes away an incentive to come up with effective solutions. On the flip side, you should allow multiple attempts, and multiple kinds of potential solutions; You should not allow the Players to benefit from spamming any-old skill at the solution ( "There, I tried something for my XP" ), but be open to them trying multiple & creative solutions until they get one that works. Also, failure is always an option! Hell - ultimately even Frodo failed at the end of the Lord of the Rings ( refused to destroy the Ring, and Gollum saved the day accidentally ). The possibility of Player failure makes their successes more meaningful.
My proposed approach is absolutely DM metagaming. I am rewarding the behaviors that contribute to the style and tone I want in the game. If I wants a gritty, high combat slog fest, I emphasize combat XP, if I want to encourage creative problem solving, I emphasize that. It allows me to "dial in" the tone and atmosphere of the game by rewarding players to contribute to it.
Now, on to the objections ...
Player Competition
There is a possibility of Players being competitive.
That is both a good and a bad thing. "Hey, Bob got an experience bonus, and I didn't!" might spur Frank on to coming up with solutions and solving encounters. Bob shouldn't be able to to hog all the XP bonuses by smacking the door down soon as the Party reaches it, and before Frank can check it for traps, because some of those will be trapped, and some of them will contain creatures. The first time Bob sets off a flame oil trap, he'll be willing to let Frank check it for traps next time.
Players shouldn't be able to rush to the front and one-shot kill the bad guy, so that no one else gets combat XP. If they can, that's bad encounter design, and the DM's fault.
It behooves the DM to provide XP opportunities for every player, although a good set of Players will creatively find their own, as well.
Solution Freedom & Character Concept Fidelity vs. "most efficient" way to get XP
I'm not sure I follow this. Don't you not want the Party to find the most effective or efficient solutions? Do you not put problems into the adventure which allow all of your Players to have their time in the spotlight?
Your Players will absolutely act outside of character concept, if you are only rewarding actions which fall outside of their character concept, or fail to allow for enough rewards to fall within them playing their concept. That's psychology. That's on the DM, for not rewarding the things you want to encourage, and building those things into the adventure. The points you raise I think are valid, but only if the DM's design is bad or lazy.
Players will perform in a manner that is rewarding to them. If they are behaving badly ( in your eyes ), you are rewarding the wrong things.
As for XP budgets being too limiting - stuffing an encounter full of extra creatures doesn't necessarily make an encounter interesting, but it sure as hell makes it deadly - and then you're scrambling to fudge die rolls, to avoid a TPK that's due to your bad encounter design.
XP ( or character level ) appropriate encounters are only boring with a boring DM. If you can't make a combat encounter interesting by employing circumstances, terrain, tactics, events, notable repeated bad guys, bad guy role-playing, and description - you need to try harder.
Working within a framework encourages people to be creative to accomplish their goals. That's as true of the DM as it is of the Players.
This is why I object to the Session Based style of advancement. It quickly becomes "OK, you guys wander around randomly, do what you want, here's some encounters that I just threw a bunch of cool sounding spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks ... Oh, I screwed that up, let me fudge some combat die rolls ... and when I feel the spirit move me, you'll level up!" - which often gets passed off as "creative freedom".
Real creativity and real craftsmanship come about by doing amazing things within the confines you have to work in, with the materials you have on hand.
DM'ing is work. It's a job we signed up for. We have a responsibility for putting in the required effort to do it well, or we have a responsibility to get out of the hot-seat and let someone who will make the effort, sit there.
They're just gonna Spam skill rolls!
I think that's a valid augment, so let me refine it a bit to be more true-to-intent ( even though I absolutely did say successful skill roll - my bad ).
Players should notbe rewarded for successfully rolling a skill, they should be rewarded for successfully solving a situation or problem.
That's a subtle - but important - difference.
It means that a Player who solves a situation by role-playing well and talked their way out of a situation has solved a problem, just as much as the Player who rolled high on damage and killed a creature. ( yep, I know - talking in character != role-playing ).
That's not giving XP bonus for role-playing; it's giving an XP bonus for solving the problem, with the means of that solution being irrelevant.
If you don't want them to "roll play" and want them to "role play" - again it comes down to DM design. Put in situations and problems that they have to role-play their way out of.
Some Characters have more useful skills than other, they will benefit more
Yes. Absolutely.
Bad character design is absolutely a thing - but I think a creative Player can still make a mechanically sub-optimal character shine.
Players can decide that they want their Character to sink a lot of their training into something that fits their role-playing concept, rather than being a utility skill. There's two possibilities here.
1) They are getting rewarded by being able to play their character concept, but it comes at a mechanical cost, and an XP opportunity cost. Maybe that influences their future character development choices. That seems realistic to me. A Wizard who took proficiency in Performance, and then has been adventuring in a war zone for the last 8 months, how do you think such a person would realistically react? They'd learn survival skills!
2) A creative Player can find ways to apply their skills in novel ways to solutions. I've seen the objection "that's metagaming", but that can also be seen as creativity. The difference here is what the DM is letting them get away with. They can try to justify anything. You as the DM get to throw limits around that, and let them, or not. DM's are allowed to say "No". DMs are allowed to say "please don't waste table time by presenting trivial, unrealistic proposals".
It makes for more accounting work
1) So? Accounting work is part of your job. Again - we have a responsibility to put in the effort to do your job well. You can always design ways to streamline the bookkeeping, but tossing it out and ignoring it ( like with session based advancement ) is a lazy-ass solution.
2) It doesn't have to if you have standard XP rewards ( here's some streamlining ).
Your players have a medium difficulty combat encounter. You know that, you designed it. They win - "Everyone note down 200XP". Later, the Rogue manages to pick a series of locks, while the room is filling with water, and the party is going to drown if they don't .... "Good job! Take 50 XP". Standardizing XP rewards ( and scaling them to what is Easy/Medium/Hard encounters as per the DMG ), makes the accounting aspect minimal, and doling them out in the moment pushes the accounting onto the Players, and also makes it clear to the Players that problem solving is rewarded ( so, maybe, problem solve, yeah? ).
Ironically, this ends up looking like a hybrid XP/Milestone system, as I could totally say "solving an encounter = 10 milestone points, Coming up with a clever solution = 5 MP, <behavior I want to encourage > is worth 5MP, <getting yourself into a situation I want to discourage, but managing to solve it > = 1 MP; coming to the end of a story arc = 10 MP; you need 60MP to level up". Weird, but mathematically equivalent.
Players end up with different XP levels, and potentially different levels!
Yes. So? As a DM, fix it.
Players who are creative, engaged, and contribute, should be rewarded. Players who sit there and do nothing - maybe they don't get rewarded as much. It's a way to encourage Player engagement.
If you have Players that are lagging, talk to them about their level of involvement ( if needed ), and also work to provide opportunities for them to be able to contribute.
Again - Player and DM responsibility get highlighted here.
I recognize that there are audience member style Players out there, and I'm not 100% how to handle them.
If they are - to quote Matt Colville - there to show up, watch, and make their attack rolls when it's their turn in initiative, then maybe they are more suited to a combat-heavy, more tactical game, where they can be a follower, not a leader. If that's the kind of game I'm running, then great! They'll fit right in. And maybe for those people, I should nudge them toward combat mechanic heavy character builds, where they have a lot of cool push-button combat abilities, and then give them XP rewards for using those buttons well , as opposed to the creative Player's Rogue character who I am rewarding for engaged and creative solutions.
Really, this all boils down to a couple of things.
The DM is responsible for good, character-centric encounter design, and building in opportunities for all the Players.
The DM is responsible for tracking the game - the "bookkeeping & accounting". A smart DM can develop processes which makes this easy for them to manage.
The DM has the responsibility for adjudicating awards, throwing up meta-gaming-skill-roll-spamming-limits. The DM also has the opportunity to encourage or discourage types of Player activity based on the tone and emphasis they want in the game.
The Players are responsible for being involved.
The Players are responsible for coming up with solutions to situations and encounters.
I think far too often session based advancement is being used as an opportunity to shirk these responsibilities, as it means that Players get leveled for just showing up - so neither Players nor DM really needs to put in the effort.
I suspect this is why we see so many threads about Players not being engaged with the story, or making an effort - they don't have to.
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So there was a thread about awarding XP in a particular situation, which quickly became a discussion about the problems that come about in-game due to XP-style advancement, and why we were all using Milestones instead.
While not all people agreed with my position, my position was that if you give full combat XP, but give less XP for non-combat solutions ( persuasion, intimidation, deception ), and don't really award XP at all for the really cool things that Player-Characters do outside of direct conflict ( the Rogue that disables that trap and saves the party from being immolated, that Wizard which casts Water Breathing on the party so they escape the bad guys and avoid a TPK, the Barbarian which intimidates the vital clue out of the NPC ), you're really pushing your players toward the murder hobo camp, since violent solutions are the solutions which have the most reward, and humans have a tendency to give you the behaviors which you measure and reward.
My thought then was that this made Milestone leveling better - since it rewarded Players for solving the story, regardless of whether or not they used violent, or non-violent means - Players were free to use creative solutions, not just a sword.
I'm no longer sure that's true.
I suspect that we place Milestones at the end of major story beats, but not a lot of attention is necessarily paid to whether or not the Players succeeded, or failed. In fact, I don't think I could, because the story that the Players create is never the one I think they're going to go down, so I can't say "OK, they'll reach a milestone when they rescue the Princess", because 2 sessions later they could be involved in something totally different that happened on their way to rescue that Princess.
Perhaps I'm just a crappy DM when it comes to Milestones - but I suspect that when people say Milestone, they're really referring to Session Based advancement, or Story Based advancement ( but as just noted, you really can't do Story Based in an open narrative ).
And thinking on that, I think that might be just as broken as awarding XP for some story-advancing behaviors and not others - because it's not tied to Player success or failure, at all.
Maybe the solution is to revert to XP based advancement, but base XP rewards on the successful execution of skills, since I don't think it can be applied to particular plot events ( at least not for me with an open narrative style ), and I don't think it should be tied to "just showing up".
The Party gets XP for combat. The Barbarian gets extra XP out of the combat if/when she uses her abilities creatively, effectively, and in character ( that's making choices as the character, not speaking as the character ) in that combat. The Barbarian would get an XP reward for Intimidating that NPC as well. The Rogue gets an XP bump for picking that lock. The Wizard gets an XP bump for saving the party with the Water Breathing. Whenever someone successfully and creatively exercises a skill - when there is a risk, or a cost - that's experience.
How those creativity/skill bumps scale compared to combat XP, depends on your style emphasis as as DM. Maybe you want a combat heavy game, so the creativity/skill XP rewards are minor. Maybe you want to de-emphasize combat, so you cut combat XP in half, but make skill/creativity bumps pretty significant. That would be up to you and the type of game you want to create. What you reward your Players for is directly linked to the behavior and style you want in your campaign.
I know that in Critical Role, campaign #1 - Matt Mercer kept a list of Player names, and ticked off check-marks whenever the Players did something notable - and that became XP rewards. I also noted that Vox Machina leveled up unevenly. I know that he doesn't do that now, and has move to Milestones - but to be honest, he doesn't need an incentive program for his Players to be creative with their skills and solutions.
So - does my logic track?
What do you think?
My DM Philosophy, as summed up by other people: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rN5w4-azTq3Kbn0Yvk9nfqQhwQ1R5by1/view
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Some of this depends on how competitive vs cooperative you want your players to be. I know some other game systems award xp or equivalent based on skills used but that's not really a d&d thing (in 5th edition).
There may be a problem of a player wanting to use their skills to solve a problem one way getting frustrated by another player diving in to use his skills to solve it a different way. Think the rogue who wants to stealth and lockpick his way into a manor only for the barbarian to kill the guards and smash the door down.
Personally i believe that if you use the standard xp awards then it should be awarded in full for defeating or bypassing enemies, which may or may not mean killing. The milestone award system (which I prefer just because it's less book-keeping) should be based at convenient story points after a suitable number of encounters regardless of "success" or "failure". These terms are a bit nebulous anyway in d&d and XP does stand for 'experience' points, not 'success' points!
I use milestone leveling exclusively.
First reason is indeed to let my players approach situations the way they want. If I'd give XP for everything they'd automatically look for the most efficient way to gain as much as possible of XP. Now that might not be the case right away, but in due time players would do that even when its totally against their preferred playstyle. It is just psychology. Have seen it more then I can count in regards to game design and sports over the course of my life. So whether someone disagrees or not doesn't really matter since its pretty much a fact by now.
I don't use it at the end of a story "beat" either. Of course I know the red line of the story and what content is coming in the near future. This allows me to have a reasonable timing of when I'll grant that level up. The way I've setup my content I don't care if my players go one way or the other or spend several sessions on some side content. Just as in real life... Training and getting better at something doesn't happen at steady intervals either. You have long periods where you train and do whatever you can, but can't breach through a plateau. Then there is a period where progress happens more rapidly. This way I'm not worried if my players spend 2 months at lvl 3 and then go to lvl 5-6 within 1 month of play. I just create my region with content that keeps in my mind my players are lvl x. As long as they stay in that region they won't level. If they decide to spend a lot of time on side content or "de-rail" that is their choice. On top of that... the earlier levels are usually more fun and challenging as well. Which makes it even easier for my group to stretch those levels out as much as I like.
I also prefer milestone for creating my (combat) encounters. Usually when I try to make interesting encounters with the XP-budget... well its extremely limiting. I often run out of XP-budget before my players even got anywhere noteworthy. Meaning that if I use xp budget my players would barely have interesting encounters and level up way to quickly as a result. With milestone I can make encounters anyway I see fit without having to worry about anything else. As a result... When players are not present for a while due to whatever reason. They won't fall behind since there is so much XP they would've gotten otherwise that its still the same level as the rest.
Players completing tasks/challenges is rewarded with loot, alliances and such instead of XP in my book.
I wouldn't give extra rewards for proper RP/creativity. Maybe in the very rare case an inspiration die, but that is it. Its just too much busy work and book keeping. As DM's we already have enough to keep track of as is.
What I think? I think, as usual, you're overthinking it. Making things more complex then they are. Giving yourself more work over nothing.
I'll add that, although as a DM you are free to experiment with whatever system you like, there can be consequences to changing the way XP works.
A XP-for-skills-used system can, depending on your adventure, players and their character classes, result in more outgoing players or those with certain classes getting all the glory, getting the xp, levelling earlier, getting more powerful and completely overshadowing other players who will get frustrated at being left in the dust.
P.S Merry Christmas!
Opinion of a newbie DM here, discretion advised ;)
I love Matt Mercers approach to deal with good RP / good solutions that players come up with. If he thinks a player did something memorable, he makes a mark at one players name on his sheet. If it's really astonishing, he gives out two or three marks. At the end of the gaming day, every mark is worth 25 XP * level number. This makes RP worth the players attention, as they may get some boosts of XP, despite not dealing with combat itself. Plus, it's easy to do on the fly.
For combats, I'm going with XP for now. Most often, I don't give the players XP until the end of the gaming day, while I'm tracking the XP on my sheet. Thus, they may not even realize which encounter gave them how much XP (maybe this only works with new players, since veterans can retro-calculate everything). In our game, every success (non-combat or combar) means the players earn the full XP for the encounter (let's say 1 BBG and 3 guardsman, currently allied with the BBG, approach the party. If they persuade the guardsman that the BBG is evil and he surrenderes, because he gets way outnumbered, they get full XP for the encounter. If they, however, escape themselves, because they get overrun by the encounter, they get little to no XP). If they did not defeat the encounter, but only postpone it, having the BBG run away and they have to face him later again, they get a part of the XP (they defeated an encounter, but did not solve the dramatic question "can they stop the BBG before he ...").
The only thing I don't like about milestones and keeps me from using them, is that they feel stationary. Minor victories don't mean anything and maybe players only head for the BBGs, leaving henchmen and branches of the dungeon aside, because they expect it not to give them XP at all, losing their ressources for the final encounter of the dramatic question.
Best, Chicken.
I really dislike successful skill use XP awards. The last game I played in where we had them was a 3.5 game but I think the same issues would apply.
Some characters are better at many more skills than others, it's not a level playing field.
It encourages players to look for ways to make a skill roll as often as possible. Roll playing is not role playing.
Some skills are used far more commonly than others. Players either end up with "useless" skills or they metagame to optimize skill picks for xp gain and everyone has similar skills and everybody wants to compete for each possible skill use.
It makes for more accounting work.
It makes level advancement happen out of step, breaking session continuity. After long enough the little differences add up and one player starts leveling up 2 fights before every one else, then another player falls a fight behind the main pack, etc, etc till people are not even leveling during the same session any more.
Don't get me wrong, I don't give XP to an individual if he single-handedly defeats an encounter. Still a team game, everyone get's the same for encounters. It's only really outstanding ideas and performances that I reward for that single player (to reward good RP and ideas). Everything else is team XP.
Moreover, if a player wants to exploit the system, they definetly can. If they want to farm XP, get minmax stats and be the only one in the group capable of something, I believe no system can heal that issue.
First of all...
Merry Christmas Everyone! :)
Hope y'all are having a pleasant holiday today ( and all season ).
Some fantastic feedback here! Thank you, eveyone.
Let me address the points ( if I can ).
First of all, a few caveats, which you may - or may not - agree with
Now, on to the objections ...
Player Competition
There is a possibility of Players being competitive.
That is both a good and a bad thing. "Hey, Bob got an experience bonus, and I didn't!" might spur Frank on to coming up with solutions and solving encounters. Bob shouldn't be able to to hog all the XP bonuses by smacking the door down soon as the Party reaches it, and before Frank can check it for traps, because some of those will be trapped, and some of them will contain creatures. The first time Bob sets off a flame oil trap, he'll be willing to let Frank check it for traps next time.
Players shouldn't be able to rush to the front and one-shot kill the bad guy, so that no one else gets combat XP. If they can, that's bad encounter design, and the DM's fault.
It behooves the DM to provide XP opportunities for every player, although a good set of Players will creatively find their own, as well.
Solution Freedom & Character Concept Fidelity vs. "most efficient" way to get XP
I'm not sure I follow this. Don't you not want the Party to find the most effective or efficient solutions? Do you not put problems into the adventure which allow all of your Players to have their time in the spotlight?
Your Players will absolutely act outside of character concept, if you are only rewarding actions which fall outside of their character concept, or fail to allow for enough rewards to fall within them playing their concept. That's psychology. That's on the DM, for not rewarding the things you want to encourage, and building those things into the adventure. The points you raise I think are valid, but only if the DM's design is bad or lazy.
Players will perform in a manner that is rewarding to them. If they are behaving badly ( in your eyes ), you are rewarding the wrong things.
As for XP budgets being too limiting - stuffing an encounter full of extra creatures doesn't necessarily make an encounter interesting, but it sure as hell makes it deadly - and then you're scrambling to fudge die rolls, to avoid a TPK that's due to your bad encounter design.
XP ( or character level ) appropriate encounters are only boring with a boring DM. If you can't make a combat encounter interesting by employing circumstances, terrain, tactics, events, notable repeated bad guys, bad guy role-playing, and description - you need to try harder.
Working within a framework encourages people to be creative to accomplish their goals. That's as true of the DM as it is of the Players.
This is why I object to the Session Based style of advancement. It quickly becomes "OK, you guys wander around randomly, do what you want, here's some encounters that I just threw a bunch of cool sounding spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks ... Oh, I screwed that up, let me fudge some combat die rolls ... and when I feel the spirit move me, you'll level up!" - which often gets passed off as "creative freedom".
Real creativity and real craftsmanship come about by doing amazing things within the confines you have to work in, with the materials you have on hand.
DM'ing is work. It's a job we signed up for. We have a responsibility for putting in the required effort to do it well, or we have a responsibility to get out of the hot-seat and let someone who will make the effort, sit there.
They're just gonna Spam skill rolls!
I think that's a valid augment, so let me refine it a bit to be more true-to-intent ( even though I absolutely did say successful skill roll - my bad ).
Players should not be rewarded for successfully rolling a skill, they should be rewarded for successfully solving a situation or problem.
That's a subtle - but important - difference.
It means that a Player who solves a situation by role-playing well and talked their way out of a situation has solved a problem, just as much as the Player who rolled high on damage and killed a creature. ( yep, I know - talking in character != role-playing ).
That's not giving XP bonus for role-playing; it's giving an XP bonus for solving the problem, with the means of that solution being irrelevant.
If you don't want them to "roll play" and want them to "role play" - again it comes down to DM design. Put in situations and problems that they have to role-play their way out of.
Some Characters have more useful skills than other, they will benefit more
Yes. Absolutely.
Bad character design is absolutely a thing - but I think a creative Player can still make a mechanically sub-optimal character shine.
Players can decide that they want their Character to sink a lot of their training into something that fits their role-playing concept, rather than being a utility skill. There's two possibilities here.
1) They are getting rewarded by being able to play their character concept, but it comes at a mechanical cost, and an XP opportunity cost. Maybe that influences their future character development choices. That seems realistic to me. A Wizard who took proficiency in Performance, and then has been adventuring in a war zone for the last 8 months, how do you think such a person would realistically react? They'd learn survival skills!
2) A creative Player can find ways to apply their skills in novel ways to solutions. I've seen the objection "that's metagaming", but that can also be seen as creativity. The difference here is what the DM is letting them get away with. They can try to justify anything. You as the DM get to throw limits around that, and let them, or not. DM's are allowed to say "No". DMs are allowed to say "please don't waste table time by presenting trivial, unrealistic proposals".
It makes for more accounting work
1) So? Accounting work is part of your job. Again - we have a responsibility to put in the effort to do your job well. You can always design ways to streamline the bookkeeping, but tossing it out and ignoring it ( like with session based advancement ) is a lazy-ass solution.
2) It doesn't have to if you have standard XP rewards ( here's some streamlining ).
Your players have a medium difficulty combat encounter. You know that, you designed it. They win - "Everyone note down 200XP". Later, the Rogue manages to pick a series of locks, while the room is filling with water, and the party is going to drown if they don't .... "Good job! Take 50 XP". Standardizing XP rewards ( and scaling them to what is Easy/Medium/Hard encounters as per the DMG ), makes the accounting aspect minimal, and doling them out in the moment pushes the accounting onto the Players, and also makes it clear to the Players that problem solving is rewarded ( so, maybe, problem solve, yeah? ).
Ironically, this ends up looking like a hybrid XP/Milestone system, as I could totally say "solving an encounter = 10 milestone points, Coming up with a clever solution = 5 MP, <behavior I want to encourage > is worth 5MP, <getting yourself into a situation I want to discourage, but managing to solve it > = 1 MP; coming to the end of a story arc = 10 MP; you need 60MP to level up". Weird, but mathematically equivalent.
Players end up with different XP levels, and potentially different levels!
Yes. So? As a DM, fix it.
Players who are creative, engaged, and contribute, should be rewarded. Players who sit there and do nothing - maybe they don't get rewarded as much. It's a way to encourage Player engagement.
If you have Players that are lagging, talk to them about their level of involvement ( if needed ), and also work to provide opportunities for them to be able to contribute.
Again - Player and DM responsibility get highlighted here.
I recognize that there are audience member style Players out there, and I'm not 100% how to handle them.
If they are - to quote Matt Colville - there to show up, watch, and make their attack rolls when it's their turn in initiative, then maybe they are more suited to a combat-heavy, more tactical game, where they can be a follower, not a leader. If that's the kind of game I'm running, then great! They'll fit right in. And maybe for those people, I should nudge them toward combat mechanic heavy character builds, where they have a lot of cool push-button combat abilities, and then give them XP rewards for using those buttons well , as opposed to the creative Player's Rogue character who I am rewarding for engaged and creative solutions.
Really, this all boils down to a couple of things.
I think far too often session based advancement is being used as an opportunity to shirk these responsibilities, as it means that Players get leveled for just showing up - so neither Players nor DM really needs to put in the effort.
I suspect this is why we see so many threads about Players not being engaged with the story, or making an effort - they don't have to.
My DM Philosophy, as summed up by other people: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rN5w4-azTq3Kbn0Yvk9nfqQhwQ1R5by1/view
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