So I was planning an encounter for one of my parties and noticed in the DMG that there is an adventuring day XP table, so when calculating total XP for an adventuring day do I use the XP of each monster no multiplier or do I apply multipliers and go for encounter XP or do both and apply multipliers for how many monster they face total in that day?
If you want a handy calculator for this, the encounter builder on this site is a fantastic tool for figuring out the XP totals and break downs. It will also tell you how "difficult" the encounter is for your party, but note that this generalized rating does not take into account the composition of your party. Some parties can handle way more difficult encounters that would certainly kill other parties.
My personal advise would be to ignore the table, and do what you feel is right.
At the end of the day all DMs are different. Some stick to the Rules as Written, fearing an upsetting of the balance the design team found (and if you do all the math to the logical conclusion it is a well balanced system). Others want to do whatever fits the narrative, and sometimes that means the adventurers don't get their "full allotment" of XP per day.
The tables are guidelines (even the DMG admits as much), if you want to throw a full days worth of XP of monsters at the players in one encounter, have at it.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
So I was planning an encounter for one of my parties and noticed in the DMG that there is an adventuring day XP table, so when calculating total XP for an adventuring day do I use the XP of each monster no multiplier or do I apply multipliers and go for encounter XP or do both and apply multipliers for how many monster they face total in that day?
You use the sum of encounter xp, as adjusted by the number of creatures in each encounter.
If you want a handy calculator for this, the encounter builder on this site is a fantastic tool for figuring out the XP totals and break downs. It will also tell you how "difficult" the encounter is for your party, but note that this generalized rating does not take into account the composition of your party. Some parties can handle way more difficult encounters that would certainly kill other parties.
My personal advise would be to ignore the table, and do what you feel is right.
At the end of the day all DMs are different. Some stick to the Rules as Written, fearing an upsetting of the balance the design team found (and if you do all the math to the logical conclusion it is a well balanced system). Others want to do whatever fits the narrative, and sometimes that means the adventurers don't get their "full allotment" of XP per day.
The tables are guidelines (even the DMG admits as much), if you want to throw a full days worth of XP of monsters at the players in one encounter, have at it.