When creating encounters, do you award the "total XP" or the "adjusted XP"? The DMG states: "This adjusted value is not what the monsters are worth in terms of XP; the adjusted value’s only purpose is to help you accurately assess the encounter’s difficulty." (emphasis in the original). On the other hand, Kobold Fight Club seems to offer both options (both total and adjusted are expressed in terms of "per player", presumably for ease of awarding). I would think that a more difficult encounter would award more XP, so any adjustment to "difficulty XP" should also factor into the award for the encounter.
Am I reading the DMG correctly in that, RAW, you're not supposed to award the adjusted XP, but rather the raw, total XP from adding up all the monsters' XP values?
You award the actual XP, the adjusted XP is only used to give a scale for how difficult the challenge of that particular combat is. KFC just has it presented in a slightly confusing manner.
That said, it is a strange decision (by RAW) to not award players for how challenging the fight actually was.
I suspect that decision was made to support the DMs who just pull an encounter together on the fly by flipping the book open at different pages. If I whipped up a fight with xyz monsters on a whim, I don't want to crack open the DMG to calculate how much XP that should actually award.
One reason to award actual XP rather than adjusted XP is simplicity. As a DM, it's easy to just add up the XP from each defeated foe and divide it up among the PCs.
Another reason is that if you award adjusted XP, you encourage your players to take on groups of enemies all at once, since splitting up these foes (into separate encounters) would earn them less XP overall. In other words, you would be penalizing your players for using clever tactics.
I award adjusted XP, personally. I use KFC to determine the XP adjustment. Since I have 6 PCs and occasionally 1 or 2 NPCs between levels 4-6, I find throwing smaller groups of harder-hitting foes to be just as fun and exciting as mass-groups of lower CRs. I suspect not all will agree, but to each their own.
I definitely agree that encounters with multiple enemies are much more exciting and tactically interesting, and the adjusted XP illustrates that they're more challenging as well. But I still reward the actual XP, for the reason I mentioned above. Another problem with using adjusted XP is that the PCs will advance more quickly than the game intends. Let me explain using an example from a recent game of mine.
My PCs returned from a mission to discover that enemy soldiers had taken over the base of an allied faction. The soldiers concealed the takeover and holed up inside the base to ambush anyone else who returned.
The PCs discovered what had happened, and they managed to sneak back inside the base and ambush the ambushers. In all, there were thirteen enemy soldiers inside the base. The PCs managed to split them up into several groups and used silence and other tactics to defeat these groups one-by-one.
The party is six PCs, all 9th level. The soldiers were elite commandos (CR 3) led by an experienced lieutenant (CR 7). In total, that's 11,300 XP (actual) and 28,250 XP (adjusted), representing an encounter that's beyond Deadly.
If I'd used the adjusted XP, and the PCs had walked straight into the ambush and prevailed, they would have been rewarded 28,250 XP. But if they'd used the same tactics (splitting up the soldiers), they would have earned 3,150 XP (for one group of three), 3,150 XP (for another group of three), and 14,200 XP (for the final encounter). Almost 8,000 XP less for a much cleverer approach.
KFC seems to match up with the new Encounter Builder... at least in the tests I've done. I can understand why some wouldn't want to do the Adjusted, and likewise, why it might be done. In essence, I feel the players should be rewarded for their valiant efforts against a seemingly overwhelming odds... I also understand it shouldn't be encouraged as a regular tactic either. However... if it WAS harder, it should be WORTH MORE.... imho. Perhaps we should look at splitting the difference, somehow?
What REALLY doesn't make any sense to me is... why bother listing the Adjusted XP at all? If you DON'T want us to award that amount.... DON'T bother to include it whatsoever. It serves ABSOLUTELY no purpose other than to confuse every DM and player out there. The claim that it is used to estimate the difficulty of an encounter is a straw-man argument... for if an encounter is more difficult, it SHOULD garner more XP.... it should also be far more likely for the party to risk dying and/or death. Now, if it was treated more of a, "this is the maximum the party should EVER get for such an encounter"... presuming they weren't deliberately trying to pull all the agro (aka "being stupid")... and the base being "this is what taking them on in manageable chunks should be worth" (aka "the minimum").... and encouraging DM's to make a call for something in between... that would be much better. CR is hosed, no matter what... everyone knows that. I just fail to see the purpose of an obviously confusing and contradictory block of information.
I know this is an old post but i struggle with the same situation. i have 6 PC's of new players. We are level 4 and fight more than roleplay and still we will never ever reach the 4 sessions per level which the DMG suggests. We just had a grind for nearly 4 hours which was really difficult and hard and only awareded 625 exp pP. they need 6500 - 2700 = 3800 exp to reach level 5. How should this be logical? This exp system and exp rewarding in 4h sessions is just not possible
It works out that daily budget is equal to the xp required to raise a level (hm... I take that back, its more like half), so given a typical multiplier, it assumes 1 session = 1 'adventuring day'.
This is the kind of thing that pushed me to milestone leveling. I know most people didn't like 4e, but building and balancing encounters in that edition was so much easier than the convoluted CR/adjusted XP system. It's like they optimized the system for encounters where you fight one thing, which you should rarely ever do because a decent party can just destroy one-creature encounters as written, legendary/lair actions or no.
Oh but that is really difficult. I mean I think I can stretch a day of traveling and exploration to a full day. But if it's a big fighting session or dungeon crawl they maybe have 2 short rests of 2 hours and the rest is combat. It would be stupid if I force the adventuring day to be over and force them to make a long rest
The intent of the adjusted xp system appears to be "two fights adding up to X have the same resource cost as a single fight with a cost of X". That means two monsters need to have an xp value of about 3x the value of a single monster.
That said, I suspect it would have been better to toss the daily budget concept and just say something like "An adventuring day is six Medium encounters. You can trade one Medium encounter for two Easy encounters or trade two Medium encounters for one Hard encounter; here are the xp budgets for each type", which based on the existing tables would be around 63%, 100%, and 160% of budget.
"much cleverer" but also less difficult on the characters. So it depends on your yardstick. I would think that this situation would divide the XP as you detailed in the last paragraph, but then I would award the party 5,000ISH exp for the clever manner they used and accurate roleplaying. Now your DM influence towards role play just counted for more than beating up 3 guys. On the other hand, If they somehow managed to gather up all of the soldiers and defeat them all at the same time with a smart idea, shouldnt they be rewarded for that? OR if somehow they do manage to fight off an Extremely Deadly Ambush, shouldnt they be rewarded? Im not making a claim either way. I like that the system leaves it open to interpretting and rewarding the behaviors that you want to.
I'm not sure that "cleverness" of combat should be included in the XP reward for defeated enemies. That is adding more charts and tables to encounter building. Not that I shy away from charts and tables like we had in 2E and 3.5E. I think Total XP should be awarded, and NOT adjusted simply because YOU are the DM. You can hand out whatever you want, when you want. So your party just whooped a group of critters by using clever tactics or building some kind of trap to contain them or wipe them all out quickly. Simple! Award Total XP and then give them extra as you see fit for how clever they did it. Sometimes it seems like people want to boil the DMs job down to a table or equation. Take the reins and BE the DM.
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When creating encounters, do you award the "total XP" or the "adjusted XP"? The DMG states: "This adjusted value is not what the monsters are worth in terms of XP; the adjusted value’s only purpose is to help you accurately assess the encounter’s difficulty." (emphasis in the original). On the other hand, Kobold Fight Club seems to offer both options (both total and adjusted are expressed in terms of "per player", presumably for ease of awarding). I would think that a more difficult encounter would award more XP, so any adjustment to "difficulty XP" should also factor into the award for the encounter.
Am I reading the DMG correctly in that, RAW, you're not supposed to award the adjusted XP, but rather the raw, total XP from adding up all the monsters' XP values?
You award the actual XP, the adjusted XP is only used to give a scale for how difficult the challenge of that particular combat is. KFC just has it presented in a slightly confusing manner.
That said, it is a strange decision (by RAW) to not award players for how challenging the fight actually was.
I suspect that decision was made to support the DMs who just pull an encounter together on the fly by flipping the book open at different pages. If I whipped up a fight with xyz monsters on a whim, I don't want to crack open the DMG to calculate how much XP that should actually award.
I am one with the Force. The Force is with me.
One reason to award actual XP rather than adjusted XP is simplicity. As a DM, it's easy to just add up the XP from each defeated foe and divide it up among the PCs.
Another reason is that if you award adjusted XP, you encourage your players to take on groups of enemies all at once, since splitting up these foes (into separate encounters) would earn them less XP overall. In other words, you would be penalizing your players for using clever tactics.
I award adjusted XP, personally. I use KFC to determine the XP adjustment. Since I have 6 PCs and occasionally 1 or 2 NPCs between levels 4-6, I find throwing smaller groups of harder-hitting foes to be just as fun and exciting as mass-groups of lower CRs. I suspect not all will agree, but to each their own.
I definitely agree that encounters with multiple enemies are much more exciting and tactically interesting, and the adjusted XP illustrates that they're more challenging as well. But I still reward the actual XP, for the reason I mentioned above. Another problem with using adjusted XP is that the PCs will advance more quickly than the game intends. Let me explain using an example from a recent game of mine.
My PCs returned from a mission to discover that enemy soldiers had taken over the base of an allied faction. The soldiers concealed the takeover and holed up inside the base to ambush anyone else who returned.
The PCs discovered what had happened, and they managed to sneak back inside the base and ambush the ambushers. In all, there were thirteen enemy soldiers inside the base. The PCs managed to split them up into several groups and used silence and other tactics to defeat these groups one-by-one.
The party is six PCs, all 9th level. The soldiers were elite commandos (CR 3) led by an experienced lieutenant (CR 7). In total, that's 11,300 XP (actual) and 28,250 XP (adjusted), representing an encounter that's beyond Deadly.
If I'd used the adjusted XP, and the PCs had walked straight into the ambush and prevailed, they would have been rewarded 28,250 XP. But if they'd used the same tactics (splitting up the soldiers), they would have earned 3,150 XP (for one group of three), 3,150 XP (for another group of three), and 14,200 XP (for the final encounter). Almost 8,000 XP less for a much cleverer approach.
I wouldn’t count that as one encounter, either. If they broke the groups up into 3 separate encounters, I’d adjust those accordingly.
KFC seems to match up with the new Encounter Builder... at least in the tests I've done. I can understand why some wouldn't want to do the Adjusted, and likewise, why it might be done. In essence, I feel the players should be rewarded for their valiant efforts against a seemingly overwhelming odds... I also understand it shouldn't be encouraged as a regular tactic either. However... if it WAS harder, it should be WORTH MORE.... imho. Perhaps we should look at splitting the difference, somehow?
What REALLY doesn't make any sense to me is... why bother listing the Adjusted XP at all? If you DON'T want us to award that amount.... DON'T bother to include it whatsoever. It serves ABSOLUTELY no purpose other than to confuse every DM and player out there. The claim that it is used to estimate the difficulty of an encounter is a straw-man argument... for if an encounter is more difficult, it SHOULD garner more XP.... it should also be far more likely for the party to risk dying and/or death. Now, if it was treated more of a, "this is the maximum the party should EVER get for such an encounter"... presuming they weren't deliberately trying to pull all the agro (aka "being stupid")... and the base being "this is what taking them on in manageable chunks should be worth" (aka "the minimum").... and encouraging DM's to make a call for something in between... that would be much better.
CR is hosed, no matter what... everyone knows that. I just fail to see the purpose of an obviously confusing and contradictory block of information.
I know this is an old post but i struggle with the same situation. i have 6 PC's of new players. We are level 4 and fight more than roleplay and still we will never ever reach the 4 sessions per level which the DMG suggests. We just had a grind for nearly 4 hours which was really difficult and hard and only awareded 625 exp pP. they need 6500 - 2700 = 3800 exp to reach level 5.
How should this be logical? This exp system and exp rewarding in 4h sessions is just not possible
It works out that daily budget is equal to the xp required to raise a level (hm... I take that back, its more like half), so given a typical multiplier, it assumes 1 session = 1 'adventuring day'.
This is the kind of thing that pushed me to milestone leveling. I know most people didn't like 4e, but building and balancing encounters in that edition was so much easier than the convoluted CR/adjusted XP system. It's like they optimized the system for encounters where you fight one thing, which you should rarely ever do because a decent party can just destroy one-creature encounters as written, legendary/lair actions or no.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
Oh but that is really difficult. I mean I think I can stretch a day of traveling and exploration to a full day. But if it's a big fighting session or dungeon crawl they maybe have 2 short rests of 2 hours and the rest is combat. It would be stupid if I force the adventuring day to be over and force them to make a long rest
The intent of the adjusted xp system appears to be "two fights adding up to X have the same resource cost as a single fight with a cost of X". That means two monsters need to have an xp value of about 3x the value of a single monster.
That said, I suspect it would have been better to toss the daily budget concept and just say something like "An adventuring day is six Medium encounters. You can trade one Medium encounter for two Easy encounters or trade two Medium encounters for one Hard encounter; here are the xp budgets for each type", which based on the existing tables would be around 63%, 100%, and 160% of budget.
"much cleverer" but also less difficult on the characters. So it depends on your yardstick. I would think that this situation would divide the XP as you detailed in the last paragraph, but then I would award the party 5,000ISH exp for the clever manner they used and accurate roleplaying. Now your DM influence towards role play just counted for more than beating up 3 guys.
On the other hand, If they somehow managed to gather up all of the soldiers and defeat them all at the same time with a smart idea, shouldnt they be rewarded for that? OR if somehow they do manage to fight off an Extremely Deadly Ambush, shouldnt they be rewarded?
Im not making a claim either way. I like that the system leaves it open to interpretting and rewarding the behaviors that you want to.
I'm not sure that "cleverness" of combat should be included in the XP reward for defeated enemies. That is adding more charts and tables to encounter building. Not that I shy away from charts and tables like we had in 2E and 3.5E. I think Total XP should be awarded, and NOT adjusted simply because YOU are the DM. You can hand out whatever you want, when you want. So your party just whooped a group of critters by using clever tactics or building some kind of trap to contain them or wipe them all out quickly. Simple! Award Total XP and then give them extra as you see fit for how clever they did it. Sometimes it seems like people want to boil the DMs job down to a table or equation. Take the reins and BE the DM.