I award levels in my current campaign using milestone/number of sessions rather than bothering with xp. Everyone levels at the same time. Works great.

For the next campaign, I'm considering doing them same but adding a way where characters can earn individual level ups as well.

I'm thinking of having a list of achievements, and when any is accomplished for the first time, the character that does so earns an extra level up. That achievement is used up then, unavailable for other characters.

"Deliver the killing blow to a CR 10 or greater creature"

"Heal 4 knocked out allies in a single encounter"

Each time a player is awarded one of these level ups the next one would get harder to achieve for that character. Or maybe a limit of one available per character per tier of play? I'd like to let the players have some difference in level but keep any one from getting too far ahead or behind the pack.

And not sure if the list should be private and I just tell them when they have accomplished an achievement,  or if I should let the players see the list ahead of time. Leaning towards secret, which would allow me to adjust it as we go and provide for more drama.

Wondering if anyone has done something similar, or has thoughts or suggestions?

Honestly, it sounds like you're trying to force an XP bonus system into Story Based Advancement - and then add a layer of Player-on-Player competition? 

I think it would be easier/more effective to comment if we understood why you're doing this, what you are trying to accomplish, and what you hope the results will be.

Fair enough, 

I want to avoid the bookkeeping of xp. I do want the players to feel their actions can affect their progression. I don't want the players to feel they are competing with each other to get limited exp. awards.

I'd want to have enough opportunities that players didn't feel too competitive with each other, and also it should not cause one player to dominate or be dominated by the others.

I'm hoping to achieve something where the players are encouraged to be daring and heroic and feel rewarded for individual awesomeness, without me having to deal with xp points.

Inspiration?

So ... you are trying to introduce an XP bonus system into Story/Session Based Advancement. 

I think some of the basic theory behind your thinking is sound - you're trying to encourage certain behaviors by attaching rewards to them. Players tend to pursue behaviors for which they are rewarded, and not bother with behaviors which are not. Even Character development is pursued only by those that are rewarded by enjoyment in developing that Character. That's the central weakness in leveling up Players merely for showing up; their individual actions don't affect their progression, so there's nothing to stop some Players from just showing up.

It looks like you're trying to add some sort of behavior incentive system back into Story/Session Based Advancement, but you want to make the bonuses epic enough that they're worth an entire level, so that you still don't have to do any bookkeeping.

I think "completely level up" rewards are so significant that you run the risk of Players trying to "game" the achievement system to get those rewards. For example: I could totally see some Players holding back in combat, letting other Players soften up that CR 10 creature, hoping to be the one to "deliver the killing blow to a CR 10 or greater creature" so that they are the ones to level up ( and then the creature TPKs the Party because everyone's holding back ). This is especially risky if those rewards can only ever be awarded to one Players:  "that achievement is used up then, unavailable for other characters."

I think I can see why you want to make these rewards only earn-able once: you don't want the Party spamming the same behavior over and over to ratchet up the Character levels of everyone in the Party quickly, but that makes no sense from an in-world perspective. What makes that killing blow teach a Character so much more about how combat works, then that killing blow?

If you try and avoid them gaming the system by making the list of possible achievements secret ( in the above example, no one would hold back in combat, since they don't know that the killing blow is significant ) then there is no incentive for them "to be daring and heroic" since they have no clue that such behavior is rewarded. Even when an achievement is rewarded, you set it up so that no one else can get that achievement, so why pursue that behavior again? In fact, there's an incentive to not do it again, since that behavior's reward has been "used up". Better to concentrate on something else, hoping to stumble onto another "rewarded behavior".

Basically, I believe that if you want to make the rewards large enough so that you don't have to do book-keeping, and make them so they can only be earned by the first Player to get to them in order to keep the Party from spamming the achievement system, you're going to warp the internal dynamic of the Party making it internally competitive. If you're going to make tons-and-tons of behaviors rewardable, so that Players don't feel that they have to compete, your Party is going to rocket up in levels really quickly. If you make it so that Players can only go one extra level up between "regular" level ups, they're going to hit their "one heroic act", and then go back to just showing up ( and if you believe your Party will act heroically without reward, then why are you trying to build an incentive system in the first place?). If you are going to make rewards small enough so that Players aren't hyper-competitive about them, and repeatable so that a) Players will continue to act in ways that you approve of as "heroic behavior", and b) it doesn't matter if the Party spams that behavior over and over ( in fact, if you attach rewards to behaviors you want to encourage, you'd want them to spam that behavior over and over ), then you're going to introduce some sort of book-keeping, where you need to track: Player X has had Y "Achievement Points", and Z "Achievement Points" equate with a bonus level-up.

Does that last one sound familiar?

so, i had a lot of practice with this exact thing, i was awarding players with a level every chapter and also a level for evey time they did something to change the world around them, this meant that players would activley seek out bbegs to defeat or work to create there own stories. this turned out to be more book keeping than i thought and later simplified it to just a level every chapter and beating a specail boss, sometimes even just soloing encounters would have leveled them (depending on difficulty, no leveling off of fodder and murder hobo). this turned out to not be what my party like at the time, they all eventually left citing it as too combat involved and stressfull. I later tried it again, this time shifting combat to rp (everyone had said previosly that they like rp more) and made it so this was the only way to make your character better, i ended up thowing the rulebook away (in my closet) and the game lasted for a few months, turns out no combat gets boring fast. so my reccomendation for you is to find a blend of combat and rp rewards, not one or the other like i tried.

It all really depends on your players really, if your party prefers to fight things they might enjoy fighting difficlt bosses for levels and loot, if your party prefers character interations you might want to reward the for doing that in a way that is fun, if your party prefers to roleplay all the problems away then that may be the route.

another thing i feel i should point out, this system will mean that you party will be leveling up faster than normal, so it might be rwarding to either input a system to take away levels for doing espescally bad at a event or just break the level cap. this part should be shared with the party so everyone is on the same page.

also, to counter competivity you might want to level everyone at once, but not de level them at once, that would suck.

 How do you justify taking away levels? You forgot how to use 3rd level spells? You had a brain fart and suddenly you can't use those Monk abilities?

I can just imagine Players' response to that sort of thing. You'd have them leave en masse.

an example of taking away a level, you lose all your hp you get dragged off, and instead of dying and starting all over again you lose a level, due to the trauma of whatever happened, i personally have no idea how this would work im just spitballing on ways to work around the level problem, that said, if you tell them ahead of the game that this is how it would work they should be ok with it (most people are cool like that)

Why not just have a system where you're not advancing people every time you want to reward them? Like, give them partial advancement toward the next level, instead of jumping them up a whole level every time. They get ahead, are rewarded for the activities that you want to be part of the game - and don't race ahead in levels faster than is sensible. That way you could even reward both combat and story based achievements, or whatever mix they achieve, without totally breaking game leveling.

yeah, but instead of using xp points just use halves or fourths or eigths, that way things are simple to keep track of. 

Yep - you could have a standard fraction of a level for an easy, medium, hard, and deadly, encounters. Then figure out how you want to reward heroic activities - maybe it's equal to an easy encounter to come up with a clever tactical idea that works well and give the Party a combat advantage, or comes up with real good social gambit, or another one for developing their Character. Then when the fraction adds up to 1, they level up!

But fractions are a pain in the ass, so let's just multiply everything so the smallest is 1, and then multiply out the number of points needed for the next level by the same amount.

How does that sound?

Quote from Vedexent >>

 

Does that last one sound familiar?

Indeed it does. :p Thanks for taking the time to explore the subject a bit. Maybe instead of reinventing the wheel, I'll just take another look at XP.

You don't have to go totally down the rabbit hole of XP, though. I think that's what scares most people off, and it really doesn't gain you anything. I find micro-managing individual XP points to be a pointless level of detail.

I pre-define blocks of XP for Party level. They're level 3 right now ( young campaign ), so a Medium encounter is 150XP. 

I'll build a combat encounter in something like Kobold Fight Club, and if it says "Medium", then I'll give individual Players 150XP. Sure, if I was totally accurate, they might have gotten 142 XP or 162 XP - I don't have time to track to that level, and it doesn't have much benefit. When they hit level 4, a Medium encounter will be 250 XP.

I have all that in a pre-calculated chart.

Then I add "heroic incentives" - If someone comes up with a fantastic idea ( tactical, or social, or around an obstacle ), that works ( that's important, they have to accomplish something with it ), they get a bonus equal to an Easy encounter. I have a list of things which I want to promote in my game: Character development ( not acting in Character, or role-playing, but developing the Character ), uncovering the Lore of the World, etc. - all have a pre-calculated reward XP value which scales with their levels.

As far as "book-keeping" is concerned, I just have a little form, with the lines being the Players' names, and the columns being Easy, Medium, Hard ... Lore, Character Dev, Ideas ... and I just add a check mark in the boxes as relevant. The Party defeated a group of Bandits in a Deadly combat encounter? Everyone gets a check mark in the Deadly box. Matilda comes up with a creative use of her familiar, which successfully give the Party the drop on the Bandits? She gets a check in the Ideas column, etc. At the end of the night, tally them all up, update the Players' XP in D&D Beyond, send them an email telling them what XP they got, and why.

And the Players know about all this. They know that if they're creative, and investigative, and tactically minded, they get rewarded - so it happens more than it did before.

I get to use rewards, and the XP mechanics, but I don't have to do a lot of fiddling XP calculations using a pre-calculated table of values for level/difficulty combinations plus Kobold Fight Club.