So I'm using experience for levels in my current campaign (only 2 sessions in) and I would like to give bonus experience outside of just killing enemies. I had this idea (inspired by a different game) where I give bonus experience for FAILING checks/attacks/saves to try and emulate the party "learning from their mistakes". Pretty much what I would do is every time they fail/miss, I would just make a little tally mark on my dry erase I keep behind the screen and at the end of the session multiply the number x10 and award each player that bonus.
My issue is I've never really tracked how many times players fail per session. I imagine its around 15-30 times AT MOST? which would result in a MAX of 300 xp which is acceptable to me (I'm fine with leveling a bit faster). But what do you guys think of this?
...This is for the technical side of things, but from fairness perspective, there is also the fact that you basically would favor classes often rolling for their skills over classes which rarely use skills, compared to magic-using or martial classes...
This is why I included failing saving throws and missing attacks!
And from a practical point of view, you would basically encourage your players to roll for absurd things, so that they can fail...
This Isn't a problem because I call for the rolls, not the players. So the amount of checks won't increase. ALSO, I've been with the same party forever and I am VERY fortunate that they are all very good RPers. We all play in another campaign (where I'm a player and another player DM's) and he decided to use XP for this campaign. I warned him at the start that there's a possibility that players would make their characters act OOC just for the sake of XP (Example: a coward character voluntarily going into the spooky crypt cause of extra XP). However, when we started the campaign, I was SHOCKED at how much we as a party DIDN'T do that! That campaign is currently over a year in and we haven't been like that at all!
I bring this up because I'm fairly confident they wouldn't prioritize silly attempts ("I backflip off the balcony instead of taking the stairs") over good RP! So I'm not to worried about this!
That being said, experience is extremely abstract in D&D, and there is no logical reason for which failing skill checks would allow you to learn new spells and powers, for example, so the link is a bit far fetched.Not to mention the fact that failing at a knowledge check will certainly not make you better at that knowledge...
As for this, if it were going for realistic increase in game tier, I think there would be a system similar to Classic WoW or the Gothic series where rather than gaining a "level" that grants you sudden abilities, it grants you ACCESS to these abilities which then you must train in. But D&D doesn't have this so I chalk it up to the fact that sometimes you just gotta flip your "its still just a game" switch on and just accept level-ups give you new powers.
You can always decide there's a ceiling to how much XP this can generate. Maybe the cap is 300 per session as you mentioned above. That way they can't abuse it even if they decide to start doing backflips.
I would also suggest altering the amount per checkmark based on the average party level. 300 XP makes a huge difference at level 2, not so much at level 6.
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I spend way too much time thinking about D&D. So much that I had to start writing it down.
I do my exp by "feel", obviously not something easily createable.
But when telling party members how much they got i always make sure to point out it wasn't just for fighting as I'm trying to encourage pretty much everything other than fighting (as that comes quiet naturally).
Is it good? Not sure no one has complained. Is it much different from milestone? Probably not, but I guess progress seems less stop go.
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All posts come with the caveat that I don't know what I'm talking about.
I tend to DM and offer levels more akin to what Lyxen says, bumping the party up a level when they've done enough in my eyes to have learned and experienced enough tow arrant character growth. Merit based-ish, but not tracked so heavily. My campaigns thus far have been combat heavy and as such, I throw tough opponents at the party. Experience points would have them gaining levels waaay to fast for the progression of the story we are working on.
In the end, it will be what works best for your group. I agree with the notion of bumping the exp if the campaign setting and group dynamic works with it. Your table, so your rules, which is one of the better aspects of the game.
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Talk to your Players.Talk to your DM. If more people used this advice, there would be 24.74% fewer threads on Tactics, Rules and DM discussions.
I get what you (OP) are going for, but it just kind of seems like extra work. If you’re doing xp, then it seems like fails are already embedded in the formula along with success. Like if killing a goblin, which happened because they hit it enough, gives you a certain amount of xp, why would you give them more on top of that for missing a few times along the way? Or if they get xp for, say, climbing up a wall, why give them more if they failed three time before they succeeded, and effectively less if they get it right on the first try?
I get what you (OP) are going for, but it just kind of seems like extra work. If you’re doing xp, then it seems like fails are already embedded in the formula along with success. Like if killing a goblin, which happened because they hit it enough, gives you a certain amount of xp, why would you give them more on top of that for missing a few times along the way? Or if they get xp for, say, climbing up a wall, why give them more if they failed three time before they succeeded, and effectively less if they get it right on the first try?
Because if a party fights a group of goblins and the dice are hot that night letting them completely destroy them in a round, I feel like the characters learned less than a fight where they kept failing and barely made it through. This is definitely not a perfect system but I thought of it with the intention of having failures be opportunity for greater growth (as they are often irl). A person who succeeds on their first try every time probably isn't learning as much as one who fails and tries again and again.
The other reason for this is to give the players a feeling of "Aw i failed.... But at least i gained something!"
I guess whatever works for each table is best. Twiggling experience isn't something I do, as I mentioned, since I don't even truly track it. I track encounters and events and when the party has accomplished enough to satisfy me that they should have learned things, I advise they gain a level on the long rest. Not sure if anyone else offers any kind of "perks" for players, but I have decided in the campaign I am running now that an "intervention" will occur from time to time. Essentially, I'm going to use it as a reward system, for staying on track (ie: focus on the game without a bunch of side silliness) and effective RPing. I had a sheet I tracked notable occurrences of the players actively RPing (the Paladin prays to his God every evening and in the morning, the teenage, newbie Wizard has "frozen" in combat a couple times, our Kobold is STILL fixated on finding some special rock) The interventions are varied, a heal on a player, a blessing on someone, a bit of information fed through a dream, the smiting of a foe suddenly, and so on. They won't occur when it would make a big difference really, but will be perks the pop up unexpectedly.
I do agree with some type of rewarding method, to encourage involvement and enhancing the fun. So far as forwarding my/our story and following where I would LIKE them to go in it, they can run circles and waste all the time they want, so long as we're all enjoying it. It's the enhancement of enjoyment I reward, less so than grand accomplishments like slaying a mighty foe. I use loots to reward those acts.
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Talk to your Players.Talk to your DM. If more people used this advice, there would be 24.74% fewer threads on Tactics, Rules and DM discussions.
I get what you (OP) are going for, but it just kind of seems like extra work. If you’re doing xp, then it seems like fails are already embedded in the formula along with success. Like if killing a goblin, which happened because they hit it enough, gives you a certain amount of xp, why would you give them more on top of that for missing a few times along the way? Or if they get xp for, say, climbing up a wall, why give them more if they failed three time before they succeeded, and effectively less if they get it right on the first try?
Because if a party fights a group of goblins and the dice are hot that night letting them completely destroy them in a round, I feel like the characters learned less than a fight where they kept failing and barely made it through. This is definitely not a perfect system but I thought of it with the intention of having failures be opportunity for greater growth (as they are often irl). A person who succeeds on their first try every time probably isn't learning as much as one who fails and tries again and again.
The other reason for this is to give the players a feeling of "Aw i failed.... But at least i gained something!"
You can learn just as much from succeeding as you can from failing. In the example you give, they learned what works really well. They would, presumably, just try and repeat those successes. Now they have an idea of what they should be doing and something to work towards. Where failing might help you figure out what doesn't work, it doesn't necessarily tell you what does work; failing ten different ways still hasn't taught you how to succeed. It may have taught you something, but you still don't know what actually works. And, of course, some people keep repeating the same mistakes without learning anything from it.
And as far as gaining something on a fail, well, first let me say, if it works for you, go for it. But for me, it feels a bit too much like a participation ribbon for my tastes. You don't have to get a reward every time you try something. Sometimes, just nothing happens.
The biggest issues that I have with this are that it's going to add a ton of more bookkeeping to do, and also that it's likely to simply come down to players who roll more dice getting more experience than players who don't. And if you're going to track experience it really ought to be based on the entire party. Having the rogue sneak off on their own and pick a bunch of locks (or possibly pockets) is something that's going to insure that one player will start to pull ahead of the others, and that kind of imbalance is not a good thing.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
The biggest issues that I have with this are that it's going to add a ton of more bookkeeping to do, and also that it's likely to simply come down to players who roll more dice getting more experience than players who don't. And if you're going to track experience it really ought to be based on the entire party. Having the rogue sneak off on their own and pick a bunch of locks (or possibly pockets) is something that's going to insure that one player will start to pull ahead of the others, and that kind of imbalance is not a good thing.
it would definitely apply to the whole party! I don't do varying party member levels. I tried that in my very first campaign and literally NO ONE liked it. So with this system, if the party (total) fails 12 rolls, EACH member will get 120 XP at the end of the session
If you are doing this, how much Exp do you give for killing the monster? Are you tracking the hits for each PC? It appears that you would have to remember not to award more Exp than the monster is worth? So if you kill a 50 Exp monster but miss him twice in the process you don't get 70 Exp, right? And this is why it sounds like a record keeping nightmare that is going to become un-fun for everyone.
If it works for you and your table then you should run with it and have fun. It just seems there are many pitfalls from my point of view, one of these being the effort to track everything.
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Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt
If you are doing this, how much Exp do you give for killing the monster? Are you tracking the hits for each PC? It appears that you would have to remember not to award more Exp than the monster is worth? So if you kill a 50 Exp monster but miss him twice in the process you don't get 70 Exp, right? And this is why it sounds like a record keeping nightmare that is going to become un-fun for everyone.
If it works for you and your table then you should run with it and have fun. It just seems there are many pitfalls from my point of view, one of these being the effort to track everything.
I keep a dry erase board behind my screen anyway. I don't think it would be that hard that when they miss or fail to just make a little mark and then at the end of the meeting look back at how many marks.
While in theory yes, fighting a 50XP goblin and missing twice WOULD net in 70 XP, I don't plan on keeping track of it that way (cause you're right! That would be a nightmare!) I would just award the experience of the regular encounter: "you beat the goblin! Everyone gets 10 XP" (in a party of 5) and then at the very end of the session it would be like "and for tonight's bonus, y'all failed 11 things, you each get 110 bonus XP"
So yes its kinda like a participation trophy. but DnD is a game based on RNG dice rolls so many times, failing isn't the players fault, its just poor luck. And we've all had nights where we can't hit anything/keep failing stealth/persuasion etc... and feel like "whelp, I guess I'm done". This is made to be like a "At least the party get something from this!"
So I'm using experience for levels in my current campaign (only 2 sessions in) and I would like to give bonus experience outside of just killing enemies. I had this idea (inspired by a different game) where I give bonus experience for FAILING checks/attacks/saves to try and emulate the party "learning from their mistakes". Pretty much what I would do is every time they fail/miss, I would just make a little tally mark on my dry erase I keep behind the screen and at the end of the session multiply the number x10 and award each player that bonus.
My issue is I've never really tracked how many times players fail per session. I imagine its around 15-30 times AT MOST? which would result in a MAX of 300 xp which is acceptable to me (I'm fine with leveling a bit faster). But what do you guys think of this?
This is why I included failing saving throws and missing attacks!
This Isn't a problem because I call for the rolls, not the players. So the amount of checks won't increase. ALSO, I've been with the same party forever and I am VERY fortunate that they are all very good RPers. We all play in another campaign (where I'm a player and another player DM's) and he decided to use XP for this campaign. I warned him at the start that there's a possibility that players would make their characters act OOC just for the sake of XP (Example: a coward character voluntarily going into the spooky crypt cause of extra XP). However, when we started the campaign, I was SHOCKED at how much we as a party DIDN'T do that! That campaign is currently over a year in and we haven't been like that at all!
I bring this up because I'm fairly confident they wouldn't prioritize silly attempts ("I backflip off the balcony instead of taking the stairs") over good RP! So I'm not to worried about this!
As for this, if it were going for realistic increase in game tier, I think there would be a system similar to Classic WoW or the Gothic series where rather than gaining a "level" that grants you sudden abilities, it grants you ACCESS to these abilities which then you must train in. But D&D doesn't have this so I chalk it up to the fact that sometimes you just gotta flip your "its still just a game" switch on and just accept level-ups give you new powers.
Though! I do agree I should run a "test session" to see how much the game would be affected! (in terms of player awards and logistics)
You can always decide there's a ceiling to how much XP this can generate. Maybe the cap is 300 per session as you mentioned above. That way they can't abuse it even if they decide to start doing backflips.
I would also suggest altering the amount per checkmark based on the average party level. 300 XP makes a huge difference at level 2, not so much at level 6.
I spend way too much time thinking about D&D. So much that I had to start writing it down.
Dungeon Master, Blogger at That Hits, Roll Damage!
https://thathitsrolldamage.com/
I do my exp by "feel", obviously not something easily createable.
But when telling party members how much they got i always make sure to point out it wasn't just for fighting as I'm trying to encourage pretty much everything other than fighting (as that comes quiet naturally).
Is it good? Not sure no one has complained. Is it much different from milestone? Probably not, but I guess progress seems less stop go.
All posts come with the caveat that I don't know what I'm talking about.
I tend to DM and offer levels more akin to what Lyxen says, bumping the party up a level when they've done enough in my eyes to have learned and experienced enough tow arrant character growth. Merit based-ish, but not tracked so heavily. My campaigns thus far have been combat heavy and as such, I throw tough opponents at the party. Experience points would have them gaining levels waaay to fast for the progression of the story we are working on.
In the end, it will be what works best for your group. I agree with the notion of bumping the exp if the campaign setting and group dynamic works with it. Your table, so your rules, which is one of the better aspects of the game.
Talk to your Players. Talk to your DM. If more people used this advice, there would be 24.74% fewer threads on Tactics, Rules and DM discussions.
I get what you (OP) are going for, but it just kind of seems like extra work. If you’re doing xp, then it seems like fails are already embedded in the formula along with success. Like if killing a goblin, which happened because they hit it enough, gives you a certain amount of xp, why would you give them more on top of that for missing a few times along the way? Or if they get xp for, say, climbing up a wall, why give them more if they failed three time before they succeeded, and effectively less if they get it right on the first try?
Because if a party fights a group of goblins and the dice are hot that night letting them completely destroy them in a round, I feel like the characters learned less than a fight where they kept failing and barely made it through. This is definitely not a perfect system but I thought of it with the intention of having failures be opportunity for greater growth (as they are often irl). A person who succeeds on their first try every time probably isn't learning as much as one who fails and tries again and again.
The other reason for this is to give the players a feeling of "Aw i failed.... But at least i gained something!"
I guess whatever works for each table is best. Twiggling experience isn't something I do, as I mentioned, since I don't even truly track it. I track encounters and events and when the party has accomplished enough to satisfy me that they should have learned things, I advise they gain a level on the long rest. Not sure if anyone else offers any kind of "perks" for players, but I have decided in the campaign I am running now that an "intervention" will occur from time to time. Essentially, I'm going to use it as a reward system, for staying on track (ie: focus on the game without a bunch of side silliness) and effective RPing. I had a sheet I tracked notable occurrences of the players actively RPing (the Paladin prays to his God every evening and in the morning, the teenage, newbie Wizard has "frozen" in combat a couple times, our Kobold is STILL fixated on finding some special rock) The interventions are varied, a heal on a player, a blessing on someone, a bit of information fed through a dream, the smiting of a foe suddenly, and so on. They won't occur when it would make a big difference really, but will be perks the pop up unexpectedly.
I do agree with some type of rewarding method, to encourage involvement and enhancing the fun. So far as forwarding my/our story and following where I would LIKE them to go in it, they can run circles and waste all the time they want, so long as we're all enjoying it. It's the enhancement of enjoyment I reward, less so than grand accomplishments like slaying a mighty foe. I use loots to reward those acts.
Talk to your Players. Talk to your DM. If more people used this advice, there would be 24.74% fewer threads on Tactics, Rules and DM discussions.
You can learn just as much from succeeding as you can from failing. In the example you give, they learned what works really well. They would, presumably, just try and repeat those successes. Now they have an idea of what they should be doing and something to work towards. Where failing might help you figure out what doesn't work, it doesn't necessarily tell you what does work; failing ten different ways still hasn't taught you how to succeed. It may have taught you something, but you still don't know what actually works. And, of course, some people keep repeating the same mistakes without learning anything from it.
And as far as gaining something on a fail, well, first let me say, if it works for you, go for it. But for me, it feels a bit too much like a participation ribbon for my tastes. You don't have to get a reward every time you try something. Sometimes, just nothing happens.
The biggest issues that I have with this are that it's going to add a ton of more bookkeeping to do, and also that it's likely to simply come down to players who roll more dice getting more experience than players who don't. And if you're going to track experience it really ought to be based on the entire party. Having the rogue sneak off on their own and pick a bunch of locks (or possibly pockets) is something that's going to insure that one player will start to pull ahead of the others, and that kind of imbalance is not a good thing.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
it would definitely apply to the whole party! I don't do varying party member levels. I tried that in my very first campaign and literally NO ONE liked it. So with this system, if the party (total) fails 12 rolls, EACH member will get 120 XP at the end of the session
Awarding EXP is a wide topic in itself.
If you are doing this, how much Exp do you give for killing the monster? Are you tracking the hits for each PC? It appears that you would have to remember not to award more Exp than the monster is worth? So if you kill a 50 Exp monster but miss him twice in the process you don't get 70 Exp, right? And this is why it sounds like a record keeping nightmare that is going to become un-fun for everyone.
If it works for you and your table then you should run with it and have fun. It just seems there are many pitfalls from my point of view, one of these being the effort to track everything.
Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt
I keep a dry erase board behind my screen anyway. I don't think it would be that hard that when they miss or fail to just make a little mark and then at the end of the meeting look back at how many marks.
While in theory yes, fighting a 50XP goblin and missing twice WOULD net in 70 XP, I don't plan on keeping track of it that way (cause you're right! That would be a nightmare!) I would just award the experience of the regular encounter: "you beat the goblin! Everyone gets 10 XP" (in a party of 5) and then at the very end of the session it would be like "and for tonight's bonus, y'all failed 11 things, you each get 110 bonus XP"
So yes its kinda like a participation trophy. but DnD is a game based on RNG dice rolls so many times, failing isn't the players fault, its just poor luck. And we've all had nights where we can't hit anything/keep failing stealth/persuasion etc... and feel like "whelp, I guess I'm done". This is made to be like a "At least the party get something from this!"