I would do 7. Any character with class levels that participated in the fight shares in both the risks and the rewards. That does two things, it prevents the players from hiding behind hirelings to farm XP without taking damage, and it helps make sure that your friendly NPCs can maintain some pace with the party.
This is one of the reasons why so many people hate DMPCs. I don’t use DMPCs, I prefer Party NPCs. The difference being that a Party NPC is there to fill a hole in the party (usually healer) and they can also be sent off to do scut work so the PCs can focus on the cool stuff. Party NPCs often find themselves locked out of rooms or held restrained for combats an inordinate amount of the time. Or they get narrated kicking ass and they lose HP but their attacks don’t really do anything unless you really, really need to pull the PCs fat out of the fire. This is so the PCs can really shine, the Party NPC should be more like Alfred or Lucious Fox than Robin if you catch my drift. The other way now is for those NPCs to be sidekicks using the sidekick rules and let the players run them, but combat will go into sloowww mottiiioooonnnnn.
The other big reason party NPCs often get left out is because they're extra bookkeeping, and doing the bookkeeping of 'NPC X does damage to NPC Y' is rarely of interest to the players.
Setup:
I have a party of 5 characters that have run across two NPC who will help fight against the BBEG.
After the combat has concluded it time to distribute experience points. For this example, the total experience points awarded to be split up is 700.
Question:
Is it best practice to divide the 700 by 7 since the NPC fought in the battle along with the party or divide the experience by 5 for just the party?
My gut tells me 7 but I also do not want to shortchange my players.
I would say to divide it by 7, at least that's what the rulebooks say.
Thank you! I did not know there was a reference in the DMG to this question. I appreciate you pointing that out to me.
I would do 7. Any character with class levels that participated in the fight shares in both the risks and the rewards. That does two things, it prevents the players from hiding behind hirelings to farm XP without taking damage, and it helps make sure that your friendly NPCs can maintain some pace with the party.
This is one of the reasons why so many people hate DMPCs. I don’t use DMPCs, I prefer Party NPCs. The difference being that a Party NPC is there to fill a hole in the party (usually healer) and they can also be sent off to do scut work so the PCs can focus on the cool stuff. Party NPCs often find themselves locked out of rooms or held restrained for combats an inordinate amount of the time. Or they get narrated kicking ass and they lose HP but their attacks don’t really do anything unless you really, really need to pull the PCs fat out of the fire. This is so the PCs can really shine, the Party NPC should be more like Alfred or Lucious Fox than Robin if you catch my drift. The other way now is for those NPCs to be sidekicks using the sidekick rules and let the players run them, but combat will go into sloowww mottiiioooonnnnn.
This might help:
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
The other big reason party NPCs often get left out is because they're extra bookkeeping, and doing the bookkeeping of 'NPC X does damage to NPC Y' is rarely of interest to the players.
Yeah the book-keeping makes me glad I use milestone XP... everyone who helps get to the milestone gets XP.
Not that any NPCs have really gotten milestone XP, but if one were around enough to get it, no problem.
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
Thanks for the feedback everyone I appreciate it.