Helldritch
Hero
First, do I feel cheated about adventure experience?
Nope, I almost never have a standard group, so most published adventure are always short on exp award. I always have to add monsters/encounters and other knick knack to adapt adventures to my groups. As long as the story is good, it will be played. If the story is bad, then it will stay on its shelf.
Second
As for the mile stones vs the experience award leveling.
Both methods are valid. I have a tendency to use the later but I have no problems using the first.
The exp budget is often a good way to judge if an encounter is good enough for your group. It helps to plan your adventures. If more exp are needed you can then add a good number of additional encounters. These should be prepared in advance and ready to play fast. For PotA, one group had made a foray into the stone temple. They went away to lick their wounds and rest. I send them a few hunting parties.
This reached two goals. First it made it clear to the players that the cults were not dummies waiting for them to get to them. Second it gave the player a sense of urgency to finish temples in one stroke. What I like to do in adventures such as PotA is to award experience for chained encounters. I set this to half of the amount that the previous encounter gave and it stops as soon as there is some form of rest.
For example. 4 encounters. The first one give 400xp, the second 350, the third gives 425 and the fourth gives 500. If the players chain them all it becomes: 400, 550, 700 and 850 xp. If they rest at any point in between, the bonus reset. This seems to work as a counter to the 5mwd as player will now want to chain the encounters as much as possible. They will thus manage resource, not going nova at the sligthest difficulty encountered and will make the game much more realistic. Resting is now a true choice and not only a simple mechanic in which you restore your powers at la computer/console games. The potential loss of exp can be detrimental and the players are aware of it. If you use this method, you'll see that most chapters in published adventures starts working as intended. You'll have almost no need for the mile stone system and additional encounters needed to compensate the missing experience is minimal.
The mile stone, I do use in some adventures. (CoS for example). There are good things going for it, but there are some bad things attached to it too.
The mile stone makes it easier for the players to focus on the story and it can be quite a fast train going. Get to the goal and leave. This leaves the exploration part a bit in the dust. We missed out on a few encounters? So what we'll level any way.
You could think that it encourages multiple encounters in a day, wrong! Players with the mile stone system will tend to get fast to the point and hope to go nova asap then rest, go nova again... rinse and repeat. With the mile stone, the DM must be dead serious to enforce the 6 encounter per day or short rest classes will get the "short" end of things. If the DM enforces the 6 encounters per day, the mile stone system is really good. But it makes up for a lot of work and a lot of improvisations.
As usual, the best system is what works best at your table.
Nope, I almost never have a standard group, so most published adventure are always short on exp award. I always have to add monsters/encounters and other knick knack to adapt adventures to my groups. As long as the story is good, it will be played. If the story is bad, then it will stay on its shelf.
Second
As for the mile stones vs the experience award leveling.
Both methods are valid. I have a tendency to use the later but I have no problems using the first.
The exp budget is often a good way to judge if an encounter is good enough for your group. It helps to plan your adventures. If more exp are needed you can then add a good number of additional encounters. These should be prepared in advance and ready to play fast. For PotA, one group had made a foray into the stone temple. They went away to lick their wounds and rest. I send them a few hunting parties.
This reached two goals. First it made it clear to the players that the cults were not dummies waiting for them to get to them. Second it gave the player a sense of urgency to finish temples in one stroke. What I like to do in adventures such as PotA is to award experience for chained encounters. I set this to half of the amount that the previous encounter gave and it stops as soon as there is some form of rest.
For example. 4 encounters. The first one give 400xp, the second 350, the third gives 425 and the fourth gives 500. If the players chain them all it becomes: 400, 550, 700 and 850 xp. If they rest at any point in between, the bonus reset. This seems to work as a counter to the 5mwd as player will now want to chain the encounters as much as possible. They will thus manage resource, not going nova at the sligthest difficulty encountered and will make the game much more realistic. Resting is now a true choice and not only a simple mechanic in which you restore your powers at la computer/console games. The potential loss of exp can be detrimental and the players are aware of it. If you use this method, you'll see that most chapters in published adventures starts working as intended. You'll have almost no need for the mile stone system and additional encounters needed to compensate the missing experience is minimal.
The mile stone, I do use in some adventures. (CoS for example). There are good things going for it, but there are some bad things attached to it too.
The mile stone makes it easier for the players to focus on the story and it can be quite a fast train going. Get to the goal and leave. This leaves the exploration part a bit in the dust. We missed out on a few encounters? So what we'll level any way.
You could think that it encourages multiple encounters in a day, wrong! Players with the mile stone system will tend to get fast to the point and hope to go nova asap then rest, go nova again... rinse and repeat. With the mile stone, the DM must be dead serious to enforce the 6 encounter per day or short rest classes will get the "short" end of things. If the DM enforces the 6 encounters per day, the mile stone system is really good. But it makes up for a lot of work and a lot of improvisations.
As usual, the best system is what works best at your table.
In the case of PotA, after errata, the 4 starting keeps are actually quite close to each other, so I don't expect all that much xp from random encounters between them.
