Non-combat Experience

texastoast · Nov 23, 2017

I'm looking for advice or suggestions for awarding experience for non-combat encounters and activity. The DMG rather unhelpfully points me toward the chapter on creating combat encounters, which has nothing to say about how to assign a CR equivalent, say, to a non-combat challenge.

I know the easy answer to this question is "milestones," but I find that using milestones boils down to "you level up when I want you to." I'm trying to reduce that DM fiat aspect and make it into more of a system. I don't like the idea that as DM I decide when the players level up; I think that should be decided by what the players do.

So, does anybody have a system or guidelines or anything for assigning XP value to non-combat achievements and encounters?

pukunui · Nov 23, 2017

texastoast said:
The DMG rather unhelpfully points me toward the chapter on creating combat encounters, which has nothing to say about how to assign a CR equivalent, say, to a non-combat challenge.

Ignore the CR requirement and just go with the difficulty rating (easy, medium, hard, deadly). So if your PCs are, say, 4th level, and they overcome a non-combat challenge that you deem was of medium difficulty, then you award the party 250 XP (to be divided equally among them).

If your PCs are, say, 15th level, and they overcome what you deem to be a hard non-combat challenge, then you would award them 4,300 XP (to be divided among them).

cmad1977 · Nov 23, 2017

pukunui said:
Ignore the CR requirement and just go with the difficulty rating (easy, medium, hard, deadly). So if your PCs are, say, 4th level, and they overcome a non-combat challenge that you deem was of medium difficulty, then you award the party 250 XP (to be divided equally among them).

If your PCs are, say, 15th level, and they overcome what you deem to be a hard non-combat challenge, then you would award them 4,300 XP (to be divided among them).

This is exactly what I do.

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Blue · Nov 24, 2017

texastoast said:
I know the easy answer to this question is "milestones," but I find that using milestones boils down to "you level up when I want you to." I'm trying to reduce that DM fiat aspect and make it into more of a system. I don't like the idea that as DM I decide when the players level up; I think that should be decided by what the players do.

I know, it's so arbitrary that the DM rates the difficulty of the situation and hands out XP. oh wait, am I talking abotu combat XP or not, I forget?

In fact, it's all arbitrary. One just has some math that posits that a combat encounter is equally challenging regardless of the party, the synergy, the builds, the items, and everything else except the number of characters.

And milestones need not be "level when I say" because not all plots need be linear. There are bound to be plenty of optional accomplishments. Killing the ogres may be a milestone, but also recovering their prisoners before they are eaten might be one, and getting the back to town safely is another - and it's one that will prevent them from dealing with the goblin tribe because they will have moved on by then.

Also, think about this: a party needs to recover an book of heretical prophecies from an evil temple. Three parties go in and get it, none accomplishing any other goals along the way. Do they diverse the same experience regardless of how they did it? Group A fought their way in and out. Group B snuck in and out, and had to deal with a lot of traps. Group C bluffed their way into a group of evil pilgrims, took about two weeks to get there, got a chance to see the book, fabricated a duplicate, and swapped them - killing the guardians at the swap in a way that raised no alarms, then bluffed their way out before the guardians bodies were found.

If some of these deserve more or less reward than the others to accomplish, then you are telling your players "this is how I want to to play, and I will reward you for it". It's why the murderhobo tag get applied so much to D&D style games.

Charlaquin · Nov 24, 2017

Have you tried Three Pillar Experience from Unearthed Arcana? I haven't, but it seems like it might be more in line with what you're looking for.

Personally, I've been considering going old-school and basing character advancement on treasure acquisition. Except instead of awarding experience based on wealth acquired, I've been thinking about making leveling up a downtime activity that costs a certain amount of time and gold. Not sure how well it would work, but it's a fun idea.

Shiroiken · Nov 24, 2017

I tried, unsucessfully, to give various tricks, traps, and other exploration challenges a CR, and found this to be untenable. Instead, I now figure out the difficulty of the challenge, and give an XP value equal to an average party for the adventure. For example, in a level 1-2 adventure for 5 PCs, a medium encounter would be worth 375 XP (50 xp times 5, plus 100 xp times 5, divided by 2). Combat encounters are built around it (with adjustments), and I award social and exploration encounters that amount.

In my campaign, I also divide all xp by half, because I want most adventures to be no more than half combat xp, while keeping combat at the same level of challenge.

Harzel · Nov 25, 2017

pukunui said:
Ignore the CR requirement and just go with the difficulty rating (easy, medium, hard, deadly). So if your PCs are, say, 4th level, and they overcome a non-combat challenge that you deem was of medium difficulty, then you award the party 250 XP (to be divided equally among them).

If your PCs are, say, 15th level, and they overcome what you deem to be a hard non-combat challenge, then you would award them 4,300 XP (to be divided among them).

The basic suggestion is great, but the numbers mentioned are from the table for per character XP for the given levels and difficulties. As someone else said, it's all arbitrary, so you could use the numbers that way, but I would think it would be more natural to use those as the XP awarded to each PC.

Swarmkeeper · Nov 25, 2017

For avoiding a combat encounter through clever action, I'll award the players XP as if they had fought and defeated the foe PLUS give them 10% to 25% more XP depending on how creative they were. The players don't necessarily realize this as I give out XP at the end of each session where there may have been a couple of combats, several social interactions, and a pinch of exploration. For certain tasks, I try to determine a set amount of XP prior to the session (like in Curse of Strahd where 1500 XP is awarded for destroying the Gulthias Tree). Setting a difficulty level, as mentioned above, is a nice way to quantify the non-combat encounter.

I should note that not every player makes it to every session that I run. I'm certainly not going to cancel a session when only 5 of 8 players can make it - that's who can play that week and so let's play! The XP method rewards players for showing up and contributing to the story. Conversely, the milestone method forces a DM to level up everyone at the same exact rate regardless of attendance. It's not that I want to punish people for not showing up as sometimes legit real life stuff gets in the way - but it only seems fair that you should earn your levels through participation.

Yeah, I suppose it is all arbitrary in the end, but it really just seems less arbitrary and more fair to give out XP than to level them up at my pre-determined "milestones", IMHO.

pukunui · Nov 25, 2017

Harzel said:
The basic suggestion is great, but the numbers mentioned are from the table for per character XP for the given levels and difficulties. As someone else said, it's all arbitrary, so you could use the numbers that way, but I would think it would be more natural to use those as the XP awarded to each PC.

Oh yes. Quite right. I forgot that it was individual rather than group XP on the table. (It's been a while since I bothered to use XP myself.)

Sunseeker · Nov 25, 2017

pukunui said:
Ignore the CR requirement and just go with the difficulty rating (easy, medium, hard, deadly). So if your PCs are, say, 4th level, and they overcome a non-combat challenge that you deem was of medium difficulty, then you award the party 250 XP (to be divided equally among them).

If your PCs are, say, 15th level, and they overcome what you deem to be a hard non-combat challenge, then you would award them 4,300 XP (to be divided among them).

Yep this is what I do. Though I'll often award only half XP, since the threat of death is usually not as tangible in non-combat encounters.

EDIT: to add, I feel it is absolutely paramount to award XP for non-combat encounters to reduce the murderhoboing of parties.