XP for Non-Combat Tasks

Yaarel · Jun 3, 2018

iserith said:
I randomly generate treasure the moment the PCs find it, so its uncommon for an NPC or monster to be wielding a specific magic item in my games.

I figure, the more appealing the magic item is, the more likely its owner knows exactly where it is.

In context, I might use the random treasure tables or get inspiration from them when creating an adventure, but place any magic items where it makes sense for them to be.

I only introduce magic items that come with a narrative. The campaigns are high magic, but the narrative relationship with items helps convey the uniqueness, sometimes the weirdness, of these coveted magic items.

Magic items are somewhat like reallife large gems. Each one has a history, and it is highly unlikely for any of them to be ‘lost’. Someone knows where it is. Moreover, unlike gems, the magic items are useful, so are probably in use.

aco175 · Jun 3, 2018

I like using quests as bonus XP. If the PCs are hired to rescue prisoners and they come back with all of them, bonus 500xp. If they come back with some, 200xp. They may go to the dungeon and spend 4 days carefully going through the dungeon, blasting each room and pulling back to rest. In this case all the prisoners may be dead and the PCs get no quest xp. They may push themselves to rescue the prisoners and place themselves in greater danger, but earn the full quest xp.

I typically reward good exploration and roleplaying with other bonuses. PC the other night came across an old river crossing trying to locate a bad guy lair. There was no actual bridge here, but the 50 bad guys came through this area over the last few weeks going back and forth to their other lair the PCs just took out. One of the players decided to scout along the banks for where the others may have crossed and rolled a 22 on their Survival skill. I rewarded him with a secret footbridge the bad guy build to cross the river.

Satyrn · Jun 3, 2018

Satyrn said:
. . . What's terrifying to me is that I've just decided that I am going to literally place loot boxes in areas of my megadungeon that the players haven't yet explored.

Update!

I'm also gonna place loot chests in areas they've already explored. Well, mimics disguised as loot chests.

Blue · Jun 4, 2018

Yaarel said:
If an encounter happens to turn out to have been challenging, then I award credit for it. On average, 8 challenging encounters are required to advance to the next level. (Individual levels vary, for example, Level 1 only needs 4 challenging encounters to advance, level 9 requires 16, and level 13 on up requires 8.) (Also, a trivial encounter counts as ½, a crazy hard encounter counts as 2). This system made it easy for noncombat. If a noncombat encounter turns out to be challenging, then it counts toward advancement.

So we're looking at about 3 weeks to 20th level if they happen to adventure every day?

19 advances. 18 of them at 8 challenges, 1 at 4 challenges is 148 challenging encounters. If we go for the recommendation of 6-8 combat encounters (avg 7) per day, it's slightly more than 21 days. I don't know how many challenging non-combat encounters you have, but all it will do is lower the number of combat encounters needed.

This isn't really a jibe at your advancement speed, more at how ridiculous the 6-8 encounters per day that balances long-rest-recovery and primary at-will classes is.

Blue · Jun 4, 2018

Dualazi said:
I tend to award XP based not only on the difficulty of the task at hand, but how much thought the players put into conducting it. When they're interrogating a noble or sleuthing up clues against a cult, if the players discuss the ramifications, thought processes, and lore considerations for their actions then I tend to reward more generously than I would otherwise. Depending on your group dynamic this might or might not be necessary, but I find personally that combat can be fun even if it's just about the numbers and tactics, but having someone simply say "I roll persuasion" takes a lot more out of a social encounter comparatively.

Are your rates the same for different activities as long as they are meaningful?

For example, is an hour long meaningful combat with good player focus and a hour long meaningful interrogation session with good player focus both worth the same?

Yaarel · Jun 4, 2018

Blue said:
So we're looking at about 3 weeks to 20th level if they happen to adventure every day?

19 advances. 18 of them at 8 challenges, 1 at 4 challenges is 148 challenging encounters. If we go for the recommendation of 6-8 combat encounters (avg 7) per day, it's slightly more than 21 days. I don't know how many challenging non-combat encounters you have, but all it will do is lower the number of combat encounters needed.

This isn't really a jibe at your advancement speed, more at how ridiculous the 6-8 encounters per day that balances long-rest-recovery and primary at-will classes is.

The advancement speed is the same as official advancement. Someone calculated how many encounters it takes to advance each level, based on how many xp the next level required, and how many xp each encounter offers according to its rating system.

My advancement by counting encounters works at the same speed, but better. When calculating xp, the DM (or adventure designer) is guessing if the encounter will prove to be hard or easy. In my system, whether it was, in fact, hard or easy is obvious in hindsight.

Counting encounters is also convenient, because advancement always happens after a session is over. So players can work on their characters on their own time.

Finally, counting encounters is better because the DM can stretch out a sweet spot in the levels, or cut short a frustrating level.

Personally I am uncertain if the highest levels should advance after 8 encounters (despite the fact that officially they do). I will know when I get there. Maybe they should be more? Maybe less?

Heh, finally, finally. As DM, I enjoy mixing in encounters that are too easy (so players can show off), and too difficult that are impossible to win (thus requiring a noncombat resolution). Xp is less able to quantify these kinds of challenges, but my counting encounters and assessing them after-the-fact, makes it easy.

Blue · Jun 4, 2018

Yaarel said:
The advancement speed is the same as official advancement. Someone calculated how many encounters it takes to advance each level, based on how many xp the next level required, and how many xp each encounter offers according to its rating system.

Hopefully then I can give you better math that whomever calculated it out.

The problem is that the XP budget is calculated with a modifier based on the number of foes, but that modifier doesn't affect the XP actually awarded.

For a party of 3-6 people, if you have a foe per PC then it's a x2 modifier. So each PC ends up getting about half the XP per enounter listed. Sure, sometimes it's a solo, and sometimes it's a horde of goblins - that averages out over time.

1st level has a budget of 50 per PC for a medium encounter, which works out to 25 XP awarded per PC. So it's 12 encounters to advance to 300 XP.

2nd level has a budget of 100 per PC for a medium encounter, again half that for awarded XP. You need 600, so 12 encounters at 50 each will get you there.

3rd awards 75 each, needs 1800 more over 2nd, 24 encounters to level.

4th awards 125 each, needs 3800 more, 22.4 encounters

5th awards 250 each, needs 7500 more, 30 encounters. In order to do 7500 in 8 encounters, that's 938 XP awarded per encounter. If you just solo hard encounters you're still well short with only 750 XP each.

I could go on, but it's pretty clear wherever said it was 8 encounters per level did not do their math right. Perhaps they missed that the encounter multiplier was just for the budget, not for awarded XP.

Yaarel · Jun 4, 2018

[MENTION=20564]Blue[/MENTION]

This link is the analysis that I use as a reference for the official 5e encounters per level. It looks plausible to me, albeit I havent gone thru the math myself.

But my own setting emphasizes tiers (1-4, 5-8, 9-12, 13-16, 17-20), so the sweet spot is 5-8 (with approximately 16 encounters per level), the apprentice tier 1-4 is a rush (I make level 1 need 4 challenging encounters to get to level 2, then the level requirements increase steeply), and 13 on up is currently as-is (with about 8 per level).

Dualazi · Jun 6, 2018

Blue said:
Are your rates the same for different activities as long as they are meaningful?

For example, is an hour long meaningful combat with good player focus and a hour long meaningful interrogation session with good player focus both worth the same?

As much as I can manage, yes. I haven't hammered out an exact science to it yet (and such a task might not really be feasible) but I try and do what I can to indicate both narratively and mechanically that players shouldn't feel obligated to behave a certain way to more effectively advance their characters.

Blue · Jun 6, 2018

Dualazi said:
As much as I can manage, yes. I haven't hammered out an exact science to it yet (and such a task might not really be feasible) but I try and do what I can to indicate both narratively and mechanically that players shouldn't feel obligated to behave a certain way to more effectively advance their characters.

Most excellent! I've seen DMs who said they were doing something like this, but still the lion's share of XP was from combat such that it didn't make a difference really. We'd still engage in combat at the drop of a hat because a session with a few encounters would be worth 20x the XP of a session with no encounters but full of good RP and moving the plot. Maybe not that much, but "you get 200 XP for the session" vs. combats where we'd each get several hundred per combat shaped our actions.

XP for Non-Combat Tasks

Yaarel

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aco175

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Yaarel

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Blue

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Yaarel

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Dualazi

First Post

Blue

Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal

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