D&D 5E Gaining Experience

This is how I handled XP in the last three long-term campaigns I ran:

3e: I didn't calculate XP, just assigned it. Every PC had the same XP total, there were no individual awards. Therefore, every PC was the same level. If you joined the campaign or opted to play a new PC (for whatever reason), you started with the party XP amount. You might ask why I bothered to have an XP total at all...

4e (multiple DMs): We scrapped XP completely. Everyone was the same level. We leveled when the DM said so.

AD&D: I calculated XP the old-fashioned way (it was oddly... soothing). Each PC had an individual XP total. New PCs started with the party average. There was some level disparity thanks to the AD&D's different class XP requirements, also from things like draining and XP boosts from powerful items/weird magic-y things.

For our 5e campaign, which is converted from the 4e one, no XP, just levels doled out by DM fiat.

Our campaigns aren't so focused on gaining levels, they're really more about good characterization & amusingly ludicrous fantasy exploits. The reward for good play is itself. And given our infrequent play schedule, anything that slows the game down with repetitive tasks --which is kinda unavoidable when XP farming -- isn't going to work with my group.

re: level-grinding... that's really something I associate w/CRPGs, particular those of the console Japanese variety. I'd be interested in playing a sandbox-style campaign which operates closer to the pure strategy game model, but my strengths as a DM/setting creator lie elsewhere, so that's not something I'd likely run.

Kikuras said:

I've never played D&D in a way that supported XP grinding... and the concept seems a bit... meta. How is it even fun in the context of the game overall? Talk about castrating the DM. If I ever ran a group that wanted to do that, I'd put away random encounter tables and let them wander for days at a time. If they're going to waste my time as a DM, I let them waste everyone's time.

Edit: Also, for OP, just give less XP if you're worried about fast advancement... though I'd warn the players you're slowing it down. Alternatively, carefully craft all encounters to give advancement at the rate you want.

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The only one who can remove the DM's agency is the DM. If players wanting to wander off into the woods and see what sort of beasties they can encounter, that seems like them handing the reigns to you as DM.

If you enjoy improvising as DM, then seeing the players wander off in a given direction to see what trouble they can get into for XP awards can be a lot of fun and a great challenge for the DM.

Take, for example, a random encounter generator. Calibrate as appropriate and see what it gives you. So here I've set it to Swamp environment, 4 PCs at 3rd-level. I get:

1 ambush drake
5 pixies

A medium encounter, 350 XP. Hmm. I have to turn that into some kind of interesting scene. Inspiration strikes: Laying on the ground, there's an unconscious, slow-asphyxiating pixie sealed in a jar with no air holes punches in the top. There's a corpse nearby - a local sage that the PCs may know (or have heard of) - that the ambush drake has partially devoured. The ambush drake lurks in the brush, having heard the PCs approach.

Four more pixies are nearby, tracking their lost friend. When they arrive, they assume that the PCs had something to do with the capture of the suffocating pixie and conflict ensues. Can the PCs save the pixie in the jar before she dies while battling the ambush drake? Will they make enemies of the pixie-folk of this forest or convince them they had nothing to do with the capture of their friend? Will they find the sage's journal in the bushes nearby that contains notes to a lost fey realm where the rain acts as an elixir of youth?

SirAntoine said:

It's a good supplement to following adventure hooks or paths. It's great when you're close to the next level, and you really want the next level of spells, for example. It's also great to bring up a new character. They usually cut their teeth by about 4th level, so won't need a lot of protecting in the rest of the adventure.

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If it's really that close, I usually just hand the PCs the extra couple hundred XP when an adventure ends. I'd rather not deal with math three encounters into a module.

That said, I also regularly go several sessions w/o awarding XP because the PCs are in town, etc. So, random awards kinda balances that out (or vice versa).

SirAntoine said:

We all have our experience and our preferences, but awarding experience is one of those fundamental parts of the game that I consider part of D&D. I referee the earning of experience points, and the players earn them. They are one of the rewards for success. I have never advanced the players when I wanted to without their permission. I have on occassion, skipped ahead, and awarded them some experience in a summary fashion given expectations, but they are playing the game and earning experience is a part of that. IME, at least.

The DM may have the authority to re-establish the PC's level in any way, but that would be a huge departure from what I expect. I am old-school, where we not only really earned our levels, but undead could drain those levels with a single touch against which there was no saving throw. The level of a character isn't parted with lightly, and if it was just given, I don't think it would ever really feel earned in the same way again.

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And I would say you failed your save; you're still affected by the illusion. You still see XP as something objective, something the DM isn't messing with, something you "earn". Just like I did in my youth, before the veil over my eyes were lifted.

Have a nice day, is about all I can add to that. Cheers, Z

SirAntoine said:

It's a big part of the adventure experience that has been a lot of fun for my players. The best way to envision it may be to think of an old video or computer game, such as Final Fantasy VII for Playstation I which was very popular, and the original Bard's Tale, for computer. Most of your time would be spent just gathering experience. You would walk around and come back when you needed to heal up or recharge your resources, then go back out again. Some monsters gave a huge amount of experience, like the metal slime and metal babble especially from one of the Dragon Warrior games for Nintendo, and you would jump to find it. You'd have to kill it quickly, which was difficult, because if it ran away you'd get no experience.

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Glad you enjoyed those games. I played them too, but the repetative monster killing was my least favorite thing about those games. It was also a staple of early MMOs. Look at modern MMOs. In Guild Wars 2 I did the "Been There, Done That" achievement. I traversed and completed every quest hub in the game, but it was always somewhere new had a story driving it. In an older game, I would have camped a spot for multiple levels killing the same stuff over and over (I'm looking at you Final Fantasy XI ). "Level grind" is not why I play.

SirAntoine said:

These kinds of "experience runs" are bread and butter of adventure. It seems like many have never experienced it, and level advancement today is delivered quickly by the set encounters only. Just the presence of wandering monsters, and encounter tables, seems rare.

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I am using random encounter tables in my sessions. But XP is using the "story award" DMG option. The players are advancing by achieving key plots points. Its still combat oriented, as they still need to traverse the dungeon and kill the big bads to move the story. But it steers them away from farming levels, which doesn't sound like high adventure to me. Monte Cook's Cypher System awards discovery/story XP and no combat XP. It definitely influenced my current DM style.

That said, the idea of an OSR kills=XP and gold=XP run does sound fun as an oocasional diversion, but wouldn't be my weekly go-to for gaming.

neobolts said:

I am using random encounter tables in my sessions. But XP is using the "story award" DMG option. The players are advancing by achieving key plots points. Its still combat oriented, as they still need to traverse the dungeon and kill the big bads to move the story. But it steers them away from farming levels, which doesn't sound like high adventure to me. Monte Cook's Cypher System awards discovery/story XP and no combat XP. It definitely influenced my current DM style.

That said, the idea of an OSR kills=XP and gold=XP run does sound fun as an oocasional diversion, but wouldn't be my weekly go-to for gaming.

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Part of the problem for me with arbitrary leveling and story awards is that those things presuppose a story or plot in the game, when it is my contention that story is what emerges from play, not what drives it. That's not to say you can only give XP for for killing things and taking their stuff. The things you reward XP for are, IMO, the things you are asking your players to engage in. If you give XP for treasure, you are asking them to make acquiring the gold their #1 objective with everything else, including killing stuff, a secondary goal. if you give XP for finishing small quests around NPCs and other setting elements, you are asking them to interact with the world and focus on problem solving. If you give them XP for just showing up, then you are asking them to just show up.

Reynard said:

The only one who can remove the DM's agency is the DM. If players wanting to wander off into the woods and see what sort of beasties they can encounter, that seems like them handing the reigns to you as DM.

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True, which is why I would have them come up empty. As a DM, if for whatever reason the PCs go up in level, I'm just going to scale things that I had planned up as appropriate, so really there's no point in venturing out to kill packs of goblins for XP. The DM takes time to prepare an adventure, go on it and gain XP that way, otherwise all the DM is really doing is refereeing combat over and over again. If the players don't want to play the story, why play the game? Granted a good DM could probably use their actions as a way to pull them into an adventure they weren't expecting... but then they may run off to town.... it just seems so unnecessary.

Kikuras said:

True, which is why I would have them come up empty. As a DM, if for whatever reason the PCs go up in level, I'm just going to scale things that I had planned up as appropriate, so really there's no point in venturing out to kill packs of goblins for XP. The DM takes time to prepare an adventure, go on it and gain XP that way, otherwise all the DM is really doing is refereeing combat over and over again. If the players don't want to play the story, why play the game? Granted a good DM could probably use their actions as a way to pull them into an adventure they weren't expecting... but then they may run off to town.... it just seems so unnecessary.

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Whatever makes you and your players happy. The above does come off as kind of limiting, though, implying that player agency is not a thing you really care for. What do you do when they find some background element more interesting than your predetermined plot? Do you gently nudge them back on track or do you have them just come up empty for hours until they figure it out? Punishing agency seems like the fastest possible route to bored players.

Reynard said:

Part of the problem for me with arbitrary leveling and story awards is that those things presuppose a story or plot in the game, when it is my contention that story is what emerges from play, not what drives it.

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You could drop the word 'story' (and the baggage that comes with it for certain people) and just call them 'goal-achievement awards' or something similar. That would work.