D&D 5E XP Multiplier

[Tobold]

In a different thread two people wanted to "correct" a calculation of awarded xp of mine, by pointing out the xp multiplier from the table in the DMG on page 82. Then others chimed in, pointing out that those multipliers were only for calculating encounter difficulty, not for awarding xp. That evoked two questions in me:

1. How many people are using that multiplier for awarded xp?
2. And wouldn't that actually be the better way?

If we say that 6 goblins in a pack are twice as difficult than 6 single goblins in a row, wouldn't it be only logical to give more xp for the harder encounter?

 

[The Crimson Binome]

If we say that 6 goblins in a pack are twice as difficult than 6 single goblins in a row, wouldn't it be only logical to give more xp for the harder encounter?

It would introduce a disparity between player goals and character goals. The party obviously wants an easy fight where they're unlikely to get hurt, but the players know that they aren't going to spend any meaningful resources regardless of how many goblins show up, so giving them a bigger reward for larger groups might encourage them to provoke fights in unfavorable circumstances.

Taking it to an extreme, imagine you have an entire den full of forty goblins, with no more than a handful in any given room. The best reward in this situation would come from sending the monk or rogue to run through each room and gather all of the goblins into a single encounter, and that's not the kind of behavior that the designers want to encourage.

I'm not saying that it wouldn't make sense. I'm just saying that it's preferable if the world doesn't actually work that way.

 

[Yunru]

If I used combat XP I would certainly use the multiplier. Logic dictates that if the difficulty has increased then so too must the experience have.

Unfortunately I just use quest xp exclusively, as it makes my party less murder-hobo-y. Which is of the good.

 

[guachi]

Part of me thinks I should up the XP reward for particularly hard battles. But I don't because I'm lazy and/or mean as a DM and don't want to really figure out what qualifies as a "hard enough" combat.

I guess I get around that by occasionally adding XP at the end of sessions to whatever the XP I have already calculated before divvying it up. And I always do XP at the end of sessions to simplify bookkeeping.

 

[Oofta]

I don't reward XP by encounter difficulty. In addition, when calculating XP budget I don't include the multiplier because I think they overstate the importance of numbers.

If you think it makes sense for your group though, it makes sense.

 

[jgsugden]

What a curious game. The only way to win is not to play.

The best approach is to award a level at milestones and not waste time calculating XP for advancing, but instead use it only as a limited guide during encounter creation.

I give a level at each milestone. A milestone occurs roughly once every three sessions (although levels 1 and 2 are faster and the highest levels stretch longer. A milestone occurs in a natural break from adventuring (completion of a dungeon, etc...)

I've used this system in 5 different decades. It has never failed me and I've never second guessed it. Calculating xp per creature as a reward is a waste of time and provides no real benefit that a generalization can't afford.

 

[Quickleaf]

In a different thread two people wanted to "correct" a calculation of awarded xp of mine, by pointing out the xp multiplier from the table in the DMG on page 82. Then others chimed in, pointing out that those multipliers were only for calculating encounter difficulty, not for awarding xp. That evoked two questions in me:

1. How many people are using that multiplier for awarded xp?
2. And wouldn't that actually be the better way?

If we say that 6 goblins in a pack are twice as difficult than 6 single goblins in a row, wouldn't it be only logical to give more xp for the harder encounter?

I can think of a couple reasons why the RAW assumes you don't account for the XP multiplier when awarding XP:

• Area effect spells can wipe the floor with lower CR monsters, especially things like goblins and orcs. The higher level PCs gets, the more they have resources to lay waste to groups of minions. So...just because you have 20 kobolds instead of 5, it may not actually be any more significantly challenging to a party packing a fireball.
• D&D 5e is designed to encourage creative solutions to the challenge posed by monsters. It's intentional that, when confronted with a large group of monsters, "kill them all" may not be the best approach.
• Discourages "kite the whole kobold tribe" metagaming tactics to maximize the party's XP gained. I suspect that's rare behavior among players these days, but it was something I observed when playing AD&D.

 

[Shiroiken]

Using the multiplier would also force DMs to use the Encounter Guidelines. In my previous campaign, I generally ignored them, only calculating after the fact for curiosity sake. Often the encounter would be well past "Deadly," even without the multiplier, yet my party did very well against most things (dragons were much harder than their CR guideline would indicate). If I had to include the multiplier, I would have to do the guideline for every single encounter, which would suck.

 

[ccs]

When I use XP I just award it based upon whatever the books say a monster is worth multiplied by however many monsters of the type you overcome.
1 goblin = x
6 goblins = that x6....
Doesn't matter if you meet them one at a time or all together.

Traps/tricks/non-combat RP/etc? Very variable.
My formula is: Total amount of XP I intend to hand out this session/chapter/(?), minus whatever the monsters total, divided evenly between all of the Traps/tricks/non-combat RP/etc. encountered.
Like I said, very variable.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

In a different thread two people wanted to "correct" a calculation of awarded xp of mine, by pointing out the xp multiplier from the table in the DMG on page 82. Then others chimed in, pointing out that those multipliers were only for calculating encounter difficulty, not for awarding xp. That evoked two questions in me:

1. How many people are using that multiplier for awarded xp?
2. And wouldn't that actually be the better way?

If we say that 6 goblins in a pack are twice as difficult than 6 single goblins in a row, wouldn't it be only logical to give more xp for the harder encounter?

When 5E first came out, I experimented with giving out multiplied XP for XP awards. It didn't last long for two reasons:

(1) It was waaaaay too much XP. I can handle giving 3rd level PCs 5,000 XP each for winning an insanely difficult fight, but 20,000 XP just seems wrong. It wasn't THAT hard.

(2) It makes it way too important whether the DM chooses to count a string of related interactions as a single encounter with multiple foes, scattered over an area; or a series of separate encounters. Normally it doesn't matter what the DM calls a given encounter as long as it behaves correctly, but this rule had the potential to give players reason to intrude into an area of the DM's responsibility: adventure construction. ("Was that one encounter we just had or five? Did we get the full x4 XP award for everything?")

I didn't think of it at the time, but there is also:

(3) You'd still have to come up with rules for how to treat circumstantial adjustments to difficulty which don't get reflected in the XP budget. The DMG says that if the PCs are all surprised, for instance, you should mentally bump up the difficulty by one level--but that doesn't technically multiply XP any, so you'd still have to wing it if you wanted to grant extra XP for extra difficulty.

Finally, the XP multiplier is just a crude rule of thumb anyway. It exists to roughly replicate Lanchester's Square Law of battle. If you really were trying to scale up XP earned based on difficulty you'd probably be better off just eyeballing things. A 3rd level Aarakocra vs. an Iron Golem on a mountaintop isn't a difficult encounter at all, no matter what the XP budget says. Adjusting XP by "difficulty" is a thorny problem indeed, one you'd basically need to start from scratch. CR vs. PC levels won't really help you.