I usually use milestone XP, but I'm starting a campaign that's going to do it the old-fashioned way. I'm just wondering if anyone has made a stab at working out good amounts of XP to award for small, medium, and large tasks that don't involve combat. If so, where can I find it? Thanks!
I'm going to spin this around a little - what's a good rate that you and your players like to level?
I bring this up because adding task-based XP
on top of encounter XP will mean more total XP per session and more rapid levelling.
Since I don't like rapid levelling, I find the question expands from non-combat XP, to rebalancing all XP.
I tend to ignore the combat vs. non-combat portion. How big of a challenge was overcome? I don't care if if was overcome via combat, stealth, roleplay, high tracking skills, etc. But I only award it once - if you sneak past a set of guards, and later make noise the guards come to investigate and the party has to fight them, they don't double-dip XP.
Mind you, some challenges may be easier or harder to overcome based on your approach. I don't care - if you're smart enough to use a better approach, more power to you. Hmm, those mercs are a tough fight - but easily bribed with that dwarven spirits we found a few adventures back. No problem, same XP either way.
As a side note, I've foudn this, plus thinking more "treasure packet" like 4e did it instead of just loot-the-bodies, and move people away from the default murder-hobo take. When you are equally as rewarded for different ways to overcome a challenge, you don't always take the same approach.