D&D 5E Do you use XPs or Milestones?

[Fenris-77]

I use XP roughly. I don't want to use a calculator at the table nor end up talking about decimals of an XP, so I go with the old 'round to an appropriately close hundred and call it a day'. More often than not this means three basic levels hard/medium/easy for both combat and story goals, adjusted sometimes on the fly for differentiated difficulty. I also don't award XP for random encounters for the most part. Not when they're a result of player sloth anyway - those encounters are a natural consequence of procrastination that chews resources, not a tasty little XP snack on the side.

 

[Lanefan]

Experience points all the way, by individual character (if a character's not involved in something that grants xp then no xp for that character) - your character gets what it earns via contributing and-or taking risks. I do it this way largely to discourage 'passenger' characters who like to let others take the risk, of which I've seen a few too many over the years.

I also have very slow advancement a la 2e, and a high tolerance for variable character levels* within the party. Xp are never given out for anything outside the fiction e.g. bringing me a case of beer before the session will get you my thanks but won't get your character any extra xp!

* - not recommended for 3e or 4e but fine in 0-1-2-5e.

To avoid having to track lots of ticky-tack stuff, at the end of each mission or adventure I'll give out a "dungeon bonus", whose base value is based on a host of factors (sometimes including my mood!) and then modified per character by the number of adventuring days that character spent in the adventure. (thus if I'd set the base bonus at 6000 xp, a character who was in for the whole 10-day adventure would get 6000 but a character that for some reason was only in for 4 of those days would get 2400) This dungeon bonus in a small way also replaces some of the xp they'd have otherwise got were I using xp-for-gp; the bonus is unrelated to the size of the party treasury. (and some of my players are already greedy enough, thanks! )

It might be cool to give them a level bump in the middle of a major, major encounter some time. It would kind of be like a major league, heroic second wind or something.

This assumes all the benefits of a new level accrue to the character >blip!< just like that, much like a typical video game, with no training or rest or anything else required first. I've always had training rules, and even if I didn't I'd still only ever give out xp after an overnight rest (or "long rest" in 5e).

Only if the DM awards XP for easy combats.

This is one place I've always disagreed with Gygax and other designers: to me, a Goblin that's worth 15 xp at 1st level is still worth 15 xp at 10th level - the difference being that at 10th level you need a helluva lot more multiples of 15 xp in order to bump, to the point where getting to 11th take wiping out most of the Goblins on the continent and even that might not be enough.

 

[Fenris-77]

Huh. I probably would give out XP for beer. Does that make me a bad person?

 

[atanakar]

But I would do that even back in the day of yore when I used XP. Did we want to use standard advancement? Count gold as XP? What about XP for noncombat encounters? Ultimately I realized the numbers didn't really mean anything. I was just kind of calculating how many hours I wanted to play before we leveled up based on what amount of XP they probably would have gotten if most of our time was spent on combat. So I got rid of the middle man because I'm lazy.

That is exactly what happened with me. I got rid of the middle man too!

 

[Lanefan]

Huh. I probably would give out XP for beer. Does that make me a bad person?

No, but it makes you a different type of DM than I am.

I want xp to be something awarded for in-game actions only, and by that I mean actions of the character rather than the player. (by extension this also means if you miss a session and your character's still in the party it'll earn xp as normal for what it does)

I've never at all been happy with the idea of giving xp for writing a good backstory or for bringing beer to the game or as a reward for simply showing up to the game, as none of those have any bearing on or reflection of what the character actually does in the fiction; and I see xp as an in-fiction reward for in-fiction activities.

 

[Zardnaar]

Milestones. Essentially when I feel like it.

 

[HarbingerX]

I was a big fan of experience points when I discovered D&D. At some point during second edition I started handing out a fixed amount of XPs per session regardless of combat and encounters. During 4e we decided to gain one level after each game. That was madness. We didn't have time to savor and properly play the new abilities of characters. At the beginning of 5e we used Milestones. It is a good system but the players felt is was too DM dependent. Now I go by a number of sessions to be played before levelling-up.

Starting level 3 the PCs gain one level after 2 sessions. At level 7 it takes 4 sessions to gain one level. Level 10+ requires 6 sessions. Our sessions last 3-4 hours and on average we play twice per month.

I'm a bit late to this party, so apologies if this was already mentioned. To remove the DM fiat, how about you award the standard 'XP per adventuring day' each session? Should level up every 2-3 sessions.

 

[Charlaquin]

I do think there's another aspect to this. As part of my session 0, I discuss how I want to handle leveling and the fact that I don't use XP. We talk about how quickly we want to level. We then have discusssions at various points - are we leveling too fast or too slow? I get feedback from my players on what they enjoy. We also change the pace at different levels, going slower in the low-middle levels that seem to be the sweet spot (even if I do enjoy higher level play as well).

But I would do that even back in the day of yore when I used XP. Did we want to use standard advancement? Count gold as XP? What about XP for noncombat encounters? Ultimately I realized the numbers didn't really mean anything. I was just kind of calculating how many hours I wanted to play before we leveled up based on what amount of XP they probably would have gotten if most of our time was spent on combat. So I got rid of the middle man because I'm lazy.

I think this is a pretty sound analysis, but I would suggest that the numbers might mean something to the players. The human brain finds it very satisfying to watch numbers go up or progress bars fill. So while removing the exp may not have changed anything for you as a DM, except cutting out the middleman and lightening your workload, it may have changed something for your players. And they may not even have been consciously aware of the change. But whether they realized it or not, they lost that progress bar in the change. They no longer have that numeric representation of how close or far they are to the next level-up. And some players - I’d wager most players, won’t see that as any great loss. The worload it saves you might greatly outweigh the visceral satisfaction they lose in the exchange - that will vary a lot from one player to the next. But I think a lot of DMs run this same analysis and come to the same conclusion that nothing is lost in getting rid of XP, forgetting that it does have a meaningful, if subtle, cost to the players.

 

[atanakar]

I think this is a pretty sound analysis, but I would suggest that the numbers might mean something to the players. The human brain finds it very satisfying to watch numbers go up or progress bars fill. So while removing the exp may not have changed anything for you as a DM, except cutting out the middleman and lightening your workload, it may have changed something for your players. And they may not even have been consciously aware of the change. But whether they realized it or not, they lost that progress bar in the change. They no longer have that numeric representation of how close or far they are to the next level-up. And some players - I’d wager most players, won’t see that as any great loss. The worload it saves you might greatly outweigh the visceral satisfaction they lose in the exchange - that will vary a lot from one player to the next. But I think a lot of DMs run this same analysis and come to the same conclusion that nothing is lost in getting rid of XP, forgetting that it does have a meaningful, if subtle, cost to the players.

This is part of the social contract and needs to be discussed with the players. Even if you don't use XPs the players know that their characters are going to level in X sessions. It is a progress bar. So nothing is lost for the players. At the beginning of each session I remind the players how many sessions they have to play before leveling up. Leveling up always occurs between games so we can discuss this in private with Messenger. With a budget of 3-4 hours I don't want to spend time doing under the hood stuff when we meet fact to face. ;-)

 

[Charlaquin]

This is part of the social contract and needs to be discussed with the players. Even if you don't use XPs the players know that their characters are going to level in X sessions. It is a progress bar. So nothing is lost for the players. At the beginning of each session I remind the players how many sessions they have to play before leveling up. Leveling up always occurs between games so we can discuss this in private with Messenger. With a budget of 3-4 hours I don't want to spend time doing under the hood stuff when we meet fact to face. ;-)

Oh, sorry, I thought we were talking about story-based advancement. Yeah, session-based advancement does have the progress bar effect. The disadvantage it has from a player perspective is divorcing progress from the players’ accomplishments. XP has the player-side advantages of both (the progress bar effect and the tangible connection between accomplishments and progress), but lacks the advantage of being easier for the DM. Personally, I as DM am more than happy to bite that bullet.