Awarding experience?

[kibbitz]

The thread 'When is an encounter beat?' got me thinking somehow about experience awards. I've not gamed in over 15 years, and even for the six or eight years of gaming I had, it was pretty much limited to either D&D, or my own homebrew ruleset (which I'm glad I don't have copies of anymore, but that's another story ). Back then, I found that I really didn't like the idea of calculating EXP awards based on treasure and kills and stuff and just gave out levels and improvements at key points in the campaign. I suppose I was (and still am somewhat) lazy with the math, though I didn't have any difficulty in doing it.

I was... incredibly immature back then, so my games were pretty much about beating bigger and badder monsters and getting better loot to kill with. Definitely handed out way too much too quickly. Still, after thinking about this again, I must say that I'm not sure I'd not do the same again if I actually manage to find a group here and start GMing again. I'm okay with receiving EXP as per normal rules if I was a player, but as a GM, I'd probably plan out a rough campaign with an estimated start and end point with awards given after certain 'milestones'.

Has anyone ever tried this as a GM? Or experienced this as a player? What are your opinions?

 

[sjmiller]

One thing you could do is take a tip from the classic SPI game DragonQuest. That system give an experience reward for successfully meeting goals. Now, the goal could be defeating a creature, negotiating a deal, or whatever. Not being successful also gives you half the reward. All in all, a good system.

 

[shilsen]

I've run two Eberron games (one at 35 sessions & on hiatus, and the other at 39 and continuing) where I dropped standard XP awards completely and just award as much XP per session (usually 1000) to keep the PCs advancing at a rate I'm comfortable with. After that, I'm never going to use the standard method again.

 

[DungeonMaester]

This is something I use in almost all my games. Its used (by me atleast) to reward subtle role plawers with (ex) ablitlies (non magic ex abilties too, which would go against Ex if I didnt note the change.) rather then players who take races classes and feats to max out abilties.

rewards come like mini feats (In my games feats are role played out rather then assumed) that a player does multiply times. Some examples are:

Ju-jitsu

On a grapple check that defeats the opponets by 10 or more allows the character to thow the enemy using thier unarmed strike+ 1.5 str bonus. target enemy is prone but can get up next round but can not take a five foot step. Ju-jitsu does not work on a target that is 100 lb more then the characters lifting limit.


Idealistic, it should be powergaming that is limited the Dm, the way it should be! Just make sure the bonus fits the person and what they achive time and time again, Which is feat like.

Sorry for any typos in adavnce.

---Rusty

 

[Lanefan]

Unless you're really sure you know what you're doing, I'd suggest being very careful with anything that takes the direct earning of ExP out of the players/characters hands, as it's an easy thing to screw up:
- if everyone always gets the same ExP, you have to watch out for the character that coasts while never taking any significant risks (my pet peeve with any such system);
- if PC's get varying ExP depending what they do but at your discretion rather than from a pre-set chart, be careful not to unduly favour one character (or player) over another (sometimes you don't even notice you're doing it until much later);
- if your intent is to simply have the PC's bump at the end of each adventure, fine, but you'll hit trouble if-when one or more PC's misses significant parts of an adventure via being dead, captured, absent, whatever...set some criteria ahead of time for how much a PC needs to be around for in order to bump from that adventure.

I'd suggest going by either the RAW tables or a hard-and-fast ExP-per-encounter table of your own design until you've got a good handle on what makes your group tick, and on what sort of advancement rate you want.

Lanefan

 

[sniffles]

In the group I play in, most of the GMs do it your suggested way, I think, kibbitz. I've never really asked any of them how they calclulate XP.

I do know that one GM awards the XP to the group as a whole and then divides it by the number of PCs in the group. He doesn't want anyone to fall behind, and worrying about penalizing players who don't pull their weight is just too much effort. I expect he does take the published XP recommendations into consideration, but I suspect he also probably uses something similar to the method of awarding XP based on fulfilling goals that sjmiller mentions. And the players never know what their XP totals are; the GMs just tell us when it's time to level up. We also only level up between game sessions; the only thing level-wise that occurs during an actual session is rolling for hit points.

Recently we started a campaign with another GM who likes to run modules and awards XP based on what it says in the module. He also awards XP in mid-session sometimes and has us level up right then if we've reached the appropriate totals. He's the only GM I play with who makes the players keep track of their own XP. Being accustomed to the other method, I don't much care for his style as regards XP awards and leveling up. You might want to talk to your players about how they're accustomed to getting XP and leveling up; if you try something very different from what they're used to they may not care for it.

 

[DungeonMaester]

Whoa! I was way off base with my post. I miss understood the topic for alt. types of rewards.

As for gaining exp, I prefer using the Rifts(tm) Free form exp table which gives them exp for thier actions as well as exp for killing. I'll post it if I can find my Rifts book, But becuase of the differnece in exp needed to level from Rifts to D&D you may want to tone it down alot.

Sorry for any typos in adavnce.

---Rusty

 

[Piratecat]

After awarding xp on pretty much an ad hoc basis for years - I'd decide the right pacing for PCs to level, based on what they did, then sneakily adjust xp amounts to match - I finally just chucked xp completely this year. The PCs level about every ten sessions (as they always have, which is slow for most people but right for our group.) I've gone to an action point system, and the PCs can turn action points into an XP pool when they want to craft magic items or burn xp for spells. So far, it's working tremendously well.

 

[kibbitz]

Hmm... well, I do have some of the Palladium Robotech rulebooks, so I'm guessing the EXP system is similar to that of RIFTS. As it its, I rather focus on building up other aspects of the game instead and just set a rate of progression through the campaign. However, Lanefan brought up some valid points, seeing that those were some of the mistakes I made last time I did that :\ If I get to GM again, I'll try to remember that.

Btw, Piratecat, mind elaborating on the action point mechanism? Sounds interesting.

 

[froggie]

Story Awards

I use straight objective based xp....the CR system in imho too easy and to fast.

For the subject at hand….In years gone by, it took weeks if not years of play to advance characters to the point that they were higher on the food chain than a troll. At 10 experience points per orc, and 5 experience points per goblin, you had to kill one hell of a lot of them for Joe Platemail III, the veteran (level 1) fighter to advance to Joe Platemail III the warrior (level 2) fighter. Then it took twice as much experience to even get that level, and the geometric progression (rather than simply needing 1000 more xp than the previous level’s goal), made it even harder to progress to 3rd, 4th, 5th level, and beyond.

The bottom line is this…In previous editions of D&D, a fighter (assuming he did nothing else) would have to kill 200 orcs to advance from level 1 to level 2. In 3E, the same fighter needs only 7 (assuming an EL ½ for an orc) kills to gain that coveted extra d10 hit points and +1 to hit. 200 to 7. Only 3.5% of the previously required fights are needed to advance to 2nd level. Wow. I understand that 3E monsters are tougher than their previous edition counterparts, but then again, so are PCs. Even in role-playing based, combat poor games, advancement is far too easy. To progress from level 2-4 is even scarier…only 42 orcs are required for Joe to be a level 4 Fighter! Compare this with the 800 orcs needed in older editions! Joe is definitely happy he traded his way up to 3E! As a DM, I am not so happy.

I believe a great deal of player education occurs in the lower levels of power. Players learn how to use their wits, they learn how to avoid death, they learn how to run and most of all, they learn that experience teaches lessons…lessons that are invaluable invaluable at higher levels. Imagine taking on Tomb of Horrors after only 14 playing sessions!

In my TT group, the players get a great deal more xp from finding the lost city and exploring it than from fighting the hill giant that is in the first ruined building. Not that I shirk from combat (I am pretty old-school hack, actually). My players advance from being clever and creating innovative solutions more than anything else. They also get most of their xp from finishing adventures, epic end-games, and exploring (I play Wilderlands of course) new regions. Advancement tends to occur after 6-7 playing sessions (just like it did in 1E).

So what solution do I offer, do you ask? I myself have not really found one that is perfect to date, but, gentle reader (to coin a phrase), I do have several ideas. Three options I have been looking into are as follows:

Option 1—award experience as usual, but at 10% of the regular rate
Option 2—reinstate the geometric experience tables from 2E (2000 gets level 2, 4000 gets level 3, 8000 gets level 4, 16, 32, 64….etc)
Option 3—delete the whole EL/CR section from the game and apply story awards as means of advancement only

Each of these has advantages and disadvantages. I am sure our readership will come up with many I have missed, but here are what I see as the strengths and weaknesses of each.

Option 1—Advantages; slows advancement a great deal while still retaining a faster advancement rate than older editions (70 orcs vs. 200 in 2E), Disadvantages; The DM will be accused of being “unfair” and breaking the “rules”. This one really pisses players off.

Option 2—Advantages; low levels still progress rapidly, but not nearly as fast as 3E standard. Since all classes are essentially balanced, 2000 xp as a basis for the advancement range seems fair, the DM awards xp “out of the rulebook”. Disadvantages; again, accusations of “being too hard” or “unfair” could run rampant with disgruntled players.

Option 3—Advantages; its in the rule book, advancement can be gained at the DM’s discretion, when the DM thinks the players are ready, the focus is on the story rather than on the mechanics of the game. Disadvantages; arbitrary, no set standard, may be at the DM’s mood, not actual play. You really need to give xp at the start of each session so you can fairly evaluate what they did the previous week w/ out what I refer to as "adrenaline bias".

Anyway, those are my thoughts.