D&D 5E DM's: what do you do with players who miss time?

[the Jester]

Its a progression mechanic, and a reward. Whether it is realistic for a character to earn experience for something they may or may not have been involved in, is irrelevant.

Yeah, we have a huge disagreement on that score.

Most players I presume want their character to progress, and I think most players would agree that they'd like their character to progress at an equal rate as that of their party members.

So why even bother to hand it out on an individual basis? Don't you want to encourage teamwork? Isn't it a cooperative game?

For me, encouraging teamwork falls well behind letting the world's logic play out, which includes the conceit that you learn through experience (i.e. doing stuff), not through not-experience (not doing stuff). Encouraging teamwork isn't the DM's role; that's completely under the purview of the players. The game is as cooperative as the players want it to be, which probably averages about 75% for my groups.

The way I handle giving the players what they want is by letting them decide the campaign's course. They want lots of xp, they seek out hard challenges and tougher monsters. They want ensured survival, they accept that they must face lesser challenges and earn lesser rewards. In 5e, I've found that mixed-level parties work very well. I run an "Everyone Starts at First Level" (ES@1) game, and it works great. Just the other night we had two brand-new players with 1st level pcs alongside pcs of 2nd, 5th and 9th levels (two lvl 9 pcs). Guess what? The new players had a great time, really enjoyed themselves and are now into playing more D&D sometime.

The progression of one's character is rewarding, regardless of the progression of others peoples' characters.

 

[billd91]

If that is common practice, its a terrible one. You are a team, and so it is in the interest of the whole team to have their deceased party member back. Why wouldn't everyone chip in?

Diff'rent strokes for diff'rent folks. Can we tone back the badwrongfunism in this thread?

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[iserith]

I don't see the solutions as mutually exclusive and am currently in a position where I am going to have to start cracking down on one my players. We start at 3pm, plenty of time to get up, get ready, do your chores, and come on over. But what has started as arriving fashionably late has progressed to the extreme yesterday of being 3 hours late and then when he arrived telling us he still had more errands to run. He's a good player and a good person, and I'm not sure why he doesn't value this commitment anymore, it may simply be a matter of neither myself nor the other DM putting their foot down on his lateness.

Sure, I agree that people should keep their commitments or honestly communicate when they cannot do so anymore. But I don't think a game mechanic is the solution here. I would just tell the player we need someone more reliable in a regular spot, recruit someone else, and tell him he's welcome to jump in, if he can, when someone else can't make it.

This is also why I always have four regular players, plus two alternates who are on standby in case a regular can't make it. As a result, my games are rarely short a player and there's no drama when life happens.

 

[manduck]

Our group still gives absent players full xp and we treat it like their character was there, contributing however was appropriate. Were we in the middle of a dungeon when the players missed? No problem, the character was still there battling monsters and helping search for secrets or traps in the background. We're we looking for someone in a big city? The character was out helping to gather information. Just because a player wasn't there doesn't mean that their character suddenly ceased to exist or lapsed into a coma or something. If something big happens, like the party is captured or defeated, then the character shares that fate. We don't kill off the character of an absent player though. Denying xp or killing a character just serve to punish a player who simply had something come up. Life happens. Not everyone can make every session and some people can attend more sessions than others. We're there to have fun. No one gets left behind if they get busy and miss a few games. Plus the DM doesn't have to worry about encounter balance with a party of mixed level heroes. Keep it clean and simple. The characters exist in the game world. They are part of the adventure. So everyone contributes. In some cases, and I've run my games this way, we decided not to even track xp at the player level. The DM just keeps track from the encounters and tells the party they can level up. The players don't know how much xp they have.

 

[iserith]

I was just chiming in on that particular discussion. I fully believe in the use of individual XP outside of this, thankfully rare, circumstance of dealing with problem players.

What are the guidelines your group uses for how is "individual XP" handed out? If you've addressed this in another post, apologies, but please point it out to me as I've been travelling and catching up on this thread sporadically.

Because my players have multiple characters, not all active at the same time, it only makes sense that they would not all be the same level. For instance, if a character dies and the party undertakes a quest to revive them, the dead character doesn't continue earning XP while dead. The player can still participate by running an alternate charcter, who may or may not be the same level as the dead character. As characters retire (either due to max level or player fickleness) it is easy to continually introduce new characters at low levels as every player has characters along the power spectrum. This allows a continuous rolling campaign that doesn't have to hit the reset button every time characters get too advanced. If you play with a fixed level party, and say they are all level 15...How do you handle a player expressing the desire to try a new character concept? Start them at 15? My players would balk at that. They enjoy seeing their charatcer grow from nothing to world-shaker. The party's constituents in each session ebb and flow organically due to player desire and story needs. Player advancement is taken as a very individual thing, celebrated, and not at all guaranteed. To me, replacing this with a party-wide equality system or milestone based levelling would rip the heart out of the game and replace it with something sterile. Yes I feel strongly about that.

Yes, a player wanting a new character could come in at whatever level the party is in our game. It's exceedingly rare that this happens though. Characters tend to get very highly developed over time in our games, so giving one up is pretty hard in my experience. Sometimes what will happen is a player will have a good idea for a character that fits the emerging story really well for a short time, so he or she will play that character for a limited run, then bring back the main character. This is kind of like a "guest star" on a TV show.

Experience points in my game are handled via a party pool to which everyone individually contributes and which is continually updated during play (generally after every scene). XP is given for combat, exploration, social interaction, and demonstrating intra-party character ties. The more everyone individually contributes - each in their own way - the faster the party advances, and we do level-ups on the spot. So it benefits everyone when all players are present and participating in good faith, but nobody gets left behind in terms of advancement for missing a game. It also allows players of different strengths, both in terms of player skill and character build, to cover for each other in terms of earning XP. Combat Gal benefits from having Actor Guy on the team with her and vice versa, for example.

Having given XP only to those in attendance in the past, I much prefer this method.

 

[sleypy]

Not in my games. Raising is very rare in my games. That said, it still didn't usually happen in games where it was common. If you could go raise them quickly, it was done. If you couldn't due to time pressures or whatever, then the person just made a new PC. The adventure would often take weeks of real time to complete and nobody wanted to wait around for possibly a month or two to play again.

I usually don't have resurrection spell in my games either. If it happens, it is going to be done for story related reasons not by expending resources. Usually, I would have the player make a new character, but if they don't have one ready. I'd just make them DM assistant and give them a monster or NPC to run with until the end of the session.

 

[MG.0]

What are the guidelines your group uses for how is "individual XP" handed out? If you've addressed this in another post, apologies, but please point it out to me as I've been travelling and catching up on this thread sporadically.

XP is handed out for combat (in most cases). It is also given for problem solving, roleplaying, overcoming obstacles, and more. In many ways I use it the way inspiration is described in 5th edition (I don't particularly care for inspiration as written). Where another DM might award inspiration, I award XP.

The more everyone individually contributes - each in their own way - the faster the party advances, and we do level-ups on the spot.

We require downtime and training to level.

 

[TheFindus]

I just need to point out that characterizing not awarding xp for things you didn't do as 'punishment' is one of the big divides here. You see withholding xp as a punishment, whereas I (and I suspect Lanefan, and others) see awarding xp as a reward. From one perspective, everyone is entitled to the same xp; from the other, nobody is, and it must be earned actively.

In my opinion XP can be seen as a reward or a pacing device. The people I play with use it as a pacing device.

However, on a practical note, I know about discussions regarding individual XP after a session. I have experienced them firsthand. So the DM passes out different XP to different players for their PC. Somebody asks for a reason for the differences. DM explains his or her view. A discussion develops and everybody chimes in why A should not get more XP than B. DM eventually says: it is my decision, I am the DM. Everybody else cries: argument from authority does not count, if you make a ruling, you have to explain your reasoning. You are only as powerful as we let you be.

In the end, after a lengthy tiresome debate, everybody agrees that 1) the DM probably gives everybody the same amount of XP most of the time, 2) everybody at the table has good and bad days and 3) the most important thing is that we all play together (Disney-D&D-moment: let's all be friends, fade to end screen and music...).
So we decide to skip the individual XP thing and just pass out XP equally and use them as a pacing device.

And that is where I am coming from.

As usual, this divide boils down to a difference in playstyles. Neither is objectively right or wrong, but one might be wrong or right for a given group.

Correct. There is literally no greater truth in roleplaying than this.

Well, partially, but encouraging certain behaviors is exactly what xp does. Players are far more likely to do things that get xp rewards. They tend to look for ways to get more xp, whether by fighting bigger, badder monsters in a system where xp come from monsters, by accumulating treasure in an xp-for-gp system, by working towards completing the story or plot they're running through in a system that awards xp for advancing the story, etc.

I'd say that (for those of us using xp) it's well worth looking at what activities provide xp, and if we want to encourage a certain playstyle, to bear in mind that xp are a great tool for motivating players toward that playstyle. Skipping xp and awarding levels at milestones falls under the same principle; it's pushing the players to follow the story or hit those milestones (whatever they might be).

I have never as a player looked for the best way to get XP. I know that in the old Dragonlance modules, the Gates of Thorbadin have a gp value in case you rip them out of the mountain and use the spell Shrink to take them with you. But "more XP in a better way" has never been my style of play. As a DM, I have catered to that style of play for a while, but found that a much stronger incentive for the players I play with is a story hook that connects deeply with something the player wants his/her PC to be challenged with. Since then, XP have pretty much become more of a background thing.

 

[MG.0]

However, on a practical note, I know about discussions regarding individual XP after a session. I have experienced them firsthand. So the DM passes out different XP to different players for their PC. Somebody asks for a reason for the differences. DM explains his or her view. A discussion develops and everybody chimes in why A should not get more XP than B. DM eventually says: it is my decision, I am the DM. Everybody else cries: argument from authority does not count, if you make a ruling, you have to explain your reasoning. You are only as powerful as we let you be.

I give out individual XP at the moment it is earned, so everyone knows exactly why someone got XP. Holding it until the end of the session would just confuse people and muddy the link between the action and the reward.

edit:

In a session the other night the party was hanging with a group of NPC's in a town where a bit of a carnival was going on. There were some roleplaying opportunities, but the main attraction were games of skill with some specific chances to apply player abilitites to gain an advantage. Most players had their characters participate, and a couple really embraced the idea and went all out in trying to find creative ways to win. One player (someone new to the game and to D&D in general) decided to do nothing but watch. As each event completed I started awarding XP to the contestants. Creative play got bonus XP. Immediately the new player engaged and began participating, and other players started coming up with wierder and funnier approaches to the contests. We actually completed the entire session without a single combat and even the normally hardcore-combat oriented players were laughing and having a blast. (If the players hadn't reacted as positively, the carnival would have been cut short and regular combat encounters would have been possible.)

I don't feel group XP would have given me the same results. It's possible with some groups it might, but I think I know my players pretty well.