How do you handle Experience Points?

[Warbringer]

In my home brew Xperia has been replaced with plot points.

Each level a character needs 10 plot points.

Like Defcon, players are awarded points for challenges that

1. Have a significant risk to the individual or party
2. Move the plot forward for the player or the party

This generates 1-3 plot points a session on average.

(Think of it as just 10% increments ox Xp per level)

Also in a completely ga its approach characters have a number of equipment points equal to the plot points they have accumulated through adventuring. These are spend on equipment, magic items, or even lifestyle (poverty, comfortable, wealthy, royalty - which generate bonuses to skill and social challenges)

All in all, works smoothly, with very little bookkeeping

 

[haakon1]

I generally follow the rules of my chosen edition (3.5), but I add in individual XP awards for:

-- showing up for a session (we don't play often, and if somebody doesn't show, someone else runs their character -- the party is what it is)

-- successful use of skills, e.g. disarming a trap or doing something cool with Diplomacy

-- story successes, like rescuing a prisoner or completing a quest

This approach means that when I ran the Flood Festival session from "The Shackled City", with the fan built elaborate version of the high society ball, there were a lot of role playing and skill challenges to overcome, yet no combat, but the PC's weren't lacking in either fun or XP.

 

[delericho]

For any level-based d20-ish system except D&D 3.5e (that is, just about everything I run), I just have everyone level up once every 3 sessions or so. Even if the player missed one (or even all three!) sessions, the character still levels up.

D&D 3.5e is a bit more trickly, because of the various elements that require the expenditure of XP - crafting items being the big one, but also casting some spells. If I ever run 3.5e again, I think I'll be adopting the "crafting reserve" rules from "Unearthed Arcana" (based on the Artificer, of course), where each character who is able to spend XP gets a reserve based on level that he can spend, with no option to exceed that limit by spending 'real' XP (since they won't have any 'real' XP).

For non-level-based games, I would generally just use the RAW for whatever advancement scheme the game uses. That said, I haven't run anything other than a one-shot in anything non-d20 in a long time.

Edit: Oh, and since many questions these days have a 5e-filter - I don't really care what 5e does. It is my intent to follow the same scheme of "level every 3 sessions", so as long as 5e doesn't do something that prevents that working, I'll be quite happy.

 

[Greenfield]

We use a system suggested by one of the authors, Monte Cook I believe. It's a variant on "Everybody gets equal".

Because PCs aren't all the same level, any given encounter will be more challenging for some than for others.

Let's say my group has characters of 5th, 6th and 7th levels.

Using the PC level v Monster CR table in the DMG, I first calculate the Exp as if everyone was 5th level. That is, take the number from the table, multiply by the number of monsters of that CR, and divide by the total count of characters involved. That's what 5th level characters get.

Now, do it again as if everyone were 6th level. That's what 6th levels get.

Rinse/repeat for every level of PC in the encounter.

It's not 100% fair, since the 5th level still had the back up of 6th and 7th level types, thus lessening the risk/challenge a bit. And the 7th level was operating without full 7th level support, so their risk/challenge was greater than calculated.

The advantage, over all, is that it more accurately represents the actual challenge faced. An incidental side effect is that it tends to close up the level spread. Lower level characters get a bigger slice of the pie, and thus tend to catch up to the bigger guys.

The disadvantage is that it adds tot he DM's work load.

I usually send out Exp to the game group via a bulk e-mail during the week, between sessions. Don't waste F2F table time on paperwork.

 

[pemerton]

I use the 4e rules as written (including DMG2), but in future probably wouldn't. One level per 3 or 4 sessions would produce much the same result without the needless maths.

I've played under a couple DMs who did the "level when you feel like" method in d20. The problem was they rarely gave the level-appropriate treasure and then tended to use monsters 2-8 CR above our level. One DM complained how "every fight I have to fudge the dice rolls" after having level 13 PCs with level 10 treasure (because that was the level we rolled them up to) fighting CR 18 monsters...

That sounds like poor GMing, but I'm not sure that the XP rules are to blame . . .

(Btw, if you don't use the XP rules in 3E, how are you meant to have XP be a cost for spells, items etc?)

 

[Ahnehnois]

(Btw, if you don't use the XP rules in 3E, how are you meant to have XP be a cost for spells, items etc?)

I adopted a replacement system for spells that causes them to deal ability damage to the caster (damage that can't be magically healed) or impose various conditions. It creates real-world consequences for the caster and there are few enough such spells that they can be easily converted to something else.

Magic items I just ignore it. It's generally such a poor decision for an adventuring character to spend a feat on item creation and sit down and do nothing for days or weeks at a time that attaching an additional cost is needless. If I wanted to attach a cost, I'd just emphasize the difficulty of finding materials.

XP costs are one of those few things that I suspect that almost everyone can agree on: no one really likes them. It's just a question of what you want to do about it.

 

[Desdichado]

I'm a little surprised by the results here. I picked that we level whenever we feel like it, but that's not strictly speaking true: I usually grant experience points, but I don't calculate them; they're all ad hoc awards based on how I want to pace advancement in the game.

But I figured that I was out on a limb, so to speak, relative to gamers overall. Turns out I'm on the same page as at least half of the respondants to the poll.

 

[Ahnehnois]

I'm a little surprised by the results here. I picked that we level whenever we feel like it, but that's not strictly speaking true: I usually grant experience points, but I don't calculate them; they're all ad hoc awards based on how I want to pace advancement in the game.

But I figured that I was out on a limb, so to speak, relative to gamers overall. Turns out I'm on the same page as at least half of the respondants to the poll.

Honestly, some of these periodic threads on ENW got me on the path from switching from ad hoc XP to no XP. Can't say anything about the broader community, but on ENW it's definitely a minority who use the XP rules as they're actually written.

 

[Desdichado]

Honestly, some of these periodic threads on ENW got me on the path from switching from ad hoc XP to no XP. Can't say anything about the broader community, but on ENW it's definitely a minority who use the XP rules as they're actually written.

Yeah, the only reason I do full-on ad hoc XP is because when I'm playing D&D specifically, there's crafting and other rules that reference XP points, to some degree. When playing any other d20 game--like Star Wars or d20 Modern, for instance, I completely ignore XP altogether.

Realistically, I don't have to make that concession, because I can't remember a time where we've actually used the crafting, or other XP rules. But I hold on to them anyway, "just in case." And as long as it doesn't really cause me or my players any significant increase in accounting workload, why not, I suppose?

 

[Viking Bastard]

I used to just level up on a whim, but my current group responds quite strongly to XP in a way that previous groups have not, so we used 4e's XP system as-is (with bonus XP for finishing quests or meeting goals). I'm not that fond of the standard D&D XP system, though. I don't really like rewarding XP for body count and while I've learned to appreciate the thought behind rewarding XP for treasure, I'm not enamored by that approach either.

So for my current game, I adopted a system inspired by indie D&D-alikes like Old School Hack and Dungeon World, where you level up by spending Action Points (although we just call them XP):

• You gain XP by overcoming challenges or failing spectacularly.
• You can spend those XP in-game for various benefits (gaining Advantage, some class based-benefits).
• Gaining XP does not count towards a level-up, only spending it does. Spend 20 XP and you gain a level.
• You can only hold 2 unspent XP at once--you will not gain more XP until you spend some.
• Any XP still held at the end of a session is considered automatically spent.

We've been using this system for a few sessions now, and while I'm certain that it will see some fine-tuning through playtesting, it's been really well received by the group.