WotC Milestone leveling in WotC editions?

[Voadam]

2e had individual awards for class-based things- for instance, thieves got xp for stealing gold- but there was no 'quest xp' until 4e.

(Speaking of cool 4e innovations that were thrown out with the bath water...)

2e gave xp for overcoming monsters.

It had story awards as a core part as well though.

2e DMG page 68:

"The other group award [other than overcoming monsters] is that earned for the completion of an adventure. This award is determined by the DM, based on the adventure’s difficulty. There is no formula to determine the size of this award, since too many variables can come into play. However, the following guidelines may help.
The story award should not be greater than the experience points that can be earned defeating the monsters encountered during the adventure. Thus if the DM knows there are roughly 1,200 experience points worth of monsters, the story award should not exceed this amount.
The story award should give a character no more than 1⁄10th the experience points he needs to advance a level. This way the character will have to undertake several adventures before he can advance to the next level."

The individual awards class awards for things like rogues and gold, fighters and more fighting, spellcasters casting spells was an optional rule in the 2e DMG.

 

[Voadam]

3e had story awards as a variant xp option as well.

3.0 DMG page 168:

 

[payn]

3e had story awards as well as a variant xp option.

3.0 DMG page 168:

View attachment 342400

Yeap, was gonna say not that innovative to 4E.

 

[Celebrim]

While it wasn't a formal part of the 1e rules, the notion of awarding XP to a party for completing an adventure irrespective of having acquired money or defeated monsters did exist in published scenarios. The one that is most notable to me is the award for "defeating" Acererak in S1 Tomb of Horrors, but in my head I remember others that I'd need to look up to verify (pretty sure UK1 Beyond the Crystal Cave has the same concept despite no evil bad to defeat). This isn't the same as "milestone leveling" but it is aligned with story rewards and the lack of official mention shouldn't necessarily mean much, as plenty of procedures of play were documented outside of the official rules and became fairly widespread. For example "roll below attribute" as save versus particular ability score (often Dexterity) as generic saving throw mechanic appeared in published modules but not the rules.

Story rewards show up as a formal rule in 2e.

Early adventure paths in 1e AD&D informally enforced milestone levelling through the overly abundant treasure in those modules (well above and beyond the guidelines in the published rules) which would power level almost any party that completed the adventure up to the level necessary to play the next module in the series.

 

[Lanefan]

2e had individual awards for class-based things- for instance, thieves got xp for stealing gold- but there was no 'quest xp' until 4e.

(Speaking of cool 4e innovations that were thrown out with the bath water...)

When we took out xp-for-gp in about 1983 we added in the idea of a "dungeon bonus" to (in small part) make up the difference, and thus beat 4e to the punch by about 25 years. At the completion of each discrete*1 adventure or mission each character gets a block of xp usually based on how many days the character was around for.

So, if it's a 10-day adventure but one character only came in on day 6 and another two died on day 8, the one coming in on day 6 would only get 50% dungeon bonus and the ones who died*2 would only get 80%. The rationale is that these xp make up for all the trivial little day-to-day things - exploration, making camp, keeping watch, etc. - that would normally accrue xp but that I just can't be arsed to track.

Usually the dungeon bonus is considerably less than the adventure has already given them, but I'll boost it if an adventure doesn't otherwise give many xp.

*1 - where such can be defined, which is most but not all of the time.
*2 - and yes this sometimes leads to sitations where a character bumps while dead!

 

[Lanefan]

While it wasn't a formal part of the 1e rules, the notion of awarding XP to a party for completing an adventure irrespective of having acquired money or defeated monsters did exist in published scenarios. The one that is most notable to me is the award for "defeating" Acererak in S1 Tomb of Horrors, but in my head I remember others that I'd need to look up to verify (pretty sure UK1 Beyond the Crystal Cave has the same concept despite no evil bad to defeat). This isn't the same as "milestone leveling" but it is aligned with story rewards and the lack of official mention shouldn't necessarily mean much, as plenty of procedures of play were documented outside of the official rules and became fairly widespread.

Pharoah (I3) - an early-era module - has a similar "story reward" at its end.

 

[the Jester]

2e gave xp for overcoming monsters.

It had story awards as a core part as well though.

2e DMG page 68:

"The other group award [other than overcoming monsters] is that earned for the completion of an adventure. This award is determined by the DM, based on the adventure’s difficulty. There is no formula to determine the size of this award, since too many variables can come into play. However, the following guidelines may help.
The story award should not be greater than the experience points that can be earned defeating the monsters encountered during the adventure. Thus if the DM knows there are roughly 1,200 experience points worth of monsters, the story award should not exceed this amount.
The story award should give a character no more than 1⁄10th the experience points he needs to advance a level. This way the character will have to undertake several adventures before he can advance to the next level."

The individual awards class awards for things like rogues and gold, fighters and more fighting, spellcasters casting spells was an optional rule in the 2e DMG.

I stand corrected!

I totally don't remember ever using or even reading that.

 

[cbwjm]

I stand corrected!

I totally don't remember ever using or even reading that.

It's something I liked enough to bring into 5e. I have major and minor rewards, a major xp award is 10% of the xp needed to reach next level, a minor reward is 5%. I often use minor rewards for story elements that don't necessarily include combat encounters but are still significant. Major rewards are basically concluding what might be called a chapter.

In the last game I ran, when the PCs negotiated with the remaining orc tribe members to join them against the horde led by an ogre, they got a minor reward. Then, after they completed the battle, in addition to other xp earned, I gave them a major story reward. They earned few minor rewards when they travelled the through the feywild as well.

 

[DarkCrisis]

Milestone is fine for 5E because every class has the same XP amounts etc

It doesn't quite work for old school stuff due to the different xp/leveling rates.

 

[Distracted DM]

Are we talking about milestone experience rewards (quest xp), or story-based leveling? The 5e DMG defines them: milestone is quest xp =/= story-based leveling is "you killed strahd, you level up. But people conflate the two terms often.