pogre
Legend
As I recall, PC levels his folks up three or four times a year. It's actually an intriguing idea. I use the method in lots of other RPGs.
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No XP for monster avoidance?
- Thread starter Treebore
- Start date
As I recall, PC levels his folks up three or four times a year. It's actually an intriguing idea. I use the method in lots of other RPGs.
I also subscribe to this method, however I think there are inconsistencies created by using it. For example, what happens if on the way out the PC's can't or don't sneak past the guards and are forced to engage them in combat? If they are victorious are they given XP for the combat? This means they would get double the XP for these creatures. Where does this cycle end? Can they in theory sneak past the guards infinite times gaining XP each time? Has this ever led to system abuse as players try and extract maximum XP from each encounter by bypassing it and then engaging it? If so how do you get around this problem?
Mark
CreativeMountainGames.com
For a couple of my more recent 3.5 weekly campaigns, I had taken to leveling up PCs every two weeks from levels 1 to 9 then each week from there on up until the campaign ends (last time around 17th level). I liked the pacing that engendered.
Hussar
Legend
Honestly, in my last campaign, I did the same thing. I realized that the party was taking roughly the same amount of time in each area, so, I just bumped them about every three sessions and stopped calculating xp. About halfway through the campaign, I did a comparison, using actual xp and the xp I had just ballparked, and, really, it resulted in exactly the same level, although the xp was a bit higher in the ballpark estimate.
Tinker Gnome
Explorer
I wish I could go to a "No XP" model, but my players like XP too much.
the Jester
Legend
Did the pcs' avoidance of the monsters overcome the challenge of the monsters? If so, then I award xp for them.
Back in the 1e days, some article in some old Dragon had a very cool way of using the chart that let you determine a monster's xp value to retune xp awards. One of the examples in the article was a pc wanting to escape from a guard tower; you could look at the guards themselves, the walls, etc. as special abilities (which added to the base xp for a monster of a given hit dice) of the tower itself, rather than as individual monsters for xp purposes... this prolly doesn't make much sense if you aren't familiar with the 1e monster xp value table, though, I realize upon thinking about it.
And, on the tangential subject of the pace of advancement for pcs, I prefer one level about every 4-8 games, with higher levels taking longer.
Back in the 1e days, some article in some old Dragon had a very cool way of using the chart that let you determine a monster's xp value to retune xp awards. One of the examples in the article was a pc wanting to escape from a guard tower; you could look at the guards themselves, the walls, etc. as special abilities (which added to the base xp for a monster of a given hit dice) of the tower itself, rather than as individual monsters for xp purposes... this prolly doesn't make much sense if you aren't familiar with the 1e monster xp value table, though, I realize upon thinking about it.
And, on the tangential subject of the pace of advancement for pcs, I prefer one level about every 4-8 games, with higher levels taking longer.
Tequila Sunrise
Adventurer
I award XP for attaining goals, not for overcoming obstacles on the way. Players rp their PCs much more realistically when monsters aren't walking level-ups.
I have considered dumping XP for monster slaying, and may implement it in a new campaign.
I find treasure a fine "scoring goal" like those in sports. Again, it is not a reward for any isolated incident (just as there are no points simply for hitting or catching the ball in baseball) but rather for a composite of actions. The immediate reward for avoiding a fight is not suffering the consequences of getting into one.
In 4E, treasure by the book is more of an entitlement (and perhaps shorter on gold pieces), but still by default considered important. On the other hand, it looks as if the game is set up so that one could easily strip away the "fluff" of magic items and integrate their effects as character powers.
The allure of treasure reflects a common motivation of adventurers both in history and in sword-and-sorcery fiction. Gold, gems, exceptionally fine armament and so on are traditionally tangible signs of glory. It works very well in the Dungeon exploration scenario from which D&D gets half its name, and the Dragons of the other half are renowned for their hoards.
However, to the extent that the game's level progression scheme reflects literary antecedents, they are mainly "coming of age" stories -- and those are more common in "epic" fantasies a la The Lord of the Rings. In tales of that sort, the driving motivation is beating The Bad Guys.
That typically means a lot of literal beating, slashing, stabbing, etc., with little reason to avoid violence except as a temporary tactic to the end of wreaking worse. If the game is primarily one of war (against Pure Evil, no less), then understandably a body count may be the chief way to score points. I find such a scenario too constraining for my taste, but of course tastes vary.
One can still get a lot of mileage from the basic principle of "XP for treasure". That is, there are objectives to attain (by whatever means the players contrive), securing which scores points. That allows one to avoid "pixel bitching" over each little action, quibbles over what constitutes an "encounter", and so on.
Indeed, this is often used with geographical objectives in strategic war-games. Capturing places of positional, political or economic significance can be a key means to the end of victory.
In other words, treasure is a sort of in-world "token" for the game construct of experience points. It is not at all necessary to use the same representation in order to use the same kind of distribution.
Rescuing Prince Constantine can be worth so many XP, driving the Pirate Queen Valeria from the Gold Coast so many more, winning the alliance of Graustark with Ruritania so many ... whatever suits the style of your campaign!
I find treasure a fine "scoring goal" like those in sports. Again, it is not a reward for any isolated incident (just as there are no points simply for hitting or catching the ball in baseball) but rather for a composite of actions. The immediate reward for avoiding a fight is not suffering the consequences of getting into one.
In 4E, treasure by the book is more of an entitlement (and perhaps shorter on gold pieces), but still by default considered important. On the other hand, it looks as if the game is set up so that one could easily strip away the "fluff" of magic items and integrate their effects as character powers.
The allure of treasure reflects a common motivation of adventurers both in history and in sword-and-sorcery fiction. Gold, gems, exceptionally fine armament and so on are traditionally tangible signs of glory. It works very well in the Dungeon exploration scenario from which D&D gets half its name, and the Dragons of the other half are renowned for their hoards.
However, to the extent that the game's level progression scheme reflects literary antecedents, they are mainly "coming of age" stories -- and those are more common in "epic" fantasies a la The Lord of the Rings. In tales of that sort, the driving motivation is beating The Bad Guys.
That typically means a lot of literal beating, slashing, stabbing, etc., with little reason to avoid violence except as a temporary tactic to the end of wreaking worse. If the game is primarily one of war (against Pure Evil, no less), then understandably a body count may be the chief way to score points. I find such a scenario too constraining for my taste, but of course tastes vary.
One can still get a lot of mileage from the basic principle of "XP for treasure". That is, there are objectives to attain (by whatever means the players contrive), securing which scores points. That allows one to avoid "pixel bitching" over each little action, quibbles over what constitutes an "encounter", and so on.
Indeed, this is often used with geographical objectives in strategic war-games. Capturing places of positional, political or economic significance can be a key means to the end of victory.
In other words, treasure is a sort of in-world "token" for the game construct of experience points. It is not at all necessary to use the same representation in order to use the same kind of distribution.
Rescuing Prince Constantine can be worth so many XP, driving the Pirate Queen Valeria from the Gold Coast so many more, winning the alliance of Graustark with Ruritania so many ... whatever suits the style of your campaign!
I play it the same as many of you have already said ...
1) Did the monsters pose an actual threat/risk to the PCs, yet they still avoided them (be it stealth or diplomacy) etc then, yes to XP
2) If the PCs avoided them simply by happenstance of wandering a different way down the hall, such that the monsters never posed a threat to bypass/over come, then no xp given.
1) Did the monsters pose an actual threat/risk to the PCs, yet they still avoided them (be it stealth or diplomacy) etc then, yes to XP
2) If the PCs avoided them simply by happenstance of wandering a different way down the hall, such that the monsters never posed a threat to bypass/over come, then no xp given.
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