Non-combat Experience

[Li Shenron]

So, does anybody have a system or guidelines or anything for assigning XP value to non-combat achievements and encounters?

I don't have a system, I have usually eyeballed an XP award based on how much of an achievement the completion of a task feels, including an evaluation of the effort and creativity but also whether the consequences are relevant for the story.

My only suggestion is to be careful about adding it to the combat XP. Make sure the total suits your preferred speed of advancement.

In other words, don't just ADD those to a campaign where combats are normally frequent, unless you want faster advancement. If you have fewer combats than average then it's ok. Otherwise consider slashing the combat XP.

 

[clearstream]

I'm looking for advice or suggestions for awarding experience for non-combat encounters and activity. The DMG rather unhelpfully points me toward the chapter on creating combat encounters, which has nothing to say about how to assign a CR equivalent, say, to a non-combat challenge.

I know the easy answer to this question is "milestones," but I find that using milestones boils down to "you level up when I want you to." I'm trying to reduce that DM fiat aspect and make it into more of a system. I don't like the idea that as DM I decide when the players level up; I think that should be decided by what the players do.

So, does anybody have a system or guidelines or anything for assigning XP value to non-combat achievements and encounters?

For my campaign, if an encounter has a chance of failure and loss, I award XP for it.

The CR relates to the likelihood of failure and the severity of the loss. With a bit of practice, you can estimate the encounter - easy, medium, hard, deadly - and associate a CR with it based on the thresholds for a combat encounter. As a rule of thumb, easy and medium encounters are only attritional (no chance of death) while hard and deadly encounters are lethal (chance of death). So if the risk is a set back or material cost, most likely it is an easy or medium encounter. If the risk is death of one or more party members, most likely it is hard or deadly.

For example, my PCs were summoned before the Deepking. The encounter focused on social skills. There was a small chance of being flung in the Deepking's forges and burned to death. I rated it a Hard encounter and awarded XP accordingly.