[Shackled City] Help! My Players get too much XP!

[Tarril Wolfeye]

I'm running my players through the Shackled City Adventure Path in Dungeon and I noticed a big problem.

There's just too much experience points you can get in the first two adventures. Most of my players will probably attain 7th or maybe even 8th level at the end of "Flood Season".

One of my problems seems to be that my players are thorough in their explorations. They won't miss a single encounter.

Can anybody help me? What should I do to keep them near the expected line? I plan on using all Shackled City adventures.

 

[Sammael]

Halve all the experience awarded?

 

[Minicol]

Sammael's solution seems good. I usually have the same problem with current modules published for 3.0 and I routinely do the same (not every time, though).

 

[Thorin Stoutfoot]

Don't do anything

I'm running my players through the Shackled City Adventure Path in Dungeon and I noticed a big problem.

There's just too much experience points you can get in the first two adventures. Most of my players will probably attain 7th or maybe even 8th level at the end of "Flood Season".

One of my problems seems to be that my players are thorough in their explorations. They won't miss a single encounter.

Can anybody help me? What should I do to keep them near the expected line? I plan on using all Shackled City adventures.

I've not found this to be a problem. If you let nature take its course, you'll discover that this means they'll breeze through the first few encounters of the next adventure in the series, while reaping much fewer xp than they otherwise would from those encounters, so everything balances out.

It's not worth your time to do any further adjustment. Hopefully, after awhile your players realize that they're wasting their time.

 

[Sammael]

I usually only award 1/2, 1/3, or 1/4 the normal amount of XP for combat in my games at any rate, but I give out generous role-playing and story awards. I usually give out 1/2 in published modules (when I use them, which is rarely ever), since they tend to be light on role-playing.

 

[Fieari]

It's a solution that won't sit well with everyone, but I don't give combat xp at all. I give story xp and xp when the players overcome something that CHALLENEGED them, and then on an ad hoc basis for how much they were challenged. Most combat can be considered part of something else. For example, if they need to obtain the mystical gem from the cave, overcome all the traps and defeat the guardian at the end, they get xp based not on the individual encounters, but rather based on the entire cave system.

Which is not calculated, but more of a wishy washy intuition thing... how much do I as the GM think that was worth.

It's a system that's worked well for my group, whether I'm the GM or not. It makes it so that the players don't kill things just to gain experience... since they can can get as much or more by overcomming the obstacle another way.

Edit: To say it another way, instead of looking at the encounter before hand, assigning each thing a DC or EL or whatever, and calculating experience from that, I wait till the players run through whatever, assign the DC or EL based on their actual performance and effort and calculate the xp from that. It's the "based on their actual performance and effort" part that's subjective, not necessarily the actual xp given, since the charts in the DMG are so nice and helpful.

 

[Saeviomagy]

My suggestion for the first adventure would be:

1) Note that you shouldn't hand out full XP when the PC's are not likely to be attacked by an NPC, or when the NPC only intends to capture the PC's. I'd quarter experience if the NPC doesn't intend combat at all, and halve it if the NPC intends to capture the PC's.

2) I'd only hand out experience for gear doors a limited number of times for each type of door. It seems strange that opening every door in the complex (using the appropriate keys no less) would produce large quantities of experience. I wouldn't hand out XP for a gear door if the PC's don't need to pass through it - if they know that there is another route to the far side of the door, no XP.

Finally note that a lot of the NPC's are given EL's even when they don't have any form of conflict with the PC's. Don't hand out this experience.