Suggestions on How to Handle Staggered XP Progression

[ourchair]

I just finished running the first chapter of Tomb of Horrors (the published edition, not the DM Rewards one). We're handling the entire adventure as a kind of 'staggered' paragon campaign, to give ourselves a taste of paragon play after a year of heroic tier campaigns currently on hiatus.

Now, my intention is to basically level up the players between each chapter. The adventure goes from Lvl 10, to Lvl 14, to Lvl 18 to Lvl 22. For challenge's sake, I put my players at Lvl 9. So technically, they should be Lvl 13, 17, 21 when I run each succeeding chapter.

However, I don't want to make XP meaningless. I've tracked their XP down to each encounter that they skipped, each puzzle they've overcome and each monster they've felled. This means they didn't do a "100% completion," run (to put it in a videogamey way).

So, how should I level them up for the next adventure? Do I calculate the entire completion and use it as a percentile multiplier for where they are in the next chapter? Do I apply their XP as a differential to the 4 levels they are expected to gain?

What do you think are the pros and cons of each possible way of going about this?

 

[OnlineDM]

When I started DMing 4e early this year, I tracked XP the way you do - you get credit for what you do, and the numbers are the numbers. If the party was really close to leveling up at the end of a session, I might just round up, but that was as far as I would go with fudging anything.

In both of my ongoing campaigns, I've changed my approach over the past couple of months. I have a loose idea of how much adventuring has gotten done, and I tell the party when they've done enough to earn a new level. That tends to be every 2-3 sessions or so.

Despite the fact that some of my players used to eagerly ask about how much XP they had earned at the end of each session, I have had absolutely no push-back from any of them with this change. Everyone seems really happy with it, especially me.

So, my advice is: loosen up when it comes to tracking XP. Make a judgment call about how well the party has done, and set their level appropriately. If they take a "full completion" approach and completely rock an adventure, you could consider giving them a bonus level or half-level (taking them from 9 to 14, or from 9 to 13.5 and the chance of going all the way to 18 if they totally rock the level 13/14 adventure).

Honestly, I have a hard time coming up with any "pros" for closely tracking XP down to the individual point. I use it as a guide for figuring out what a fair challenge is when building encounters, but that's about all.

 

[ourchair]

When I started DMing 4e early this year, I tracked XP the way you do - you get credit for what you do, and the numbers are the numbers. If the party was really close to leveling up at the end of a session, I might just round up, but that was as far as I would go with fudging anything.

In both of my ongoing campaigns, I've changed my approach over the past couple of months. I have a loose idea of how much adventuring has gotten done, and I tell the party when they've done enough to earn a new level. That tends to be every 2-3 sessions or so.

I actually do that already in my other campaigns. Just not for this one.

I'm not so concerned with micro-tracking the XP so much as I'm trying to assess how the approach to one chapter will affect the gains they make before the succeeding chapter.

So, my advice is: loosen up when it comes to tracking XP. Make a judgment call about how well the party has done, and set their level appropriately. If they take a "full completion" approach and completely rock an adventure, you could consider giving them a bonus level or half-level (taking them from 9 to 14, or from 9 to 13.5 and the chance of going all the way to 18 if they totally rock the level 13/14 adventure).

Honestly, I have a hard time coming up with any "pros" for closely tracking XP down to the individual point. I use it as a guide for figuring out what a fair challenge is when building encounters, but that's about all.

I generally calculate XP gained according to the XP spent on building encounters hard -- my players don't often require me to improvise new encounters, or split up in a fashion as to upset the math -- so I've never really needed to work out the math too hard.

This matters to me only because I'm running a published adventure, and skipping sections should matter, just as many previously published WotC adventures like Seekers of the Ashen Crown account for potential XP gaps by inserting disposable encounters as sidebars.

 

[KidSnide]

Now, my intention is to basically level up the players between each chapter. The adventure goes from Lvl 10, to Lvl 14, to Lvl 18 to Lvl 22. For challenge's sake, I put my players at Lvl 9. So technically, they should be Lvl 13, 17, 21 when I run each succeeding chapter.

However, I don't want to make XP meaningless. I've tracked their XP down to each encounter that they skipped, each puzzle they've overcome and each monster they've felled. This means they didn't do a "100% completion," run (to put it in a videogamey way).

The XP system, as described in the core rules, is best designed for a campaign where the character's objectives is simply to destroy as much evil as possible. Then it doesn't matter whether the PCs run through arbitrary dungeons, fight wandering monsters or complete the occasional quest - so long as they are thwarting evil, they advance at a reasonable (or rapid, depending on your point of view) rate.

However, it doesn't work very well when your campaign is based around a particular story. In that sort of game, destroying arbitrary evil isn't relevant -- it's whether you can accomplish the goals of the campaign. In fact, in that type of game, going on a side trek to get a particularly magic sword isn't really an appropriate source of xp. Sure, the PCs can make the strategic advantage that they want the treasure to better accomplish their goals, but it's a side trek away from their goals. Similarly, if the PCs find a clever way to avoid a bunch of fights to get to their primary target faster, they should be rewarded by leveling faster, not punished for missing the expected source of xp.

In a game like Tomb of Horrors, I would identify specific objectives that are worth xp (a lot of xp!) and only track those. You don't want your PCs playing through the Tombs with the goal of clearing the dungeons. It should be to reach the objectives and survive!

-KS

 

[BobTheNob]

However, I don't want to make XP meaningless.

Why not?

(Disclaimer : The following is purely myself and my groups position. If xp works for you, great. Enjoy!)

It took a bit of soul searching, but I ended up asking myself why have XP at all? Well, it gives us a relative measure of character progression and lets us know where that growth occurs in the form of a level advance.

But at the end of the day whats important is that you gain levels. XP is there for a measure of when this should happen. But to me, when you gain levels should be an aspect of campaign growth, not of some abstract number system.

As such, our group has been operating on the basis of gaining levels at key campaign points. I haven't, in the 2 years we have been playing, calculated XP once. Our group started level 1 and is about to hit 16 (one lloonnngg campaign).

Frankly, as a gm I have to be author, adjudicator, encyclopedia, enabler and occasional bastard all rolled into one. I dont need accountant on that list...

 

[WalterKovacs]

Ultimately, the XP here ties to how succesful and/or thorough they were in completing the area during each "delve", before fastforwarding to when they return at a higher level.

While the XP they "missed" could be reflected in them being slightly behind. (i.e. for each encounter they failed or missed in the previous run through, they are that many encounters shy of leveling up in the next one.) Another way to do that is simply through treasure allocation. Each time the character "jumps forward", they'll need to recalculate what kinds of magic items they have. Depending on how that is calculated, the treasure they recieve would also be tied into completion ammount (both directly, a bypassed encounter or failed encounter could result in missing out on treasure; but also it could be in the abstract, as their 'interem' adventures are extrapolated as being equally succesful, and they miss the same approximate ammount of treasure).

For example, an 80% completion rate, would be a loss of about 1 magic item for the group at each level and 20% of the cash.

 

[Shin Okada]

So technically, they should be Lvl 13, 17, 21 when I run each succeeding chapter.

If so, why you don't want to make XP meaningless? You don't intend to fill the "gaps" between each chapter with actual adventures and encounters, right?

Then, XP is not that meaningful anyway.

If you want them to play chapter 2 with level 17th PCs, let them be level 17th PCs.

Also, if you skip the gaps between each chapters, you MUST give them appropriate gear as higher-level PCs. After playing Chapter 1, your PCs suddenly become higher-level PCs with higher level gears. Your players need to "upgrade" their PCs suddenly, not gradually, anyway.

If so, there seem to be no need to bother calculating XPs.

 

[bbjore]

I'm going to throw my name in with those saying if you want the story progression to be the focus of your campaign, and not the constant delve to gain more loot and XP, just do away with the careful tracking. I have never, in decades of gaming, bothered with tracking XP. Characters level when they complete the quest set ahead of them, and I've never had a problem with it. If you like to track XP carefully so that you can reward character's playing well, trying hard, or staying in character, there are other ways to reward such behavior to. The star player of the night gets to pick what sort of item is found in the treasure horde, a token that allows a reroll, divine boons, in character rewards like followers or holdings. There's all kinds of stuff that you can use to reward good play in game. XP does a good job of motivating characters to just adventure, but if you're trying to tell a story, it can interfere. If you still want to use XP, I'd go with some of the above suggestions. Pick some key accomplishments or quests in the adventure, and make them big rewards, like 1/2 the Xp to the next level. Or just make the total XP value for completing one aspect of the adventure just shy of enough to reach a bonus level. Then if you give out XP as a reward, some players start the next session 1 level up, and the rest gain a level half way through. Pick the kind of story you want to use, and then use the tools you've been giving to reinforce that ideal. Because in the end, that's all the rules are, tools you and your group use to tell a story.