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<blockquote data-quote="dkyle" data-source="post: 5855901" data-attributes="member: 70707"><p>Quest XP was pretty standard, I think, but I didn't think adjusting combat XP was all that common. But my experience with early D&D is very limited.</p><p></p><p>Of course, very early on, most XP was from treasure, and that was tied directly to what treasure table the monster you fought had.</p><p></p><p>But the salient issue is that XP wasn't always an "encounter design" tool. It was a reward, nothing more or less. Creating "fair" encounters wasn't really the point. If the random encounter table says you encounter "Orcs", then you roll for how many. It could be 1. Or it could be hundreds.</p><p></p><p>In 3.5, we got the CR system, but it didn't work very well. It was confusing, and general game balance problems made it rather superfluous.</p><p></p><p>XP as measure of challenge was new for 4E. And I think it works quite well. But it relies on a few important assumptions: an encounter will have total XP of (standard monster XP of level [party level +/- 4]) * party size, that monsters will not deviate more than 7 levels from the party, that monsters are present and free to act from the start, and that parties will get short rests between them. Those are important assumptions, because it forms a context the monster will be used in; how big of an encounter it'll be part of.</p><p></p><p>The problem in the L&L article is with trying to generalize that to Adventure XP pools, and have that XP value make sense whether the monster is alone, or in a group with a bunch of others. And I don't think that really works. Once you take away that encounter context, a simple XP amount is not a good measure of challenge. Adding in some kind of "overhead" XP, counted against that Adventure pool, for additional monsters per encounter could work, but then we're basically back to Encounter-based design, which is what a lot of traditional D&D players don't like, and what I think Mike was trying to avoid.</p><p></p><p>In addition, if that Overhead XP is purely DM judgement, then I don't think there's much point in having the system. If you standardize on assumptions of monsters per encounter and encounters per adventure, then you're basically just back to 4E-style encounter design.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="dkyle, post: 5855901, member: 70707"] Quest XP was pretty standard, I think, but I didn't think adjusting combat XP was all that common. But my experience with early D&D is very limited. Of course, very early on, most XP was from treasure, and that was tied directly to what treasure table the monster you fought had. But the salient issue is that XP wasn't always an "encounter design" tool. It was a reward, nothing more or less. Creating "fair" encounters wasn't really the point. If the random encounter table says you encounter "Orcs", then you roll for how many. It could be 1. Or it could be hundreds. In 3.5, we got the CR system, but it didn't work very well. It was confusing, and general game balance problems made it rather superfluous. XP as measure of challenge was new for 4E. And I think it works quite well. But it relies on a few important assumptions: an encounter will have total XP of (standard monster XP of level [party level +/- 4]) * party size, that monsters will not deviate more than 7 levels from the party, that monsters are present and free to act from the start, and that parties will get short rests between them. Those are important assumptions, because it forms a context the monster will be used in; how big of an encounter it'll be part of. The problem in the L&L article is with trying to generalize that to Adventure XP pools, and have that XP value make sense whether the monster is alone, or in a group with a bunch of others. And I don't think that really works. Once you take away that encounter context, a simple XP amount is not a good measure of challenge. Adding in some kind of "overhead" XP, counted against that Adventure pool, for additional monsters per encounter could work, but then we're basically back to Encounter-based design, which is what a lot of traditional D&D players don't like, and what I think Mike was trying to avoid. In addition, if that Overhead XP is purely DM judgement, then I don't think there's much point in having the system. If you standardize on assumptions of monsters per encounter and encounters per adventure, then you're basically just back to 4E-style encounter design. [/QUOTE]
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