Why I dislike Milestone XP

[iserith]

Nicely passive aggressive. That specific sentence was a joke. Sadly, you chose to ignore all the constructive things I actually did say that preceded it.

Oh well, cherry picking things to be mad about seems to be par for the course around here.

It was the closest comment of that sort I had at hand. I didn't want to search out other pages of your other similar comments in this thread. I'll follow my own advice at this time.

 

[Oofta]

I'm saying that the real mechanical benefit of making an alliance (or engaging in subterfuge, whatever) should be equivalent to the real mechanical benefit of fighting. If fighting gives you 500xp, then the benefit of not-fighting should also be worth ~500xp. But in a system where levels measure how good you are at fighting, and XP is awarded for fighting, the mechanical benefit of not-fighting would not be XP. Instead, the benefit would be that you don't waste resources (such as HP and spell slots).

Imagine two possible paths for Jim the Ranger:

Going down Path 1, Jim kills everything in his path. Two hours later, he has earned 500xp, found 400sp, and has a +1 longsword. But, he's also down to 12hp, and only has one spell slot left.
Going down Path A, Jim avoids confrontation, through a mixture of stealth and diplomacy. Two hours later, he has earned zero xp, found 100sp, and doesn't have a +1 longsword. But he still has 100hp and 7 spell slots left.

At this point, Jim comes across the Big Bad who had orchestrated this whole scheme, and they aren't willing to negotiate. They are going to battle with Jim, to the death.

If Jim 1 wins, then he goes home with the grand prize: everything he looted earlier, plus XP and loot from the boss, and he's saved the day.
If Jim A wins, then he goes home with a lesser prize: some XP and loot from the boss, plus 100sp, and he's saved the day.
If either Jim loses, then he gets the consolation prize: death, and none of the loot or XP from before.

It's hard to "waste" resources in 5E considering how forgiving it is of resource expenditure. You regain all HP and spells with a long rest. While you may have some other resource that take longer to recover (HD) or you might use some potions that's not very typical.

But in any case, in most games I've played that reward XP, you only get XP for killing things or at least beat them up until they are defeated. This is particularly true in organized play where the DM has less latitude. YMMV.

 

[Oofta]

I can not really speak to AL games, the only ones that I am familiar with are Starfinder and from what I have seen they give you XP equivalents for completing missions and you level after completing a certain number of missions.

But in any case I really dont see being 75 XP short of leveling as a bug, that is an incentive to go back the next time to get your 75 XP. If the DM just levels up your character whenever you want to level up then there is no incentive. If you want to level up before your epic then you will be looking for another game to play. I just dont see the penalty here.

I agree it's working as designed. I think it's just a poor design. Had we run around killing things instead of talking to people I would have been rewarded by gaining a level. In my book, lack of reward is a penalty.

 

[iserith]

Here are the advancement systems I used in the last three campaigns:

The Delve, a town-to-dungeon campaign. PCs earned XP by defeating enemies in combat challenges. PCs earned bonus XP at the end of the session by answering some questions related to genre-appropriate achievements: Did they defeat a notable monster? Did they acquire an interesting treasure? Did they make an ally out of a potential foe? Did anyone nearly die while boldly confronting deadly perils? And so on. (Can't remember all of them offhand.) If they could honestly say "Yes" to those questions, they got the bonus XP. So the players were incentivized to murder things and to achieve particular goals that made sense in context for the focus of that game.

Host of the High Chieftain, an adventure path (Red Hand of Doom, rewritten). Combat challenges and achieving set objectives appropriate to the adventure path were how PCs earned XP. It was a campaign focused on war, so I wanted to incentivize smashing skulls whenever possible; however, the campaign was on a tight timeline and I wanted the players to feel that pressure, so one of the ways I did that was to make wandering monsters worth no XP. This made them not worth the time and effort and worth avoiding in favor of tackling the major set-pieces and quests. Whereas in the previous campaign they would sometimes seek out random monsters to level up lower-level characters, in this campaign it wasn't worth it to do that, so they didn't. This also made them stick close to their caravan (which was a whole other thing that was a big part of the campaign) while they moved around the setting because wandering monsters wouldn't trouble the caravan. So that XP rule reinforced the theme further.

Unity of Rings, a Sigil-based Planescape campaign. Since they mostly interact with intelligent creatures, combat and social interaction challenges are how they earn XP. That way they can decide, based on their current priorities, whether they want to destroy or ally with particular groups (usually other factions). I therefore set up scenes so that either is a possibility in many cases. So far, they do still tend toward violence, but this seems largely due to the players enjoying a good fight, plus the characters themselves tend toward the more Chaotic factions. But it seems to be working fine.

So, really, unless you're running the same basic game over and over again, it's a good idea in my view to examine what's important in the campaign and then structure the advancement system around that. It's just another way to drive the play experience you're aiming for.

 

[Shasarak]

I agree it's working as designed. I think it's just a poor design. Had we run around killing things instead of talking to people I would have been rewarded by gaining a level. In my book, lack of reward is a penalty.

I dont see lack of reward as a penalty. If I have something and you dont that is not a penalty, a penalty would be if I take something from you.

I also have no problem with the idea that players who take more risk earning more reward. That just seems logical to me. Which could explain why I never got to games like Call of Cthulhu which penalises players that take risk.

 

[iserith]

I dont see lack of reward as a penalty.

Agreed. That is a bad perception to have in my view, especially if you know what you have to do to get the reward.

 

[Gardens & Goblins]

That just seems logical to me. Which could explain why I never got to games like Call of Cthulhu which penalises players that take risk.

Unless you consider, 'Everyone you love and everything you know is destroyed by a hideous ancient cosmic entity' something worth taking a risk to prevent, and its prevention* the reward for taking said risk.

Heck, even if they don't pay off, dying horribly or having terrible things happen is part of the appeal. Not a reward for the characters but rather, one for the players!

*...well, for now. Until next time. Ok, we're basically screwed regardless but hey. Beer?

 

[Caliban]

Unless you consider, 'Everyone you love and everything you know is destroyed by a hideous ancient cosmic entity' something worth taking a risk to prevent, and its prevention* the reward for taking said risk.

Heck, even if they don't pay off, dying horribly or having terrible things happen is part of the appeal. Not a reward for the characters but rather, one for the players!

*...well, for now. Until next time. Ok, we're basically screwed regardless but hey. Beer?

Yeah, but you don't get XP. And as we all know, that is the only reward that really matters.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

It's hard to "waste" resources in 5E considering how forgiving it is of resource expenditure. You regain all HP and spells with a long rest. While you may have some other resource that take longer to recover (HD) or you might use some potions that's not very typical.

I agree. It is unfortunate. Unless you do something significant to address those issues, the XP mechanic falls into exactly the trap you mentioned.

It's like, they had all these great ideas to bring back the things that made AD&D so great, but then they made a bunch of changes that directly negated those aspects of the game. They should have picked one way or the other, instead of trying to walk a middle path that fails at everything.

 

[Shasarak]

Unless you consider, 'Everyone you love and everything you know is destroyed by a hideous ancient cosmic entity' something worth taking a risk to prevent, and its prevention* the reward for taking said risk.

Heck, even if they don't pay off, dying horribly or having terrible things happen is part of the appeal. Not a reward for the characters but rather, one for the players!

*...well, for now. Until next time. Ok, we're basically screwed regardless but hey. Beer?

As far as I am aware, CoC was specifically not a game of "preventing everyone you love and everything you know being destroyed by a hideous ancient cosmic entity", it was "this strange thing is happening in a fishing village and....OMG Deep Ones" or "your Uncle dies leaving you the deed to his old Mansion and...OMG Cthulhu". Where investigating the old Tomb meant being killed by Ghouls and where reading the Necronomicon to find the Shogoths weakness meant that when you actually encountered it you were more likely to go mad.