D&D 5E XP Multiplier

[Tony Vargas]

I can't think of any reason that the encounter XP calculation would take more than a minute. Am I missing something?

Adjusting & re-calculating the encounter... ?

 

[jgsugden]

Again. I don't object to milestone advancement. I do object to the argument that milestone advancement is good because to do otherwise is a "punishment for having a life outside of D&D."

You'Re free to object, but I encourage you to be on the watch for players that feel this way, and if you find them put yourself in their shoes.

As for fighting a CR 9 fire giant at 3rd level or other monsters of much greater CR than the party, I've seen players do this plenty... and succeed. They do so by fighting on terms favorable to them and not the monster. If you're going toe-to-toe with a fire giant at 3rd level, as DM I wish you the best of luck, but you shouldn't be surprised if you are smashed into a fine pulp. Maybe try a different tactic next time.

I don't disagree that a well designed, careful, prepared 3rd level party can take a fire giant with no losses. However, you've just precluded players from playing a lot of personality types that are fun by creating an environment with no tolerance for risk of any type.

In a game where we strive to make fun characters, with fun personalities, to tell heroic stories... which all turn on the roll of the dice... Thrusting underpowered characters into extreme danger can give you a heroic tale, but far more often is just a frustrating smack down.

No more to say.

 

[iserith]

You'Re free to object, but I encourage you to be on the watch for players that feel this way, and if you find them put yourself in their shoes.

I'll work hard to win them over.

I don't disagree that a well designed, careful, prepared 3rd level party can take a fire giant with no losses. However, you've just precluded players from playing a lot of personality types that are fun by creating an environment with no tolerance for risk of any type.

That's not borne out by my experience. Players take tons of risks. It's also a popular personal characteristic (trait, ideal, bond, flaw) to be prone to taking risks in my games. That's so players can reliably get Inspiration by doing things like taking risks. As usual, they tend do stuff they're rewarded to do and risk-taking is generally something I want to reward. A reasonable amount of failure mitigation is normal in my view. To go back to the original topic as to adjusted XP and difficult, this is how they reduce the difficulty of the challenge.

In a game where we strive to make fun characters, with fun personalities, to tell heroic stories... which all turn on the roll of the dice... Thrusting underpowered characters into extreme danger can give you a heroic tale, but far more often is just a frustrating smack down.

One would hope it would be the players thrusting themselves into such dangers. (Okay, that sounded weird.) I didn't thrust the players into a situation where they had to fight the chain devil I mentioned upthread, for example. The players chose to do that. Is there not a choice on whether and how to engage in some games?

 

[Yunru]

Can we please just ignore Saelorn's attempts at thread derailment to enforce her One True Wat. People like that don't change and won't admit they're wrong, because to them, they're not.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

meta-gaming is definitionally the antithesis of role-playing

See previous comment re: idiosyncratic definitions.

I will absolutely look down at anyone who claims to support role-playing while also espousing the merits of meta-gaming, as those trolls are a plague on the entire hobby, and rightly deserve to be shunned.

Let me remind you: the current target of your ire is people who with respect to absent players follow the printed core rules. So maybe a bit less with the "These people are literally evil for listening to the rulebook instead of me" and more with the "I personally dislike this rule and prefer to use an alternative", eh?

 

[Maxperson]

You might be surprised. I've played in more games than I've run, and many followed the experience point system in the books. Those systems created more ill will than my system by far. It resulted in less feelings of 'rewarded for being there' than you describe and more feelings of 'punished for having real responsibilities outside the game'. Further, when PCs fall behind in power relative to other characters, it becomes harder for them to contribute equally to the story. The game is more fun when all PCs are theoretically equal in power.

The punished feeling is probably the least of the reasons why I don't penalize players for showing up. I give full XP to the characters of players who miss a game. When my players asked me why I do that(they didn't when they DMd), I explained that since the characters are there and participating in the danger and resource use for the benefit of the rest of the group, they should get full exp. After all, if they died in combat the player would lose his character. It's not cool(read fair) for the players to have the risk of loss when they don't show up, but not benefit of gain. Second, I also explained how penalizing those characters for players not showing up actually punishes the players who do show up. By weakening the other characters as they fall behind in levels, they are putting their own characters at greater risk in the encounters I plan.

Once I put it to them in those terms, they unsurprisingly had no further problems with me giving exp to those who didn't play.

 

[Maxperson]

Sure, but you can always just give XP-and-a-half or doubled to characters who are behind. They catch up fast.

I've seen people say this before. I have to ask, though, what's the point? If you're just going to quickly catch them back up by giving them more, why penalize them in the first place?

 

[TheCosmicKid]

I've seen people say this before. I have to ask, though, what's the point? If you're just going to quickly catch them back up by giving them more, why penalize them in the first place?

Well, there are lots of reasons a character could be behind. Giving them XP-and-a-half is a just a general solution for making that a temporary situation, whatever the cause. As for this specific circumstance, if you think of it as a penalty (I don't, but for the sake of argument), then yeah, it's a temporary penalty, but lots of penalties are temporary. They're still penalties. "If you're just gonna let your kid off time-out in thirty minutes, what's the point of putting them on time-out in the first place?"

 

[BoldItalic]

If you multiply the XP awarded to the players to allow for monster numbers, and if the players know that you will be doing it, a cunning player can use a "bag of rats" ploy to work the system. On encountering three monsters, say, with a multiplier of x2, the PC drops a bag of 8 rats to inflate the number of monsters present to 11, thus increasing the multiplier to x3 for no great risk. After defeating the regular monsters, the PC scoops up his rats and pops them back into the bag for next time. The party get no XP for the rats themselves, but they get extra XP for free because of the multiplier.

Now, you can accuse the player of 'cheating' and 'metagaming' if you like, but you have set up the situation where that is rewarded so it's your own fault.

Personally, I use the XP guidelines to work out what is reasonable for adventure pacing but use milestones to award levels because then I know what level the party will be at the start of the next episode.

This is the One True Way and everyone else must adopt it. Anyone who doesn't is having badwrongfun, regardless of what the rules say, and the thought police will be around to confiscate their books and dice.

 

[Yunru]

If you multiply the XP awarded to the players to allow for monster numbers, and if the players know that you will be doing it, a cunning player can use a "bag of rats" ploy to work the system. On encountering three monsters, say, with a multiplier of x2, the PC drops a bag of 8 rats to inflate the number of monsters present to 11, thus increasing the multiplier to x3 for no great risk. After defeating the regular monsters, the PC scoops up his rats and pops them back into the bag for next time. The party get no XP for the rats themselves, but they get extra XP for free because of the multiplier.

Now, you can accuse the player of 'cheating' and 'metagaming' if you like, but you have set up the situation where that is rewarded so it's your own fault.

Personally, I use the XP guidelines to work out what is reasonable for adventure pacing but use milestones to award levels because then I know what level the party will be at the start of the next episode.

This is the One True Way and everyone else must adopt it. Anyone who doesn't is having badwrongfun, regardless of what the rules say, and the thought police will be around to confiscate their books and dice.

Quibble: That'd only work if the rats are hostile.

Problem: I'm not sure which button on the app is laugh.