Level Up (A5E) You don't hate exploration, you hate survival

[lolsworth]

I just think a video game can handle minutiae a lot better than a table top game. You can add depth to a food system without adding tons of pages you have to go through, and the feedback doesn't have to filter through a human trying to remember when you need to do, say, a Thirst Check while also managing a story and NPCs and stuff.

Do you (or anyone) have an example of a game that does it well?

Is what I was trying to get at

 

[lichmaster]

My issue with milestones is that you miss out on feeling a sense of accomplishment on a small scale, but only on a large one. Ultimately it really doesn't matter what you do; you can drift along at the back of the group and still level so long as the party crossed the DMs arbitrary line, which if it has any basis at all is solely narrative, ie, you level when it is appropriate to the story that you level. Not my preference.

XPs are actually just hidden milestones: each encounter is per se is seen as a milestone, and the progression itself of character is measured in terms of encounters required. It's all plainly there.
The fact that someone decides not to follow the largely arbitrary and inconsistent guidelines giving there shouldn't be a basis for disliking milestones. But I do understand that some people feel rewarded and accomplished only if they see a number "going up"

 

[Micah Sweet]

XPs are actually just hidden milestones: each encounter is per se is seen as a milestone, and the progression itself of character is measured in terms of encounters required. It's all plainly there.
The fact that someone decides not to follow the largely arbitrary and inconsistent guidelines giving there shouldn't be a basis for disliking milestones. But I do understand that some people feel rewarded and accomplished only if they see a number "going up"

Way to simplify and insult a preference.

 

[Xethreau]

I agree resource's mean nothing in 5e. Short and long rests being codified broke what was left of resources mattering. i've more than once called 5e the "anime version" of D&D

I will say that I disagree with this take fundamentally. 4e had both short and long rests, but that was a fundamental aspect of how resource management worked in 4e.

Which is to say that, for all its faults (including being "too anime," which also isn't a problem for me), resource management (particularly XP per level) worked in 4e.

 

[lichmaster]

Way to simplify and insult a preference.

Insulting is definitely not the intention, but it's my post justed wanted to show xp for what they are: simply a measure of advancement that is normally distributed in chunks.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Insulting is definitely not the intention, but it's my post justed wanted to show xp for what they are: simply a measure of advancement that is normally distributed in chunks.

It's also a way to reward individual effort, which is why I preferred different experience tables for different classes. If everyone always levels up at the same time, individual effort is meaningless.

 

[SteveC]

As someone who uses Milestone levelling, I would say you really need to put things into place to encourage activity that would gain XP but aren't part of that progression. Awarding XP tells people what they did was important, since it moved them forward in a tangible way. In that way, what you give XP for, you see more of.

If you just Milestone, you lose out on the sidequests or interesting activity that suddenly isn't rewarded. That's why I call it out. I give out Hero Points (in PF2) or Inspiration in 5E. And I let people store up multiple Inspiration so it is something that they just don't ignore once they have it. That's how I call out stuff I want to see more of when I can't reward it with XP.

 

[nevin]

It's also a way to reward individual effort, which is why I preferred different experience tables for different classes. If everyone always levels up at the same time, individual effort is meaningless.

true but we have a three generations of trophy kids who all got trophies when they lost playing D&D now. I suspect that's the reason for the focus only on group rewards.

 

[nevin]

Of course when magic items weren't passe and bad they were a good way to reward players.

As someone who uses Milestone levelling, I would say you really need to put things into place to encourage activity that would gain XP but aren't part of that progression. Awarding XP tells people what they did was important, since it moved them forward in a tangible way. In that way, what you give XP for, you see more of.

If you just Milestone, you lose out on the sidequests or interesting activity that suddenly isn't rewarded. That's why I call it out. I give out Hero Points (in PF2) or Inspiration in 5E. And I let people store up multiple Inspiration so it is something that they just don't ignore once they have it. That's how I call out stuff I want to see more of when I can't reward it with XP.

Awarding XP happens for unimportant things too when the party decides to go the wrong way, refuses to do the main quest and does a side quest or just jacks around in town and gets crossways with the guards. XP simply rewards play. Milestone XP rewards the Railroad and only the railroad.

 

[SteveC]

Awarding XP happens for unimportant things too when the party decides to go the wrong way, refuses to do the main quest and does a side quest or just jacks around in town and gets crossways with the guards. XP simply rewards play. Milestone XP rewards the Railroad and only the railroad.

Or, you know, you can always reward different things in different ways. Like I just talked about. There are different kinds of games that can all be fun. You do you and I'll do me. I suspect both of our groups of players will have fun. And as someone who's playing a bard with a Doss Lute, magic items are still awesome.