D&D 5E XP tracking vs. story progresion leveling, an observation

I played AD&D from 1981 to 2012, and used XP exclusively (you kinda sorta had to, with how XP tables varied from class to class). In 5e, I've used story progression leveling most often, probably because we play the published campaigns and it's really simple and easy to manage, and everyone has the same XP progression table.

But one thing I noticed? Even though leveling with tracking XP is a bit slower than story progression, it didn't feel like it. And I think I know why. In story progression, if you didn't get to that set point where you leveled and ended the session, it felt like nothing changed. In XP tracking, even if you didn't get enough XP to level up, you got XP and could see the progress to the next level, and knew how close you were. So it felt like you made progress, even if in the large macro perspective you leveled a bit slower than story progression leveling.

I miss that, I think.

I tend to let my players know (given what they are currently doing) when they will level. For instance, in my OotA PbP game, they are 2nd level and trying to get to Sloobludop. They know that when they get there, they will get to level 3. If something comes up and they veer from that path, they will get to 3rd level when they achieve that goal.

But yeah...I like XP better...I'm just too lazy and my groups don't play enough so I like story progression (or advancement per session...as long as they are making good progress) better.

Sacrosanct said:

I played AD&D from 1981 to 2012, and used XP exclusively (you kinda sorta had to, with how XP tables varied from class to class). In 5e, I've used story progression leveling most often, probably because we play the published campaigns and it's really simple and easy to manage, and everyone has the same XP progression table.

But one thing I noticed? Even though leveling with tracking XP is a bit slower than story progression, it didn't feel like it. And I think I know why. In story progression, if you didn't get to that set point where you leveled and ended the session, it felt like nothing changed. In XP tracking, even if you didn't get enough XP to level up, you got XP and could see the progress to the next level, and knew how close you were. So it felt like you made progress, even if in the large macro perspective you leveled a bit slower than story progression leveling.

I miss that, I think.

Click to expand...

I prefer story levelling myself, but I see what you are getting at. 13th Age handles this in a neat way. You get a partial level up in between sessions. Instead of getting all your goodies at once when you reach a new level, you get them spread out. I'm not suggesting this be adopted in 5e, as it wouldn't work, but I just think it's a fun and useful system.
I do find, levelling up is going far too fast in published adventures lately. Okay, it was too slow in the old days, but now...Both Paizo and WOTC have you just flying up.

I prefer XP leveling to story leveling, especially if it draws out leveling more. I'm not a fan of how quick it seems that leveling occurs in vanilla 5e. You barely get used to a PC at a given level and then bang(!), they level up.

Sacrosanct said:

I played AD&D from 1981 to 2012, and used XP exclusively (you kinda sorta had to, with how XP tables varied from class to class). In 5e, I've used story progression leveling most often, probably because we play the published campaigns and it's really simple and easy to manage, and everyone has the same XP progression table.

But one thing I noticed? Even though leveling with tracking XP is a bit slower than story progression, it didn't feel like it. And I think I know why. In story progression, if you didn't get to that set point where you leveled and ended the session, it felt like nothing changed. In XP tracking, even if you didn't get enough XP to level up, you got XP and could see the progress to the next level, and knew how close you were. So it felt like you made progress, even if in the large macro perspective you leveled a bit slower than story progression leveling.

I miss that, I think.

Click to expand...

I can see that. In my Curse of Strahd campaign, I basically broke down each level into a number of "beats" I wanted my party to hit, and gave out XP for those "beats" such that hitting all the beats for a given level granted you enough XP to level up.

Of course, CoS is also really sandboxy, so the party has hit several "beats" for levels above where they are, and their progression isn't exactly linear, but it's basically like populating a dungeon in this way: skip one room, you miss out on a fight and some XP.

It's had kind of an interesting effect on some of the more mechanics-minded players in the party, I think. We've got tangible XP rewards tied to things like experiencing lore and meeting NPC's. If you're a player motivated by that XP reward, you're now looking at the setting differently from the usual "fight some goblins, gain some XP" perspective. It means that fighting can serve no real purpose - if it doesn't pursue some story goal, doing it isn't going to get you to the next level any faster.

I like XP.

That said in CoS I give out huge chunks of XP whenever the characters achieve a goal set by the Tarokka reading.

Almost everything in terms of how a game is designed is a trade-off. My ideal "perfect" game would use XP, we'd play all the time consistently, it'd be very much a game with high verisimilitude and it would be challenging and deadly, etc. But I use milestones primarily at the moment. I have one PbP using xp, and three using milestones, and one real life game using milestones. The reasons all essentially come down to simplifying things for both me and them, especially on these set-path pre-made adventures that might have expectations I do not about encounters per day. Note, the one PbP using XP is also my only fully homebrew game, so that has something to do with it.

If my RL group played more frequently I'd be willing to use XP, but I have to cut down some encounters and some random encounters and such just to make our time frames fit our real life. I mean, you could tinker with XP amounts, but if you're going to "cheat" the system to irk out exactly what you want when you want, just use milestones and call it a day.

Sacrosanct said:

I played AD&D from 1981 to 2012, and used XP exclusively (you kinda sorta had to, with how XP tables varied from class to class). In 5e, I've used story progression leveling most often, probably because we play the published campaigns and it's really simple and easy to manage, and everyone has the same XP progression table.

But one thing I noticed? Even though leveling with tracking XP is a bit slower than story progression, it didn't feel like it. And I think I know why. In story progression, if you didn't get to that set point where you leveled and ended the session, it felt like nothing changed. In XP tracking, even if you didn't get enough XP to level up, you got XP and could see the progress to the next level, and knew how close you were. So it felt like you made progress, even if in the large macro perspective you leveled a bit slower than story progression leveling.

I miss that, I think.

Click to expand...

I'm an advocate of using whatever advancement system speaks to the priorities of the play experience. In my current campaign, The Delve, it's a town-to-dungeon play experience that I wanted to have an "old school" feel (without any of the pitfalls) so we use the standard XP model, with some extra opportunity to earn bonus XP. If your character dies, you're back to the beginning with a 1st-level character. After 10 sessions, the highest level characters are 4th level, bordering on 5th level, but we have probably 20+ characters total on the roster, varying from 1st to 4th level.

When I run my Evil Dead themed Curse of Strahd game, I think I will use quest-based advancement - complete the requisite number of quests and you gain a level. I haven't quite worked it out yet, but I think it will work and still preserve that sense of advancement while keeping players focused. It should also help with a common concern about CoS, which is players wandering into areas where the threats are too deadly for them. It's unlikely they will do that if they have unfinished quests that are preventing them from leveling up.

Straight milestone advancement isn't my favorite, but that could largely be because I'm not running the storyline adventures much. I greatly prefer adventure locations to unfolding plots the players are expected to follow.

"I'm kind of like a banana," I guess. I have points at which I want the party to level, and I'm giving out incremental XP at the end of each session as progress toward those points. It's for exactly the reasons stated: to give the feel of progress, and emphasize that XP can be won for things other than combat -- for social & exploration accomplishments and particularly for not fighting when you could fight but opted not to (such as because it didn't make sense, or because you found a clever way to avoid it).

I use milestone leveling for the same reason why I'm completely fine with overnight healing. Doing it the "old way" ends up giving me almost the exact same results but just with more work... so I just cut out the middleman.

The game has the barest examples about determining what "roleplaying" or "quest" XP should be. Or what things are considered XP-able. Or how much any particular type of roleplaying or quest is worth. They say it should be given out like an "applicable" combat encounter, but I have no real way of knowing how easy or difficult a "roleplaying" scene or "quest" should be or is meant to be, so I end up just guesstimating an amount and handing it out. "What you did tonight is worth... uh... 700?... experience points, plus an extra 345 for the monsters you killed." At that point... since I'm just choosing random numbers that seem to "make sense" based on level to give for roleplaying and quest XP (and thus am really just determining how many sessions they will have until characters are going to level up anyway)... I don't even bother wasting my time anymore. I aim for like an average of 3 sessions because that's usually how long it takes to complete a specific "chapter" of the story, and at the end of the short chapter I level people up. And if they've fought monsters during that time, their reward for that is the treasure they get, rather than the specific XP.

It's the same way in editions previous to 4E that invariably PCs would rest for as many overnights shifts were necessary for the Cleric to cast Cure Light Wounds over and over and over again (either from their slots in 2E or earlier, or a wand in 3E) so that every PC got healed up almost completely before they went out adventuring again. So unless I invented or found reasons why they couldn't just rest over and over, they would start each next part of the adventure virtually full regardless. At that point, I was quite happy with 4E's evolution of healing surges (now as 5E's hit dice and long rest healing), rather than just wasting my time keeping track of wand charges or spell slots. More work to reach the inevitable same result.

I'm sure with other DM's styles they don't suffer the same results, so I can understand why something like granting XP would work. But for me, milestones are just a better mechanic for the way I run the game.