Lanefan
Victoria Rules
Except if you'd read the rest of Helldritch's post you might have noticed this bit:Combat's so nice, you reward it twice. That's my kind of DM.
So, no double-dipping.Helldritch said:Once exp is given for a given encounter, it won't be awarded again. They negociate with the goblins and come back 2 days later and kill them. No experience the second time. They had received their exp already. No need to give it to them twice and depending on the situation, it could even be a negative experience award.
I use xp and always will, mostly because I want those characters who get involved in an encounter to earn xp and those who stand back (or are elsewhere) to not. Xp are a character (as opposed to player) benefit, thus if a player misses a game their character keeps going as an NPC (our term for such is QPC - Quasi-Player Character) for that session and earns whatever xp it would normally get for what it does.
My main opposition to milestone level-ups and suchlike is that is in my view it unfairly rewards those characters who do less and-or who wait for someone else to do the dirty work (of which I've seen my share) and unfairly penalizes those who do more. Individual xp encourages all the characters to get on with it and get involved as best they can.
Keeping everyone's level the same isn't nearly as much of an issue in 0-1-2-5e as it is in 3-4e; and as there's enough things in the game that can cause level disparity anyway (e.g. level draining foes in 0-1-2e, level or xp-granting items/spells/effects/etc. in all editions) it's just not worth the bother of trying to force equality.
Lanefan