D&D 5E The Illusion of Experience Points that Everyone Disbelieves

[Thyrwyn]

With the group I am currently playing with (3.5, playing through old Living Greyhawk mods), xp is very important, as different characters participate in each module, some lose levels, some make items, etc. . . The level of each character is very important, as the Average Party Level (APL) determines the potential risks/rewards from each module - and everyone takes turns DMing. Very different from my usual gaming experience.

I am much more familiar with sandbox games like Mistwell described. The groups I play with usually fiddle the actual values to level up at a certain pace, but a night spent over-achieving could still see the party leveling a session early. And I've run my games that way since 2nd edition.

 

[Jester David]

Tracking experience is irrelevant if everyone levels as a group.
If not everyone levels at the same rate, such as having absent players nit recieve full xp or giving bonus experience for roleplaying, journal writing, or creative solutions, then tracking experience is more useful.

I think with it's flatter math, it will be more permissible to return to individual leveling.

 

[Quickleaf]

I recognize however that there are rare D&D campaigns, usually homebrews, and usually in the form of sandbox campaigns, where DMs allow PCs to freely roam a game world and meet monsters that are way too strong for them; and the players then need to identify that fleeing or otherwise avoiding combat is the proper solution. This is fine and I recognize that XPs can have much greater value in such campaigns. But this type of game is the exception. By and large, most campaigns pit the PCs against "level-appropriate" encounters.

Really? Is that true?

My experience has been the opposite, that such sanboxy games are more common, and that formulaic games subscribing to "level-appropriate" encounters are more the domain of convention and store games.

I just don't know how you can make a gross generalization like that. Obviously we have different experiences with our gaming.

 

[Ahnehnois]

[MENTION=20323]Quickleaf[/MENTION]
I'm inclined to agree that level-appropriate encounters are not that common in home games. Also that experience doesn't have any particular value for a more open-ended game.

 

[Stormonu]

@Quickleaf
I'm inclined to agree that level-appropriate encounters are not that common in home games. Also that experience doesn't have any particular value for a more open-ended game.

Really? In the 30+ years I've played/DMed D&D, I've never been in or run a sandbox game and I'd wager to say the encounters were 90-95% "level appropriate".

 

[Quickleaf]

Really? In the 30+ years I've played/DMed D&D, I've never been in or run a sandbox game and I'd wager to say the encounters were 90-95% "level appropriate".

I have seen a spread of encounter challenge levels in the 25 years I've played. It's a hugely group dependent thing. I mean when we played Slave Pits of the Undercity in my boyhood at camp, it seemed like every encounter was hugely lethal. And the several DMs I keep in touch with all have stories of throwing lone kobolds or way too difficult dragons at PCs. True, those may not be the majority encounters, but they definitely make up a significant number greater than 5-10%.

Since groups are widely variable this way, I think that alone justifies XP as a system that belongs in the core rule books and assumed as the default.

Additionally, XP is useful for the DM as an encounter building tool to estimate threat level. So that makes XP essential, in my mind.

On the other hand, IMO the core 5e books, while keeping XP as default, should include several variant XP variants that DM's can choose from. This should include things like group consensus leveling, quest-based leveling and XP, # of sessions based leveling, old school XP for gold, etc.

 

[Umbran]

I think we've hit the land of, "See? Personal experience doesn't tell you what everyone else is doing!"

The 3e books rather specifically led folks to think in terms of level appropriate encounters. But anyone who read the rules also saw they talked about encounters above and below that, ranging form "cakewalk" to "flee or die!" And how many followed those guidelines? We shouldn't assume we know.

 

[Stormonu]

I have seen a spread of encounter challenge levels in the 25 years I've played. It's a hugely group dependent thing. I mean when we played Slave Pits of the Undercity in my boyhood at camp, it seemed like every encounter was hugely lethal. And the several DMs I keep in touch with all have stories of throwing lone kobolds or way too difficult dragons at PCs. True, those may not be the majority encounters, but they definitely make up a significant number greater than 5-10%.

Well, I have to concede that 1E & 2E didn't have CR's or XP budgets, so "level appropriate" was pretty much (in my mind) anything you could fight and walk away alive from - preferably with less than one permanent party casualty. A also agree that, like everyone else we've all got memories of facing overwhelming odds (for my old group, it was the Slavelords in the Aerie - the fight wound down to whose wizard familiar was going to survive to drag the "victor's" remains away to be revived or buried). Still, I wouldn't put such occurrences past the 5%-10% I posted earlier - other folks, such as you, may have had more.

I was just a bit incredulous at the idea that most home games didn't use a majority of "level appropriate" challenges, my experiences had run directly counter to that notion.

Since groups are widely variable this way, I think that alone justifies XP as a system that belongs in the core rule books and assumed as the default.

Additionally, XP is useful for the DM as an encounter building tool to estimate threat level. So that makes XP essential, in my mind.

On the other hand, IMO the core 5e books, while keeping XP as default, should include several variant XP variants that DM's can choose from. This should include things like group consensus leveling, quest-based leveling and XP, # of sessions based leveling, old school XP for gold, etc.

All agreed. For D&D, levels and experience is part of the game and should remain pretty much as they are, with different options for how to implement them. I wouldn't play D&D without it, as much as I have come to despise level-based games.

 

[howandwhy99]

What is the purpose of experience points?

What are Experience Points in D&D?
1. First they are your score for playing your class through the length of the campaign (a single play of the game).
2. They measure how much personal experience/learning in the campaign you as a player have shown and...
3. They measure the accumulated class experience for a character, PC or NPC, in the campaign.

Your XP total is always a measure of class ability whether it be what you've demonstrated or what your character has accumulated. It doesn't weigh either your abilities or your PCs abilities beyond that.

What is the purpose of keeping score in a game?
Usually score is kept to see who wins when game time runs out. But in D&D and other kinds of games it's more often about how well you are doing at the game personally. You don't need to be in competition with others or even yourself (Or cooperation for that matter), but by checking the score you can know the relative health of your current ability to play the game.

I recognize however that there are rare D&D campaigns, usually homebrews, and usually in the form of sandbox campaigns, where DMs allow PCs to freely roam a game world and meet monsters that are way too strong for them; and the players then need to identify that fleeing or otherwise avoiding combat is the proper solution. This is fine and I recognize that XPs can have much greater value in such campaigns. But this type of game is the exception.

No. Those are the games treating D&D as a game. A game where score should be tracked because the players are playing to objectives, like collecting experience points for one. Story following games as D&D have been very popular too and I don't discount them. But no one needs to track the score in those games.

 

[howandwhy99]

tl;dr
XP is your roleplaying score for playing your class, so you can keep track of how well you're doing that.