D&D 5E Why do we award Encounter XP instead of Adjusted XP?

[Delandel]

Heh, just to increase the confusion - you're all forgetting that the Githyanki only counts as 350 XP, since it's alone. This means that the Gith will always either count for 350 XP or 1050 (or more) - never 700.

I've never heard that before. Do you have a source?

 

[Psikerlord#]

I've tried asking Mike Mearls and Jeremy Crawford this question on Twitter but no response. I want to know their intent behind this, because I have no clue why it's done this way:

A party of four level 2 characters are fighting five Goblins being led by one Hobgoblin. Encounter XP Total: 350, Adjusted XP Total: 700, a Hard encounter. You divide 350 XP equally to the characters if they win.

The same party goes against one Githyanki Warrior. Encounter XP Total: 700, Adjusted XP Total: 700, a Hard encounter. This time you divide 700 XP equally to the characters if they win.

I don't get it. Why are we supposed to award Encounter XP instead of Adjusted?

I award adjusted XP for 2 reasons:

(1) the fight is harder, so the party should get more xp
(2) I prefer faster leveling

I'm not sure if there is any good reason to award flat xp.

OVerall though I think the best leveling method is story based, or end of adventure based, or whatever. I think I'll go back to that method next time, not sure.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

I don't get it. Why are we supposed to award Encounter XP instead of Adjusted?

Players will play in whatever manner is rewarded by the game. If you get bonus XP for fighting larger groups, then it encourages players to increase the number of enemies - run into the next room, and gather as many goblins as possible, because they're all going to die from one Fireball anyway, and each one gives you an XP multiplier.

And that just... doesn't seem like how they want the game to be run. It doesn't seem like the characters would want to do that, and it's counter-productive to put the players and characters at odds with each other.

While I can't say with certainty, I believe it's intended to shape how players approach encounters.

Like that.

 

[Psikerlord#]

Players will play in whatever manner is rewarded by the game. If you get bonus XP for fighting larger groups, then it encourages players to increase the number of enemies - run into the next room, and gather as many goblins as possible, because they're all going to die from one Fireball anyway, and each one gives you an XP multiplier.

And that just... doesn't seem like how they want the game to be run. It doesn't seem like the characters would want to do that, and it's counter-productive to put the players and characters at odds with each other.
Like that.

hmmm I think this is more theoretical concern, I have not seen it in play. Still, something to be aware of.

 

[Fanaelialae]

Yup. My 5E experiences as well.

Interestingly enough, my 4E experience is different than my 5E experience. Nearly all fights in 4E (except possibly solos) were ones of multiple PCs getting bloodied or even unconscious until a tipping point was reached where the healing allowed action economy to shift into the favor of the PCs. NPCs tended to fire off their big guns early, so a lot of PCs often took an initial volley of damage which was then healed (usually if the PC got bloodied). That does not often happen in 5E. If a PC gets damaged in 5E (at least IME), they tend to stay that way until the battle is over (or until they go unconscious at which point someone might heal them in combat). Healing was extremely common in 4E combat to the point that it was happening every 2nd or 3rd round at least. It tends to be a lot less common in 5E combat, often not happening at all in an entire encounter. At least at our table.

Yeah, that matches my experience.

The druid occasionally will throw a heal to someone in the hope of buying them an extra round, and I've seen a few healing potion used in desperate situations, but the vast majority of the time my players don't heal during combat.

 

[Matrix Sorcica]

I've never heard that before. Do you have a source?

Absolutely not!! I could have sworn that I saw it in the basic DM PDF, but I've just checked and it's not there.
Sorry about the fuss.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

hmmm I think this is more theoretical concern, I have not seen it in play. Still, something to be aware of.

It's not everyone who plays that way. Maybe one in three players? It definitely appeals to optimizers - anyone who enjoys math, and likes playing with equations. It can cause stress between players, though, so you might not see it if the optimizer in the group decides to put the other players first.

But you would definitely see groups who read the rules and interpret that to mean you should go for the highest chain bonus, by stringing all of the encounters together into one mega-encounter at a 20x multiplier.

 

[redrick]

Awarding adjusted xp also makes more work for the DM. It's easy if your encounters are all hermetically sealed, and you know exactly how many characters will face exactly how many opponents when you're prepping your adventure, but what if there are groups of opponents that could be easily drawn into a fight, or kept separate? You get into a fight with 3 sentries, make a lot of noise, and now 5 more orcs arrive. So now you need to adjust, after the fact, the xp for that encounter. Doing that for all the encounters in a session would be a pain in the butt.

Not to mention that the adjustments for the number of combatants only measure one variable on the difficulty of an encounter. What about terrain? My characters literally slept-walked through 20+ melee combatants the other day, because they were able to hold a doorway and just cut the mindless undead down as they came in. On paper, that was an unbelievably deadly encounter, but I waved the rest of it away with a hand gesture after the first quarter of the zombie-like creatures went down.

 

[DaveDash]

I'm always amazed at how many people use "XP when the DM feels like it". I hate hate hate that with a passion to the point where I'd rather not play D&D at all that play under that system.

If we as players come up with a clever way to kill your creature worth a ton of XP, I would be pretty angry if you just hand waved that into the "milestone leveling" system. Otherwise where is the risk vs reward?

I also don't really game the XP system either like farming in some MMO, but I expect more control over my destiny.

 

[Gecko85]

Y

I'm always amazed at how many people use "XP when the DM feels like it". I hate hate hate that with a passion to the point where I'd rather not play D&D at all that play under that system.

If we as players come up with a clever way to kill your creature worth a ton of XP, I would be pretty angry if you just hand waved that into the "milestone leveling" system. Otherwise where is the risk vs reward?

I also don't really game the XP system either like farming in some MMO, but I expect more control over my destiny.

As a DM I would count the experience even if I hand-waived the rest of the encounter. The characters came up with a good strategy that worked, so they get XP (either actual encounter XP, or counting towards a milestone - they successfully thwarted the baddies), but there's no reason to waste time rolling and going through the motions of killing wave after wave of baddies if nothing is going to change. Now, if there was a boss baddie who could come up with a strategy of his own, then fine. Otherwise, "you successfully mow down the rest of the baddies" and move on.