D&D 5E Sacred Cow Bites The Dust.

[pemerton]

Before I had players that would go out of their way to force more fights for xp, that never let anything live if they could help it, and now.... if they butcher a bunch of npcs, it is because they are annoyed or bored, not because they are being rewarded at a system level.

I've never really had this experience.

If players are forcing fights to earn XP, which - but for the XP system - they wouldn't be engaging in, doesn't that just show that something is wrong with the system? That is is not driving play in the way that people want to play the game?

I Find milestone is more about what you are going to encounter and works well when running adventure paths or linear campaigns but xp is more about what your characters have experienced and i prefer it when I run sandbox

I agree with [MENTION=93631]Greg Benage[/MENTION] - "milestone" is about pacing, and that does not particularly depend upon AP vs other campaign styles.

At the moment I am running two 4e games - in one I have awarded XP per the 4e rules, in the other I'm not bothering and we'll level the PCs when we feel like it. In practice I don't think there will be much difference, as the 4e XP system is basically a pacing device anyway - you get an encounter's worth of XP for every hour or so of play (be that via XP award for combat encounters, for skill challenges, or for free roleplaying), and so it's seems sensible enough to do away with the intermediary device and just award the levels based on pacing considerations.

As a DM, the now-known-as-Milestone-Advancement always fell...cheap?

Mile stones are, for me, a lazy way to level and it also have the pernicious effect of encourage the 5mwd.

If the XP system is basically "You get XP for doing these things which you would be doing anyway, because they constitute playing the game", then I don't think milestones is any cheaper or lazier.

If XP is actually a reward for skilled play that you can't get just by trying, then XP makes more sense. But I don't think that's the main way that D&D is played these days.

The idea that XP should be used to motivate a certain sort of player engagement with the game I don't really get, for the same reasons that [MENTION=6801228]Chaosmancer[/MENTION] has stated - if people are turning up but don't really want to engage with the game, they're already suffering! Why make them have smaller numbers on their sheet too?

 

[Ilbranteloth]

Yep, rewards can help reinforce the kind of behavior we want to see in the game. I therefore change the reward structure based on the game.

I guess this is one way to look at why I've used something along the lines of "milestone" XP/leveling.

Any construct/rule in the game that causes the players to modify the behavior of their characters within the game is what I'm trying to avoid.

One of my golden rules for game design is that the "rules should support the world" and not the other way around.

My campaigns are based on developing characters and their stories over the course of years. A given player will frequently have many characters over that time, all "active" although usually only one active in a given session, or series of sessions that eventually form a story arc.

I expect that the characters will generally find combat a relatively undesirable option, because it's, well, dangerous. The majority of their opponents won't fight to the death either, unless there's a good reason to.

Characters are assumed to practice their skills, etc., in the evenings after stopping for the night, but before bed, as well as "off-screen" time when they aren't the featured character.

Gaining levels is a slow process, and part of a lifetime of a mix of intense practice and/or real-life experiences (adventuring, etc.), and the majority of characters don't typically reach much more than 5th level in the process. I still use the concept of level limits based on ability scores (from AD&D), and most people can't achieve more than that, in fact many can't reach 3rd level.

Experience is a mix of success, failures, training, and time. The more time invested, the faster it occurs. In some cases, the characters in a given active adventure level up at the same time, but not always. It's really a question of where in the lifetime story arc of that character that the player and I feel they've reached a new plateau.

I compare the concept to real-life situations like school, intense training for top athletes, my hobby as a guitarist, and general observation of how I myself learn.

A lot of people don't allow characters to gain a level in the middle of a dungeon, or it can only be during a rest, or they must return to home and locate a trainer. In my personal experiences, I'll often find that I can attempt to learn a new piece of music, and it will be difficult to play. Then one day I'll find that I can play it, often when I haven't practiced it for several days. There are other times where I'm just playing better, all around better. Not just one song, or piece, but my skill as a whole has improved. Suddenly there are a number of things that I can learn practically on the spot, whereas similar pieces would have been difficult in what seems like yesterday.

By not using experience (in the traditional sense), the goal of the PCs is whatever they are trying to accomplish in the world. It's not a question of trying to kill more monsters, and it's usually not driven by treasure either. Instead, there are a lot of plot threads happening at once, and the party will choose to follow one of the existing ones, or a new one, or go looking for something else.

I realize that the game isn't designed for this approach per se, although it's the way I've been doing it for 30+ years. It won't fit every campaign either. It's ironic, because I love tweaking and working on the mechanics of the game, trying to figure out how to make the rules better support modeling the stories and scenes we want to see. But the approach is to remove the rules themselves from the decision-making process of the players, and by extension, the characters.

 

[Satyrn]

A big distinction needs to be made here: I'm not talking about slacker PLAYERS. I'm talking about slacker CHARACTERS in the party who are sometimes run by very engaged players who take a long-term approach to "winning". The sequence usually goes, over a series of adventures, something like this:

- hang back, stay safe, get involved in risky business only when it's essential (but be fully involved in all other aspects e.g. planning) right from the start
- where serious risks have to be taken (a reasonably frequent occurrence in adventuring) get others to take them
- each adventure one or two characters will probably die...but not yours, and you'll get to share in looting them along with sharing whatever conventional treasure the party accrues
- replacements for those characters often come in at lower level and invariably come in with lower wealth, making them a bit more vulnerable, so...
- lather rinse repeat until...
- after 6 or 8 adventures (or by the time the party has relatively easy access to revival-from-death effects) you're "ahead" of the party - in wealth and sometimes in level - enough that the DM can't seriously threaten you without probably slaughtering the rest of the party. Further, as you're now the big fish in the pond the party is probably built around you to some extent...maybe you're even its perceived leader...and now you're set. As a player, your main challenge now is to resist any calls for you to retire or otherwise weaken your character.

Needless to say, a party entirely made up of such "passenger" characters doesn't tend to get much done; be it by analysis paralysis, indecision, or simply getting stuck in a position where everyone is waiting for someone else to make the first (risky) move. I've seen this once or twice; eventually someone (as either player or character) gets bored and dives in and gets on with it, thus dooming him-herself as even if the current risk doesn't prove deadly he-she has now put him-herself in the position of risk-taker and will be looked upon to do it every time, inevitably leading to the character's death.

The only ways* a DM can mitigate this if she sees it happening are to either specifically (and, too often, unrealistically) target only that character; or to make sure the risk-takers somehow get individually rewarded for what they do - and this is where individual xp can come in very handy, though from experience I can say it's not a complete fix.

* - well, another (awful) way is to make all the characters death-immune; but that way lies gonzo madness and-or complete loss of realism.

Lan-"if EnWorld ever does another battle-of-the-bards we have a song for it about this issue"-efan

I have no problem playing with that sort of player. I don't find playing that way fun for me, but more power to them. Well, more levels to their character, anyway.

What I would hope for from DMs like you - those who don't want to encourage such players - is that you don't discourage me from playing the heroic risk taker like me. Things some DMs seem to do that would discourage me include:

1) Making my new characters (and there'd be several of them! ) start significantly weaker than the slackers, sidelining me from the combat and exploration bits of the game that require that risk-taking because I'm too fragile to handle what is set up for the level of the slackers; and

2)Keeping the storyline focused on those slackers' characters for continuity's sake, as this leads to sidelining me from the social bits of the game as all the NPC contacts deal with the slackers they know and trust.

2 has actually happened to me in a couple groups. 1 hasn't, at least not that I can recall, but probably because some version of starting new PCs only a level back is common enough.

Anyway, this isn't meant as advice for you, specifically, Lanefan (unless you see yourself doing that), but more a rant about how DMs can encourage the exact behaviour they don't like without knowing it . . . although I gotta say I don't really see any ranting as I proofread my post. I'm not much of a ranter apparently.

 

[Capn Charlie]

I've never really had this experience.

If players are forcing fights to earn XP, which - but for the XP system - they wouldn't be engaging in, doesn't that just show that something is wrong with the system? That is is not driving play in the way that people want to play the game?

You've never had players choosing to pick a fight with potential xp rewards as a factor in that decision? That is astonishing to me. I have had bad players that based their decisions almost entirely off of xp, and good players that just let things happen, but even back in the early days of 3e I had to start giving out at least partial xp to avoided encounters so they felt like diplomacy was "worth it".

That being said, I feel like milestones really work for me, my style, and my largest group of players. Although, I saw a guy with xp draining wraiths, and it made me practically salivate. There are some benefits to an xp system.

 

[pemerton]

You've never had players choosing to pick a fight with potential xp rewards as a factor in that decision? That is astonishing to me. I have had bad players that based their decisions almost entirely off of xp, and good players that just let things happen, but even back in the early days of 3e I had to start giving out at least partial xp to avoided encounters so they felt like diplomacy was "worth it".

Back when I ran AD&D I used an XP rule from Dragon no 95 (March 1985), for awarding XP for overcoming non-combat challenges. (As well as XP for gold.)

When I ran Rolemaster for 20-odd years I used a mixture of activity-based and goal-based XP systems (the former from the core rulebooks, the latter I think from The Guild Companion online fanzine), but neither awarded XP only for success in combat.

4e's XP rules, as I posted, award XP for combat challenges, non-combat challenges ("skill challenges") and for free roleplaying, and so basically however the players are engaging the game, they earn XP (at the rate of around 1 on-level encounter's worth per hour of play). In other words, the XP rules are basically a convoluted pacing mechanic - which can be easily ditched to cut directly to pacing, which is how I am handling it in the new 4e game I recently started.

As I posted, if player are forcing fights to earn XP which, but for that, they wouldn't be interested in, then something has gone wrong with the XP system. You seem to be agreeing with this when you say that "even back in the early days of 3e I had to start giving out at least partial xp to avoided encounters so they felt like diplomacy was "worth it"

 

[GMMichael]

Back when I ran AD&D I used an XP rule from Dragon no 95 (March 1985), for awarding XP for overcoming non-combat challenges. (As well as XP for gold.)

Was just thinking about the XP-for-gold rule. Seems to make more sense - shouldn't PCs get XP based on their class? Warriors kill, thieves steal, wizards learn, and priests proselytize.

Anyway, congrats Zardnaar. Welcome to the Dark Side.

 

[iserith]

I find that, in general, milestone XP works best when I want the players to follow a storyline such as an adventure path module - complete these objectives or plot points and level up. Regular XP works best when it's the PCs just exploring the world and adventure locations without an overarching storyline outside of what they choose to do with their time.

 

[Cyrinishad]

Was just thinking about the XP-for-gold rule. Seems to make more sense - shouldn't PCs get XP based on their class? Warriors kill, thieves steal, wizards learn, and priests proselytize.

If I recall correctly the AD&D 2nd Edition books had tables for this concept.

 

[Lanefan]

I have no problem playing with that sort of player. I don't find playing that way fun for me, but more power to them. Well, more levels to their character, anyway.

What I would hope for from DMs like you - those who don't want to encourage such players - is that you don't discourage me from playing the heroic risk taker like me.

When I'm a player I also often end up playing the risk-taker, usually out of boredom with all the planning and caution (I can plan and strategize with the best of 'em but sometimes you just gotta say "you take the left" and charge in). So the last thing I'd want to do is discourage - in effect - myself!

But that said...

Things some DMs seem to do that would discourage me include:

1) Making my new characters (and there'd be several of them! ) start significantly weaker than the slackers, sidelining me from the combat and exploration bits of the game that require that risk-taking because I'm too fragile to handle what is set up for the level of the slackers; and

2)Keeping the storyline focused on those slackers' characters for continuity's sake, as this leads to sidelining me from the social bits of the game as all the NPC contacts deal with the slackers they know and trust.

...these are almost unavoidable. In order:

1. This happens to me as well, and sometimes I go through characters at a rather alarming rate. However, the flip side would be to have new characters start where the old one left off...which in terms of level wouldn't be too much of a problem (though not perfect; it might serve to make me even more gonzo!) but in terms of wealth certainly would be, as the percentages say all that extra wealth would just end up accreting to the passengers when I died thus making the problem worse. (note: all this assumes limited if any access to revival effects, which change the dynamic considerably) As DM, I usually start new ones at a "floor" level which slowly rises as the campaign goes along.

And, they don't all die; and as player I can still weave old and new characters alike into whatever story is going on. One tactic I use often is to come up with an entertaining characterization and-or personality and just play that to the hilt for the first while without worrying about bigger-picture stuff at all; this gives the character some in-game time to learn about the party's history-goals-story (and gain the party's approval by taking some risks) after which I can then integrate the character into that story in whatever way makes sense.

2. It's kind of a fact of life that the survivors are going to end up being who carries any ongoing storylines from one adventure to the next; and any new character is probably going to have to integrate herself into such. Sure, once or twice a DM might bring in a new character with its own storyline and try to convince the party to go along with it, but that can't happen every time without both coming across as very artificial and probably butchering any existing storylines whether DM or player driven. Also, in the game fiction it's the survivors who will end up with all the fame-rewards-etc. and thus 99.5% of the time be the ones approached when adventuring needs doing. Personally, as a player I just accept your point '2' as a fact of life.

Another way to put that is that if the storyline is intended to focus on the party-as-a-whole and the slackers have become the party there's not all that much anyone can do while maintaining any sort of internal continuity or consistency.

Anyway, this isn't meant as advice for you, specifically, Lanefan (unless you see yourself doing that), but more a rant about how DMs can encourage the exact behaviour they don't like without knowing it . . . although I gotta say I don't really see any ranting as I proofread my post. I'm not much of a ranter apparently.

Are there milestones for ranting? Sounds like this person needs to level up!

Lan-"and sometimes it just comes down to sheer luck of the dice as to who lives or dies, and I think I might have missed a few luck milestones along the way"-efan

 

[Satyrn]

Personally, as a player I just accept your point '2' as a fact of life.

Another way to put that is that if the storyline is intended to focus on the party-as-a-whole and the slackers have become the party there's not all that much anyone can do while maintaining any sort of internal continuity or consistency.

To some degree, I accept it, too. I'm totally fine with my new character hitching a ride onto the party's goals. But I've played with a couple DMs who have virtually shut my new PC out of conversations and long stretches of social interaction because they decided that the NPCs wouldn't trust my guy (or whatever similar reason the DM actually had).

It's kind of that specific gripe I have that I direct my rant at for all the DMs reading: Find a reason to include the new character instead of making some unfun (even if "realistic") decision that excludes me.


(Oh, and as for the treasure piling up as the dead corpses of PCs pile up, there a table rule says a dead PCs gear gets buried with the corpse, or given to his family, or whatever, goes a long way for that point 1 - of course this requires player buy in, which might be tough to get from the slackers' players *sigh *)

Also, I am delighted that my playing preferences align so well with my current group. My gripes are all about the past. So nice.