D&D 5E Do the official WotC adventures cheat with xp?

[Guest 6801328]

Cheating in the sense that if you read on the back of the book "campaign from level 1 to 15" and you know how many encounters it would take to get regularly from level 1 to 15, you are led to believe that the book has far more content than it actually has.

I share this sentiment. Maybe it's not "cheating" but it's at least "cheesy" (or even "deceptive advertising") to call it a 1-15 Campaign and then fudge the XP so badly because, as you say, you know how much play time it takes to get from 1 to 15 and that's not what you get for your money.

The argument "now you know so it shouldn't bother you" reminds me of the line from Airplane: "Shaaaaaayna....dey bought da tickets. Dey knew wut dey wuz gettin' into. I say, let 'em crash."

 

[LordEntrails]

So, has anyone actually gone through one of the adventures like PotA, calculated the XP of the set encounters AND THE random encounters (and how many of these) and divide by 4? So how much is it off?

 

[cbwjm]

Can't you get a bunch of side quests of the DMs guild? I've never actually got a group together to run them through these APs but I do wonder if there are meant to be a few side quests, either of the DMs devising or from the DMs guild, to help level up the party if you want to use xp instead of milestones.

 

[CapnZapp]

Seems a rather pointless argument.
PotA pretty much recommends doing event based levelling. If you do that then you'll manage the levels indicated.
If you don't like that method, then there's plenty you can do to make it up - side treks and lots of random encounters should do the trick.

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Ayup

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[CapnZapp]

The books all pretty much ignore the guidelines for XP and Treasure. You either get way too much of both or almost nothing.

I remember playing through "Hoard of the Dragon Queen" and not getting a single magic item on my character until level 8. (A few magic items were found before then, but not many.)

Then I ended up with Haziwran - a legendary, sentient greatsword. Someone else received a legendary black dragon mask, and we also found a Staff of Fire. All around the same time.

Again, sounds like all of it

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[CapnZapp]

I'm ashamed to say it never occurred to me to just drop XP from the game entirely and award levels through a different method until that suggestion was made in the 5e stuff, but drop it I did and I'm not picking it up again.

That's really the only takeaway here.

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[CapnZapp]

I share this sentiment. Maybe it's not "cheating" but it's at least "cheesy" (or even "deceptive advertising") to call it a 1-15 Campaign and then fudge the XP so badly because, as you say, you know how much play time it takes to get from 1 to 15 and that's not what you get for your money.

The argument "now you know so it shouldn't bother you" reminds me of the line from Airplane: "Shaaaaaayna....dey bought da tickets. Dey knew wut dey wuz gettin' into. I say, let 'em crash."

But the "1 to 15" sales pitch can mean more things than "enough xp for 15 full levels".

It can also mean "encounters spread over 15 levels"

And in 5e, all published modules talk about the latter.

To call that "cheating" is not to realize the shifting times we're living in.

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[Guest 6801328]

To call that "cheating" is not to realize the shifting times we're living in.

Well done! Kellyanne Conway has nothing on you!

 

[ad_hoc]

I think in a heavy story/narrative campaign it makes sense to use milestones.

In a sandbox game it makes more sense to use XP.

CoS is a bit of a hybrid so I ran it with XP from monsters plus bonus chunks whenever they solved a Tarokka card.

 

[Guest 6801328]

I'm not arguing against milestones. I think milestones make a ton of sense for two reasons:
1) They reward non-combat activities
2) They alleviate bookkeeping for the DM (and players)

However, they shouldn't speed up leveling. Or, at least, an adventure that advertises levels 1-15 shouldn't take as long as leveling 1-10 (or less). Roleplaying negotiations with NPCs or searching for clues or whatever is great, but 15 minutes of talking to townspeople is NOT equal to 15 minutes of fighting bad guys, XP wise.

It annoys me in the way that it does when food companies reduce the amount of the contents but use packaging that looks like the larger stuff. Like the new ice cream containers that are the shape of the half-gallon ones they've been selling for decades, but contain a smaller amount. I guess CapnZapp might say, "Well it's marked clearly on the side, and you can see the price per ounce on the shelf marker. If you are too lazy to read that's your problem" or something like that. It's not that I get home and realize I've been short-changed (short ice-creamed) it's just that it feels like they're trying to trick customers who aren't paying attention.