D&D 5E What XP to award for defeating DMPCs?

[clearstream]

I'm designing a campaign in which many foes will have character-class levels. For convenience I call them CCEQs, which short for character-class-equivalence. I want a quick rubric for awarding XP for defeating CCEQs. So if character defeat a 5th level ranger and a 3rd level sorcerer, it is easy to know how much XP to award. Searching online, I see many people recommend the guidelines for designing and evaluating foes in the DMG. Those see suitable for one-offs, but would be onerous to use for my whole campaign.

My current thinking proceeds from two ideas

1. The outcome could well be a coin-flip, so a CCEQ of a given level is at least a deadly encounter for a PC at that level
2. I don't want to put too high an XP bounty on murder!

The XP threshold for deadly encounters is 1/8th to 1/3rd of the XP to advance from a given level. So I was thinking of saying, XP for defeating a CCEQ = XP threshold for a deadly encounter (i.e., at that level).

Does this seem like a good rule? I would welcome your thoughts?! (Also any links to other analysis of this problem?)

 

[Mannahnin]

If you're building them using PC abilities, they will normally be weaker than a monster of the equivalent level.

PCs have abilities which are designed to be used over a whole adventuring day, and in situations other than combat, which a foe will not have time to use and will not contribute to their combat prowess. PCs also have fewer hit points than an average monster of their level, because they're balanced around the expectation that they have access to in-combat healing and synergies from other PCs to add durability and spread the spotlight around, considerations which really don't apply to monsters.

I recommend evaluating the abilities the "monster" is likely to be able to use in a 3-4 round combat, and compare their combat stats to the NPC stat blocks in the back of the Monster Manual to get a sense of their actual CR.

 

[Musing Mage]

If a PC beheads a DMPC, they should be able to absorb their quickening and take over as DM.

But seriously though... I think most players might be thrown off by DMs using PC classes as enemies more often than not. The massive variety of options mean you can't really predict abilities as much as using a stock monster. As for how much XP to award... I would say follow the DMG chart for challenge as best you can as a basis. If they trounce your PCs regularly, perhaps up the award over time?

 

[the Jester]

Why not figure their xp value like any other monster? I think you're very much overrating them.

Unfortunately, there is no simple and quick way to say "level x npc is CR y", because not all character types are the same- and they therefore have very different capabilities. Compare, say, a low-Con rogue 1 to a high Con mountain dwarf wizard 1 with spells prepared for maximum damage. The wizard is going to have roughly equal hp, probably a better AC, and better damage output over three rounds. They aren't the same CR.

 

[delericho]

DMPCs will vary enormously in power. Even within a class the combat challenge will vary massively - a 5th level Wizard with nothing but Divination spells is a vastly different combat challenge to one with nothing but fire spells.

So the 'right' way to figure XP would be to work it out as for any other monster as per the tables in the DMG.

But if you want a quick way to do it, I would recommend just giving each PC an award equal to that listed for an average encounter of their level, as shown in the table on page 82 of the DMG. It won't be strictly right, but it should more or less average out okay. (If you want to be generous, go for a hard encounter... but don't be generous. )

 

[iserith]

I don't really think it needs to be all that precise. I would eyeball it, take a guess, and just go with that. I certainly would not spend any of my time going through the DMG CR calculator to figure it out.

I also wouldn't use class levels on NPCs. If I wanted to do something that conferred the idea to the players that so-and-so is a "ranger," for example, then I'd probably just take like an Archer monster stat block and tack on a couple of key spells or features that would make people go "aha, a ranger." Then just use that monster's regular XP value or CR + 1 XP value.

 

[Blue]

A "deadly" encounter is not deadly in 5e. It is potentially deadly as part of a series of encounters over the course of an adventuring day. An actual 50/50 either way is much tougher than that.

As a side note, PC-rules-built are lousy foes in 5e. Those built with monster rules have different ratio of damage/nova to survivability. Fights with PCs will be very swingy and short - the dice will dictate more than in a normal fight.

Build your foes using monster rules, with a few iconic abilities to feel liek the class. This will give you satisfying fights and will give you a CR for them so you know how much experience to award.

 

[Charlaquin]

Recall that a monster of CR X is supposed to be a Medium challenge for a party of 4 characters of level X. So, an NPC with levels in a PC class should have 1/4 their level added to their CR, no?

 

[clearstream]

If you're building them using PC abilities, they will normally be weaker than a monster of the equivalent level.

That doesn't seem quite right to me. Consider this thought experiment: I take a 5th level champion and clone it. Isn't the outcome of a duel between them a coin-flip? That's substantially more dangerous than most encounters.

I recommend evaluating the abilities the "monster" is likely to be able to use in a 3-4 round combat, and compare their combat stats to the NPC stat blocks in the back of the Monster Manual to get a sense of their actual CR.

I've been looking at foes like the mage, archmage, etc. At one point, I suspected that you could just use MM foe hit dice as indicative of its relative class-level. The champion (MToF?) challenged that idea. I'm mindful also that PCs will face multiple encounters. More importantly, I don't want to perform an ad-hoc estimate on every occasion: I'd like a rubric.

 

[clearstream]

Recall that a monster of CR X is supposed to be a Medium challenge for a party of 4 characters of level X. So, an NPC with levels in a PC class should have 1/4 their level added to their CR, no?

Agreed. That might be the right alternative. It's been mentioned in a few threads I found from searching. Tonight I plan to compare the result for using deadly threshold with the result from CR = 1/4 class levels.