D&D General Experience Matters - The benefits of XP

[abirdcall]

Interesting - the designers have kinda baked in that there's a sweet spot, and tried to extend that part a bit via tweaking of the advancement table.

My question for you 5e-playing types: is the 5th-11th range in fact 5e's sweet spot in play?

Yes.

The game is split into 4 tiers with suggestions about the scope of adventures.

It is something like this:

1-4 - apprentice. Adventures might involve the fate of a village.

5-10 - heroic - adventures might involve the fate of a kingdom.

11-16 - adventures might involve the fate of a plane.

17-20 - adventures might involve the fate of multiple planes or even the multiverse.

Those are just examples of the scope of the PCs potential influence on the world (not literally the types of adventures assumed).

5th level is when most characters either get a 2nd attack or 3rd level spells.

It is when players start having a lot of options about how to plan and approach different challenges. Where in the apprentice levels they are mostly trying to react to things happening to them and survive the best they can.

Level 11 is another spike in power with either 6th level spells or a major ability like a 3rd attack.

WotC identified that most people like to play in the heroic tier so they stretched it out. They made the training tier shorter and for the people who like to play high levels they made it quicker to get to the really big epic situations.

 

[S'mon]

An extreme option would be to have a campaign where the characters never level up at all, but IMO that's probably overkill.

I'm loving Dragonbane, which is a BRP/Runequest derived system, ie no levels.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I'm loving Dragonbane, which is a BRP/Runequest derived system, ie no levels.

Yeah, sometimes I really miss the skill-based systems I played in the 90s.

 

[S'mon]

Interesting - the designers have kinda baked in that there's a sweet spot, and tried to extend that part a bit via tweaking of the advancement table.

My question for you 5e-playing types: is the 5th-11th range in fact 5e's sweet spot in play?

Yes. Level 1 & 2 are too squishy. 3 & 4 are good, albeit tough. Most of my 5e groups have been in the 5-10 range for the past couple years (partly due to new PCs coming in at half the maximum PC level) and it definitely feels like a sweet spot.

11-16 remains perfectly playable though, aside from a very few things like Simulacrum that are easy to nerf/ban. 17-20 can work really well especially in small group or solo play, but IME generally is not as fun as lower levels. I've enjoyed the campaigns that climaxed at that Tier, but not so much extended Tier 4 play, especially not extended play at 20th.

 

[Clint_L]

Yes.

The game is split into 4 tiers with suggestions about the scope of adventures.

It is something like this:

1-4 - apprentice. Adventures might involve the fate of a village.

5-10 - heroic - adventures might involve the fate of a kingdom.

11-16 - adventures might involve the fate of a plane.

17-20 - adventures might involve the fate of multiple planes or even the multiverse.

This criticism is not directed at you, but at those plot suggestions from WotC. I think they are absurdly terrible story advice. Story stakes do not have to be significant on a national, global, or even universal scale to be hugely impactful at a character level. Like, how many adventures involving the fate of an entire plane of existence can you do before the stakes become essentially meaningless (c.f. the Marvel Cinematic Universe)?

When I am discussing the importance of narrative stakes with my writing class, I often show them a clip from the film 8th Grade. Specifically, when the protagonist is trying to get up her nerve to leave the bathroom and reveal her thirteen year old body to her peers wearing only a bathing suit (it's a pool party). To anyone else, these stakes are trivial, but in the context of her story arc they seem as consequential than anything in a Marvel movie (and I like Marvel movies). More so, even. When she finally opens the door, you want to stand up and cheer for her courage.

And you know what? I didn't know how that was going to turn out. She had struggled and failed many times in the film, so my anxiety on her behalf was real. I loved End Game, but not for one second did I think our heroes were going to lose. It's the same if you run stakes like that in a D&D campaign - unless ending the entire campaign and setting is really on the table, at a fundamental level there is actually nothing at stake because the heroes can't lose. We might willingly suspend our disbelief, but underneath, we know it's BS, just like we knew that ultimately Thanos was a paper tiger.

Raising the stakes by just invoking ever more apocalyptic threats is not only cliched and lazy, it also falls quickly to the law of diminishing returns. You've seen one world-threatening apocalypse, you've seen 'em all. Real stakes are personal and have the potential for actual consequences.

 

[el-remmen]

I completed a 5E campaign recently (well, chapter one - we may return to these characters after we're done with "chapter one" of the new campaign) and we ended just shy of 8th level (they didn't get enough XP on their final adventure to advance - but if we pick up with these characters "one year later" in game time I am going to tell them to go ahead and level up to 8th). This took 45 sessions that ranged from 4 to 5 hours each (with a handful being 3 hours and even fewer being 6 hours).

This is actually a faster rate than my pre-5E games. My only completed 3E campaign ended at level 11 and we played 104 five-hour sessions over the course of 5 years.

 

[abirdcall]

This criticism is not directed at you, but at those plot suggestions from WotC. I think they are absurdly terrible story advice. Story stakes do not have to be significant on a national, global, or even universal scale to be hugely impactful at a character level. Like, how many adventures involving the fate of an entire plane of existence can you do before the stakes become essentially meaningless (c.f. the Marvel Cinematic Universe)?

When I am discussing the importance of narrative stakes with my writing class, I often show them a clip from the film 8th Grade. Specifically, when the protagonist is trying to get up her nerve to leave the bathroom and reveal her thirteen year old body to her peers wearing only a bathing suit (it's a pool party). To anyone else, these stakes are trivial, but in the context of her story arc they seem as consequential than anything in a Marvel movie (and I like Marvel movies). More so, even. When she finally opens the door, you want to stand up and cheer for her courage.

And you know what? I didn't know how that was going to turn out. She had struggled and failed many times in the film, so my anxiety on her behalf was real. I loved End Game, but not for one second did I think our heroes were going to lose. It's the same if you run stakes like that in a D&D campaign - unless ending the entire campaign and setting is really on the table, at a fundamental level there is actually nothing at stake because the heroes can't lose. We might willingly suspend our disbelief, but underneath, we know it's BS, just like we knew that ultimately Thanos was a paper tiger.

Raising the stakes by just invoking ever more apocalyptic threats is not only cliched and lazy, it also falls quickly to the law of diminishing returns. You've seen one world-threatening apocalypse, you've seen 'em all. Real stakes are personal and have the potential for actual consequences.

I figured someone would reply to this so I specifically said they aren't plots.

They are a measure of how much influence on the world PCs of that level should expect to be able to have.

 

[Mecheon]

First off, IME individual experience doesn't lead to that sort of thing, but then none of us have that MMO background. Also, ideally xp are awarded for getting through encounters by means which can include things other than all-out murder e.g. negotiation, stealth, trickery, and so on; and are also awarded for getting past things you can't just kill e.g. traps, puzzles, and so forth.

Second off, if a player's main (or only, I've seen this) goal and focus of play is just to level up a character and get all those kool powerz, then the question "How can I easily get xp" simply changes to "How can I easily level up" and you're right back in the same boat. The only way around that is to somehow change that player's focus away from levelling and on to other aspects of the game - story, non-mechanical character development, the day-to-day run of play, whatever - with levelling seen as no more than an occasional pleasant side effect.

An extreme option would be to have a campaign where the characters never level up at all, but IMO that's probably overkill.

Third off, who gets to define what qualifies as "Appropriate Tasks"? If it's just the DM, that risks restricting not only what the players can have their characters do but to some extent how those things get done.

The other problem I kinda have with purely mission-based xp is that it highly encourages a commando style get in-get it done-get out MO from the party (the extreme of which is 3e-style scry-buff-teleport in-do it-teleport out), instead of encouraging/rewarding deeper exploration of the adventure site beyond just the fastest route in and out. This is perhaps the one redeeming feature of giving xp for treasure: it encourages exploration of the whole site if only to find any spare change lying around.

There's enough stories like that around I've heard it said, plus the absolute classic from Dragon magazine of that guy who killed most everyone in Oerth and wanted to know how much XP he got from the murders. But XP specifically comes from those things then leads to this thing where, yeah, first up you do the sneaky element.... But then you turn around and murder those people you just negotiated with because, that's more XP you'd be losing otherwise. Every trap becomes disarm it, then tear the thing apart for more XP, sell the parts of it in town for more gold, steal the doors from the tomb of horrors type of situations.

Which, I mean, if you want morally corrupt vultures, is certainly a choice, but at odds with how people tend to play and what the big examples of play are at the moment.

With milestone levelling, the boosts come from completing story beats. So that gives all players an incentive to continue on with the overall things going on. However, XP shifts the carrot over to killing things, which could lead people to discard story. Talking to people and handling fun small-end stuff isn't showering you with XP, so to those people, its a waste of time. Why help the citizens of Townsville (which can be later used as a base of operations, gain valuable allies in future efforts, and allow for storyline beats) when we can just go outside town and kill things for more XP?

Just like how the DM picks what foes to fight, they get to decide the appropriate tasks. DMs restricting the players either way in much the same way they could just, dunk a tarrasque on a level 1 party. Its all dependant on the DM regardless. They could just as easily screw the party over in an XP only enviroment.

I'd argue on the last point that they should get other treasures from doing further exploration. Sure, you get the stuff towards levelling for completing the task, but poking around further gives you more leads for future story stuff, alongside Fun Items to give more of an incentive to looking around. Not XP, sure, but its still stuff that gives an incentive to look around further. A magic item is a lot more evocative of why to explore a strange area than just a number going up that could go up from anything else.

 

[James Gasik]

There's enough stories like that around I've heard it said, plus the absolute classic from Dragon magazine of that guy who killed most everyone in Oerth and wanted to know how much XP he got from the murders.

Waldorf! Nothing like a good ol' Power Word, Nuke!

 

[Clint_L]

I figured someone would reply to this so I specifically said they aren't plots.

They are a measure of how much influence on the world PCs of that level should expect to be able to have.

I mean, they are specifically framed as plots: "adventures might involve..." What else do you call them? What is the point of the measure, otherwise?