I really hate awarding XP for killing monsters. Pausing after every combat and adding up all the monster XP and dividing by the number of players is really kind of an annoying speed bump that interrupts game flow. I also don't want to reward players for just killing stuff.
But, milestone XP works poorly in a sandbox game because you never know where the players are going to go next. Like, if each dungeon is a milestone, what if they get 3/4 of the way through 4 dungeons? is that 3 milestones, or none? It seems weird to award a milestone level-up at some random time in the middle of a dungeon.
So I went through Princes of the Apocalypse and broke out all the major accomplishments the PCs might achieve, and assigned XP values to them, as Quests. For example, killing boss monsters, discovering important information, rescuing prisoners, and locating dungeons. Minor encounters and wandering monsters are worth precisely zero XP: instead, the Quest XP is inflated to account for those challenges that are obstacles to completing the quest, including minor encounters and wandering monsters. This way, players who cleverly circumvent monster encounters aren't losing XP for doing so (unless they do a kind of half-assed job, in which case they get half XP).
I made this for my own campaign so it may contain a few weird non-canon entries. But then I figured other people might find it useful so I cleaned it up a bit added some discussion material to the beginning and end. I hope you like it!
But, milestone XP works poorly in a sandbox game because you never know where the players are going to go next. Like, if each dungeon is a milestone, what if they get 3/4 of the way through 4 dungeons? is that 3 milestones, or none? It seems weird to award a milestone level-up at some random time in the middle of a dungeon.
So I went through Princes of the Apocalypse and broke out all the major accomplishments the PCs might achieve, and assigned XP values to them, as Quests. For example, killing boss monsters, discovering important information, rescuing prisoners, and locating dungeons. Minor encounters and wandering monsters are worth precisely zero XP: instead, the Quest XP is inflated to account for those challenges that are obstacles to completing the quest, including minor encounters and wandering monsters. This way, players who cleverly circumvent monster encounters aren't losing XP for doing so (unless they do a kind of half-assed job, in which case they get half XP).
I made this for my own campaign so it may contain a few weird non-canon entries. But then I figured other people might find it useful so I cleaned it up a bit added some discussion material to the beginning and end. I hope you like it!
