A House Rule

[Phlebas]

Dvvega

Hmm, i ref for my partner too, and although she almost died last week in quicksand (and was already working out replacement character) i'm not sure how she'd react to a death out of her control!

Just asked her - response was "It would be unfair if the character died under DM control, fairer if it was under another players control, but a second chance of some kind would be best"

You didn't say how you work out XP?

 

[dvvega]

That is why we have the choice ... if you think it is unfair then take options 2 or 3

XP for option 3 is based on % participation. Thus if you choose 75% damage you get 75% XP.

Of course you have to take into account that you also use a % of your resources as well.

This is handled thus:

A normal encounter should use up approximately 20% of a party's resources. So if the party faced 4 encounters in the session they have used up 4 lots of 20% (not 80% strictly speaking since the 20% is of a lesser value).

Depending on your choice of % return, you use that % up of the 20% of your own resources.

Now before people clamour that it is unfair, remember that a character would have more equipment/level if they did not lose their share while taking 100% experience.

 

[Phlebas]

My fault, badly phrased question

I meant whether you normally work out XP based on CR's individually or as a group. ie would players who fall behind never catch up, or catch up gradually.

 

[Rel]

Interesting, I never thought giving out 50% xp was at all immature.

I'm just getting back to this thread from Thanksgiving vacation. Sorry for the delay.

I wasn't slamming others as immature. I was saying that when we were younger we had fewer demands on our time. When somebody missed "The Game" it was usually done because something fun came up at the last minute and we figured, "Hey, the game will be there next week! This keg party is TONIGHT!" The sentiment was that it wasn't cool to dump a prior obligation at the last minute when your absense would detract from everbody else's fun. So we felt no qualms about imposing some kind of penalty.

Nowadays our lives are very scheduled. We work, we pick up the kids, we take them to piano, we put them to bed, etc. We don't get to see each other three or four days a week and the time we get to spend hanging out and gaming is pretty valuable to us. Nobody blows that off lightly for the most part and most of the time when somebody can't make it, the call or e-mail is prefaced with, "This totally sucks but I'm not going to be able to make it tonight."

At some point we mutually decided that penalizing them for not showing up like that is kind of kicking them when they're down. We still expect (and get) the common courtesy of a phone call if they can't make it but beyond that we kind of just say, "Bummer dude. We'll try not to get your character killed. See you next week."

 

[dvvega]

@Phlebas:

Oh right ...

Option 1 - CR etc based on party with missing player's character included.
Option 2 - missing player's character isn't counted since they don't participate.
Option 3 - as option 2. The reason is that the character doesn't actually participate and the player is just sacrificing some items/charges/etc.

Since every player has chosen option 1, no one was falled behind. I did have one campaign where someone would consistently take Option 30 @ 50% and he did fall behind but not too far since he gets more XP when fighting higher CR creatures than the others. However it didn't help that he was spending XP to make items etc.

I forgot to mention that spells do count as usable resource that is removed with Option 3.