Adventures with an XP Budget - "Strategic" Play in D&D 4E ?

[Turtlejay]

Probably an even simpler way to get the same effect is to simply remove XP for monster-defeating entirely (or at least mostly) and take the XP that would be granted by the monster budget of an area or encounter sequence, lump it into one or more Quests that can be accomplished in that area or encounter sequence, and leave it to the players how to hit those Quests.

This is mostly what we do in our group. No XP awards. Once the party finishes an adventure they gain a level. Or not, if the DM doesn't feel like it was enough of a challenge. Or we level in the middle of an adventure. I like it a lot.

Jay

 

[Jhaelen]

Of course, a simple alternative approach would be to just forget XP from encounters and just reward fixed XP (the budget for the adventure) at the end, without looking at the individual challenges defeated. Some people might go even further and just tell the players when to get a level. The disadvantage is a little that XP are always a carot by which to mechanically motiviate the players to act. It feels good to earn a direct reward for finishing a particular task.

Yup, that's the dilemma in a nutshell.
In theory, I really like the approach to forget about encounter xp but I'm pretty sure my players are going to miss them. There should be 'something' they get immediately after the encounter (well, in 4E they get milestones & AP). Mmh, maybe it's time for a new discussion with my group...

 

[Pseudopsyche]

Maybe, but if you don't get XP for "avoiding" a fight, the mechanics provide an incentive to not avoid the fight, while all logic says the PCs would avoid them.

It depends. Should the players try to maximize XP earned per adventure or XP earned per session? IMC, combats run slowly enough that fighting monsters yields less XP per unit time than skill challenges to avoid monsters or quest rewards for completing adventures without having to fight.

 

[Victim]

I think that if you want real strategic play, then you need reasons why PCs shouldn't always take whatever easy ways out they can get. Sure, luring ogres into a trap or going back to get help might make that encounter easier, saving the PCs some daily powers and surges. But it's also costing them time and possibly other resources, making it a trade off.

You probably don't want to make just avoiding or cheaping out enemies too rewarding. Otherwise the ideal strategy is still preselected; it's just different from the default..

In a game I'm playing now, the PCs are sort of competing with other adventurers - the most successful group clearing out the monster infested gets noble titles to it. Because other groups are presumeably out doing stuff too (plus the enemies might do something too), we want to achieve major objectives as quickly as possible - that means going through enemies with as little surge/daily uses as possible, and maybe bypassing enemies when possible to get to the important bosses. But we also want to take the stuff of all enemies to get treasure, and win all the encounters for XP. Bringing along some NPC cannon fodder/allies would give us an advantage in encounters and allow us to save some healing. But getting other people killed damages our reputation. There are tradeoffs to make - neither rushing in and killing everything (even if this is our typical modus operandi) nor bypassing as much as possible is necessarily the correct approach.