Not in my experience (heh).
That’s if the party has a ranger or rogue (or other sneaky character), the group is willing to engage in party-splitting, and the scout character is willing to take XP-worthy risks while ahead of the party. Again, not really a common occurrence in my experience of the typical way modern D&D is played - though admittedly not unheard of.
I’ve never seen this happen in my life, but it would be hilarious.
Though I've seen it done, IMO it'd be unwise of a party not to have at least one such character in its lineup.
There seems little sense in asking the clanky Fighter or the clumsy Wizard to be stealthy; and information is valuable. Again, it'd be an unwise party that didn't use its stealth resources as info-gatherers and scouts when doing so makes sense.
The "xp-worthy risk" lies in the very fact of being alone, without available backup, in a potentially dangerous place. Even if you-as-DM know it's safe the PC in the fiction doesn't; thus in the PC's eyes she's taking a risk and - one would think - she would earn some xp for that.
You're not exactly selling me on "modern D&D" here...
If the xp system itself is loosy-goosy, then its granularity is pointless. (No pun intended.) It becomes farcical to microcount meaningless numbers.
Citation please. I looked for it, didn't find it.
Then you are the anomaly IME, not the norm.
Out of combat XP is more loosey goosey. No matter how many Orcs I fight, I get the same XP per orc. This is fixed. Sure, the number of orcs present in an encounter can be variable, but there are clear guidelines on how what range of orcs for what effect works -- I'm still fighting discreet orc units with assigned XP.
Is it? I'm sure it is for some. I always found it just overhead because for me the reward was playing the game. This seems like a very "one true way" and "everyone thinks the same as I do" statement. It may be true in general, but individuals vary. I assume you could find some study that "proves" this but those studies look at one aspect of motivation in isolation, they don't consider the entire experience.
For some people. Not for everyone.
A couple times I tracked XP for the characters instead of having the players do it. I told them if they ever asked "How close am I to leveling?" I would remove their XP for the last session.
I’m not trying to. It isn’t to your tastes and that’s ok.You're not exactly selling me on "modern D&D" here...
In real life people can become more proficient at what they do. They go from playing chopsticks to Chopin, from playing in the living room to a concert hall. As a game, D&D has to simplify that process and gaining a level is "chunky", but it's still based on real world experiences that people have of growth in expertise over time.
The granularity is its own point. It allows you to give it out in smaller quantities, without preventing you from giving it out in larger quantities. It’s much more versatile, and as far as I can tell the only drawback is that you have to do a bit more math. Again, well worth the tradeoff in my opinion.
Again, nothing about XP prevents you from doing this. It simply allows you to have more difficulty categories in-between those, if you want to.
Right, but you can do that and give XP for an easy encounter if you judged the encounter to be easy. Again, what you’re describing is a benefit of judging encounter difficulty after the fact, which you can absolutely do with XP.
That’s how it works as described in the DMG, yes. You don’t have to award XP that way. If you have a problem with the way XP is awarded, changing the way you award XP seems to me like a better solution than getting rid of XP.
@Yaarel is advocating for giving using the encounter bands as a guide for how much to award for combat encounters too. They’re just counting fractions of encounters instead of more granular experience points. I’m just saying, you could do that with XP too. The benefits they’re describing are benefits of deciding the award after the encounter, not benefits of tracking fractions of encounters instead of XP.
Yes. This is a very well-documented psychological phenomenon.
Seeing progress bars fill up as a result of your actions is satisfying. It just is. Is it the only satisfying thing? Of course not. Is it the most satisfying thing? Probably not to most people. I don’t know where you’re getting the idea that I’m making any sort of statement about “the entire experience (of D&D).” And I’m very explicitly not saying that using XP is “the one true way.” I have been very clear and direct in saying there are perfectly legitimate reasons one might not want to use XP, and that it isn’t right for every campaign. I just think that most campaigns could benefit from using it. If yours is not among them, great! Have fun!
“Can we go kill some orcs? I’m really close to leveling!” is literally the effect I’m talking about in action. Humans are motivated to make the progress bar fill up. Now, you may not like the effect that causes on your game, that’s totally fine. But the effect is very real.
I wasn’t going to chime in anything of the sort. I’m well aware that XP isn’t the only thing that can motivate players to adventure. Heck, if they didn’t want to go on adventures, they wouldn’t be playing D&D in the first place, and XP wouldn’t change that.
Right. So like I’ve been saying, it’s an example of how powerful that progress bar effect can be; it’s also a perfectly legitimate reason someone might not want to use XP.
That’s like saying jackhammer isn’t a powerful tool for everyone. A jackhammer is objectively a powerful tool. It might not be the right tool for the job you’re doing, and if so, obviously you shouldn’t use it. But it’s still a powerful tool, independently of your need for it (or lack thereof).
Sure. If you only look at one aspect of motivation.
Again with the assumptions. I never found getting XP particularly rewarding, it was just overhead and bookkeeping. That's what I'm objecting to, this insistence that because many people find it rewarding that everyone finds it rewarding. I find leveling rewarding but the process of getting and having to keep track of XP? Nah.
Which I hate. Why is the character going out to kill orcs? What's their motivation to do so? The character the person is role playing has none.
Again, I find it a challenge to discuss the game when things that people insert or ignore are treated as the game in question. I'm sure that the way you've decided to implement out-of-combat XP is peachy, but I don't know what that is and I wouldn't expect you to know what I might do. I can talk about what the books say, though.
Sure, but this doesn't make out-of-combat XP suddenly less loosey-goosy because you've decided to ignore the system and make combat XP more loosey-goosey (we still have combat encounter guidelines, whereas we have no such thing for out-of-combat).
You do know that by this logic, people in real life also earn XP.
You have a number stamped on your forehead that grows over time? People get better at things, there's no artificial number that tracks it. People grow and improve. XP is just a game mechanic to track that process because the granularity of the game's leveling system is not a smooth curve like real life.
Citation please. I looked for it, didn't find it.
I agree it is a silly suggestion, and we never followed it, especially as we would often have to end play mid-dungeon, or even mid-combat!AD&D 1E Dungeon Masters Guide p37 said:
I was not comparing the power of levels in D&D to other games directly (your "men are telephone poles" argument). I was making a broad observation that some form of "leveling" is present in any game that has character improvement. A level in one game is not necessarily equal to a level in any other game, but from the 45000-ft view they are conceptually similar. It was intended to be a humorous dig at RPG players who turn their nose up at the idea of levels as a concept. People can draw lines about particular levels in particular games as "too powerful," "too weak," "not granular enough," "not flexible enough," etc., but they still have the broad game element of levels.
Some games may have a finer resolution than D&D and can create a wider variety of characters, but it is not an infinite range. Some D&D levels offer players a choice from two or three features. A hypothetical game with 200 ways to spend a character point could be looked at (in the abstract) as having many more levels than D&D, and at each level you have 200 things to choose from. Two characters who spent their character points the same way would (mechanically) look alike.
Even if we don't apply the suggestion "in the middle of the action," player characters have lives, goals, activities, enemies, rivals, etc., that they would not let slide just because the player is not playing. I agree that time-keeping is very important in a campaign, but I like the idea that the players decide if their characters will take a week off doing nothing. Certainly there are some downtime activities that can be handled very quickly away from the table if all agree to let the time pass while doing these things, but some events and interactions involve NPCs or decisions that need to be handled in game.
