Awarding Experience

[CSB046]

Hey everybody. Hope you can forgive a fairly basic topic.

I'm a long-time Dungeon Master (ranging all the way back to the old Basic D&D set and first-edition AD&D), but I just finished running my first adventure under the third-edition rules. It was a generally successful mission, and now it's time to award experience to the party.

Calculating the standard awards for monster kills is easy enough, but I'm wondering about story-based awards, tied into the mission goals. How do you go about handling them? The DM's Guide suggests either dropping "monster-kill points" entirely in favor of story awards, or halving the points for monster kills and supplementing with mission-based points. Any thoughts on either of these practices? Also, do you find yourself handing out any points for good roleplaying?

I realize that everyone's mileage will vary based on how fast you like your group to advance in level, but any general thoughts are appreciated. Thank ya much.

 

[the Jester]

This is my system.

First off, I halve xp for monsters and traps overcome.

Second, I give each pc xp at the end of each session for roleplaying in several categories. These are race, class, alignment, and personal concerns. Each category that the player roleplayed is worth 25xcharacter level xp; so a pc that gets all four categories earns an extra 100 xp per level per session.

I'm fairly loose with my interpetation on these; the one hard and fast rule is that you don't earn rp xp simply for using your abilities. So you couldn't, for instance, say, "Well, I used my power attack feat a lot" to earn xp as a fighter. You could say, "I took the point and waded into all the fights"- that's a roleplaying decision, not just using your feats. Likewise, the rogue who tries to call disabling traps and sneak attacking won't get any sugar, but if he sought out the local thieves' guild she will.

I personally find that the standard xp award system in 3e leads to advancement that's too quick for my taste, so part of the reason for this was to slow it down a little; also, I really like rewarding good roleplaying, and xp is the best way to encourage it. I don't give story awards per se, but if the party's been trying to hunt down their nemesis for four sessions and they finally succeed, well, that's prolly something they can all call under "personal" and get their rp xp for.

Also, I give another 25xcharacter level for props.

Finally, this amount is the standard award. A character who achieves a really tremendously major goal- the cleric who frees her imprisoned deity- will prolly get twice as much for that category as normal. Also, the prop award is the most variable of them all; I'll typically give less for props that require less effort and more for props that are more interactive, inventive, etc.

 

[CSB046]

Thanks, Jester.

I appreciate the help.

 

[Drawmack]

I do it this way
A successful role-playing encounter = same experience as a successful battle.

Each place where they earn indiv experience they get what they would have gotten from a successful battle (in otherwords charted xp/# in party)

 

[dkilgo]

I award xp for good rp, and encounters. The encounters being combat oriented or non-combat oriented. The non-combat oriented encounters I award 50% of the EL only because the character does stand losing much compared to combat.

 

[Fenes 2]

We ditched xp alltogether, just level up when we feel like it, usually after 2 to 3 months, but after reaching 14 we will slow down.

Before we ditched xp we just had story award xp - after the adventure the DM gave out a flat number of xp. No calculating CRs here, no counting kills.

That way the DM had control over how fast we leveled and could choose the encounters as he saw fit without worrying over too fast or too slow exp.

 

[Tonguez]

Give CR to Plot Events (eg Getting from the Shire to Bree, Bree to Rivendal etc tyaking into account likely 'dangers' and obstacles) - now it doesn't matter how they got to Bree and whether they killed the threeheading Troll on the way or bribed him to let them pass (they could have avoided it entirely) - they get CR for reaching there goal.

I also give out bonuses (skill points, XP for innovative roleplaying...

 

[-Eä-]

We ditched xp alltogether, just level up when we feel like it, usually after 2 to 3 months, but after reaching 14 we will slow down.

Before we ditched xp we just had story award xp - after the adventure the DM gave out a flat number of xp. No calculating CRs here, no counting kills.

That way the DM had control over how fast we leveled and could choose the encounters as he saw fit without worrying over too fast or too slow exp.

This is the best XP-solution ever! The group gather's and agrees on the fact that the characters have learned quite a deal now. Maybe it's time to level up?
This is the way to go, although it requires very mature and experienced player's in my opinion. This system would probably work perfectly for a private group in which I DM sometimes, but for a group consisting of perhaps 25 players it may not work very well...

Anyhow: This is the best solution, imo, for groups from 3 to 6 players.

 

[Fenes 2]

It also requires some workwith spells or feats that cost xp. So far it has not yet crept up on us (and we played since it came out), but I am planning, should it become an issue, to just forego the xp cost on items, instead requiring hard to aquire reagents (adventure hook anyone), and looking that each PC is similarly equipped.
As far as xp-costing spells go, I do not particularly like the poster spells (wish, limited wish) anyway, and the rest will not be used much anyway, even if we had spellcasters able and willing to cast them.