Compulsions and Experience

[Shirt Guy John]

How do charmed and dominated monsters affect experience gained from an encounter? My guess is that a charmed creature gains a share of the experience as if it were a character, 'cause it is still acting of its own regard to a degree. A dominated monster ont he other hand has no affect on experience 'cause it's just a tool for the dominator, like a sword or a shield, and the dominator thus gains full experience from anything that he makes the dominated monster do. Anyone think these are right? Wrong? Thanks.

 

[Maitre Du Donjon]

Since the enemy of the charmed/dominated person is basically the person who charmed/dominated him/her, my take would be that said person gains experience if he can survive his/her encounter with said charmer/dominator...

Maitre D

 

[Shirt Guy John]

Uh, well, i meant more along the lines of doe sthe dominator (if he's a caster) suffer any sort of reduction to his gained exp if he's using another creature (via a compulsion) to reach his goals?

 

[Wormwood]

Full XP is warranted (IMO), since he's simply using his spell repertoire properly.

 

[AuraSeer]

Full XP for the controlling character.
You don't reduce XP awards if he casts cone of cold or summon monster V, so don't reduce them if he casts dominate person.

 

[Stalker0]

Full XP for the controlling character.
You don't reduce XP awards if he casts cone of cold or summon monster V, so don't reduce them if he casts dominate person.

Agreed, I mean how else do I get my bard vampires

 

[shilsen]

So what do you do in the following situation:

Spellcaster dominates someone, and orders the latter to travel into a forest and kill the dragon living within, while the spellcaster sits at home. The dominated character/creature kills the dragon. Does the spellcaster get the XP?

Also, if you provide full XP to the spellcaster for combat actions taken by a dominated creature, I presume you use the spellcaster's level for calculating XP. What about a rogue using a scroll to dominate someone? Use the scroll caster level or the rogue's level?

 

[hong]

So what do you do in the following situation:

Spellcaster dominates someone, and orders the latter to travel into a forest and kill the dragon living within, while the spellcaster sits at home. The dominated character/creature kills the dragon. Does the spellcaster get the XP?

Sure. If the dominated guy is strong enough to kill a dragon on his own, then dominating him in the first place should have been a nontrivial challenge in itself. The question here is whether you should be awarding XP for successfully dominating that guy (and overcoming that encounter), _as well as_ XP for the dragon.

In practice, I don't see this as being a major problem, if only because most players are going to want the chance to beat on a dragon themselves, rather than letting NPCs get all the fun.

 

[AuraSeer]

Spellcaster dominates someone, and orders the latter to travel into a forest and kill the dragon living within, while the spellcaster sits at home. The dominated character/creature kills the dragon. Does the spellcaster get the XP?

Yep.
Consider the reverse case. You fail a Will save one day, and your PC wakes up in an unfamiliar town, disoriented. In his backpack there's a letter of thanks from the king; it turns out he killed a dragon. He kind of remembers doing it, but he wasn't in his right mind while doing so. (You as a player got no chance to make any rolls or decisions.) Should you get a free level just for failing a Will save, or should that XP go to the mage who cast dominate person?

Also, if you provide full XP to the spellcaster for combat actions taken by a dominated creature, I presume you use the spellcaster's level for calculating XP. What about a rogue using a scroll to dominate someone? Use the scroll caster level or the rogue's level?

Use the rogue's level, just as if the rogue used a scroll of some other offensive spell.

It shouldn't make much of a difference anyway. If the rogue has access to an unbalancingly powerful scroll, any XP weirdness is the DM's fault, because he's responsible for maintaining the treasure balance. (You wouldn't give a scroll of meteor swarm to low-level mage, so don't be giving scrolls of dominate monster to a low-level rogue.)

 

[kramis]

Experience for your own actions

I only award experience to the character doing the action, whether or not he or she is under the influence of a mind altering spell. This is for direct action experience only.

If a wizard dominates someone and that person kills a creature, the wizard gets no experience, period.

However, if the wizard dominates a rogue and sends the rogue into a dungeon to retrieve a poweful magic item, while the rogue will get experience for all the traps and monsters in the dungeon, upon receiving the item the wizard will get "story" and "goal" experience which I give out as well in my game. The wizard my also get bonus "personal" experience for clever use of a ability, something I also give out in my games.

I find this to be the most fair and balanced. And since my characters are getting charmed and dominated a lot, they are quite happy to be getting the experience for their actions ... actually, they also often get bonus experience for good role playing of being charmed or dominated which isn't always easy, especially when other characters don't know and you aren't allowed to to let them know. It's usually some of the most entertaining sessions we have.