I'm A Banana
Potassium-Rich
pemerton said:In 4e, for example - at least as I play it, but I hew pretty close to the RAW - XP are a reward primarily for turning up and playing the game.
So, given that, it's not really functioning as a reward any more. There might be other rewards that you offer in your games (such as accomplishing certain narrative goals), but XP isn't one of them.
I think that's pretty common, but it's not hard to adapt to a system like 4e's or 5e's. You simply continue to use XP as a guideline for challenge difficulty, and continue to level up your players at a rate that feels comfortable for you. If you take your system in 4e and adapt it to 5e, perhaps showing up and playing the game awards 1/4 of a day's worth of XP. Or whatever.
pemerton said:5 monsters worth per full skill challenge...5 monsters worth per equal level combat...Plus Quest XP
I don't imagine those would require any big deviation from a hypothetical daily-XP-value baseline, really. You'd probably even be able to use "monsters' worth," though I imagine XP could exist for individual skill checks, even (probably "minion XP," I'd think).
pemerton said:Also, in 4e XP don't correspond to risk in any tight way.
It doesn't need to be exactly tight. In fact, it kind of can't be: a Minion Brute against a party heavy with Strikers is going to be a bigger challenge than a Solo Controller.
It's enough that a level 2 creature is worth more XP than a level 1 creature, and it has bigger numbers, and is a bigger vertical threat in general. Precision gives you rapidly diminishing returns as you micro-manage individual numbers of unique party members in an ever-increasing set of nigh-infinite variables, but ballpark is useful as a guideline.