Citation? I don't recall XP being specifically and exclusively linked to combat in any edition.
D&D 5E D&D's XP & advancement system is a bit broken. I have a solution.
- Thread starter LexStarwalker
- Start date
Citation? I don't recall XP being specifically and exclusively linked to combat in any edition.
Demorgus
Explorer
See DMG, page 261...this isn't a variant rule or a homebrew rule. It's part of the rules.
It is meaningless meta-game currency. In 1E you used to experience for every gold piece you acquired. In other editions role-playing experience, traps, and a role-playing provided experience. Experience has always been a meta-game advancement with a great deal coming from combat because the game was built for a lot of combat because players like to fight and use their combat abilities.
Experience points as combat experience is nebulous as well. What if a wizard kills ten creatures with a fireball? Does he get the experience while everyone else gets nothing? Or the fighter kills far more than the rogue or cleric? Does he get more experience? 2E used to have an experience bonus based on hit dice killed. It was fun for the players to keep track of, but it skewed the experience some, especially for a player playing a healing class.
Advancement systems are always metagame. They try to pay a little respect to realism, but as a DM you should never think of experience points as anything tied to real experience. That would lead to problems calculating the amount of combat power each class brings to the table.
Tony Vargas
Legend
Which'd also probably run faster and give less swingy encounters.
The system as written has all kinds of advice for advancement. I use all the experience point options with a focus on combat which is the standard method. Our other group DM uses leveling by milestone. He levels us when we need to level for the story or adventure pace. Both are valid. Leveling isn't some hard rule. It's something as a DM you plan for after you determine the method you intend to use for leveling. Heck, most of the adventure paths are designed to level by milestone. There isn't near enough experience in modules like Hoard of the Dragon Queen or Princes of the Apocalypse for leveling by experience. That's why the WotC modules give recommendations for advancing the characters rather than assuming they earned enough experience through combat.
The Crimson Binome
Hero
It's not meta-game - it does correspond to real knowledge that the characters possess - but it's... kind of abstract and hard to deal with. There's a lot of twisting to make it fit into a system that's roughly analogous to the original meaning of the term, while still being simple enough for players to understand it.
Part of the deal with class-and-level systems is that they bundle a lot of different abilities together, and then allow experience with any one of those things to advance the progression of all of them. Within the narrative of the game world, fighters get better at fighting by fighting, and wizards are supposed to be digging up arcane lore in all of these places, while rogues are using their rogue skills all along. In AD&D, they tried giving out experience points based on those priorities - everyone got XP for fighting, but fighters got more from fighting, wizards also got XP from casting spells, and thieves also got XP from finding loot or using their skills.
Maybe, back in the old days, experience was purely meta-game. I can't speak for anything before 2E. I've never seen a game where advancement was purely meta-game, though.
It's meta-game. As in the players never know how much experience they have. They never use it in combat or in the actual game world. It's a tracking number that loosely represents advancement. It advances all abilities, even ones the player doesn't use when he advances a level or that don't involve combat. The generic proficiency bonus advances and it affects all skills, even if you didn't use any of them in any encounter. It's always been this way for every game system.
Even skill point game system it is meta-game because you can usually spend it on any skill you wish even if you didn't use it. If a game forced you to spend skill points or experience only on skills you used during the combats or encounters, then it wouldn't be meta-game. Given how it is used in D&D and 5E, it is a meta-game number.
It was meta-game back in the old days. It was meta-game in 3E. It is meta-game in 5E. Experience is a tracking number that gives players a vicarious sense of character improvement and allows the DM to use a higher level of enemy to challenge them. It's always been that way in D&D and most game systems. It has little to nothing to do with the actual experience of what they are doing, even less so in a game like 5E where a generic proficiency number advancing improves everything the character can do.
I'm not going to fault you for wanting to see it as "real" knowledge. I don't see it that way and never have. Experience points have always been a tracking number to create the illusion of advancement with not much tied to what they are actually doing. The fact that combat experience is the primary method of advancement for every character is the biggest indicator that experience is a meta-game number since combat makes up so little real knowledge as you put it. A character has many skills and abilities, not all of them combat-related. Yet they advance based on combat experience just as combat skills can advance based on role-play or milestone experience or curing some NPCs insanity. Experience is a meta-game tracking number. Even designed modules treat it as such. You can even see that different characters impact combat differently and always have, yet experience is generally divided evenly regardless of the impact each player had on the combat. If experience were really tied to combat experience, it would be doled out according to their impact on combat or according to the skill used. Instead it is doled out exactly like you would a generic tracking number with a meta-game effect that the character doesn't know about, but the player gets to use as he wishes, even taking another class if he so chooses. Even the function of using the advancement gained from experience is a meta-game function.
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FormerlyHemlock
Hero
??? Why six? If four PCs fight four orcs three times, they go from level 1 to 2. If they fight twelve orcs once, the same.
A band of twelve orcs holding captive a farm family in their own house sounds like a dandy first-level party meet. It's urgent enough to explain why the PCs are getting involved, and tough enough to explain why they learn to trust each other through the experience.
The Crimson Binome
Hero
That's patently not true. Most skill point systems explicitly state that you should only improve skills that you've actually used, and even 3.5 explained this in the DMG. Granted, most people ignored that part of the book since it added a lot of bookkeeping, but you shouldn't fault the system for players misusing it. And then there are games like Skyrealms of Jorune, where skills only ever advance in the aftermath of having used those skills. (In this specific case, it's a chance for a skill to improve after a fixed period of time, based on how often you used the skill and under what circumstances).
Even for systems where you do improve at combat/skills you haven't used, like much of D&D (and especially the 3.x Commoner class), that doesn't necessarily mean it's a meta-game thing. Meta-gaming is very specifically the term for player knowledge which the characters lack, and the characters should be aware that they get better (at what they do) by doing stuff (that they can learn from). They don't know the numbers, but their knowledge about how they improve mirrors our own knowledge about how they improve. Unless you hand out extra experience for RP or something, at which point the characters don't really have any analogous knowledge on that front.
Edit:
It's certainly possible to meta-game with experience points. The whole class-based advancement system only makes sense in the context of adventurers who go out and fight/magic/skill in roughly equal proportions, such that improving all of those things at once is a reasonable abstraction made in the name of bookkeeping. If the characters starting acting on this, by killing boars until they were better at lockpicking, then the assumptions made in order to justify that abstraction are no longer sufficient.
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Libramarian
Adventurer
I do XP for GP. I reduce monster XP to 20% and give it treasure equal to the remaining 80% (generally; some monsters have more, some less).
The treasure is often hidden or trapped, so the PCs do get XP via the exploration pillar of the game. They also get XP when they sell magic items or get paid for accomplishing some mission, so XP is also tied to the social pillar.
The treasure is often hidden or trapped, so the PCs do get XP via the exploration pillar of the game. They also get XP when they sell magic items or get paid for accomplishing some mission, so XP is also tied to the social pillar.
Flamestrike
Legend
Read it again. It refers to adjusted difficulty XP in the chart itself, but in the text of what the XP in the chart represents it refers to 'earnt' XP.
Its a clear as mud.
I find the values in the chart lines up with earnt XP if youre sticking to 6-8 medium to hard encounters in a day.
Istbor
Dances with Gnolls
I agree, sounds like business as usual.
ExploderWizard
Hero
That point was 1974.
The AD&D DMG released 5 years later explained in detail that XP makes no rational sense and that it works the way it does because its a game.
The Crimson Binome
Hero
Which was an untenable position from a simulation standpoint, and thus quickly reversed in time for AD&D 2E.
ExploderWizard
Hero
The 1E DMG went into the whole simulation rabbit hole. It pointed out that in a simulated fantasy world fighters should get more XP from combat, thieves from stealing loot, clerics for converting folks to their faith, and magic users for studying ancient tomes and scrolls and how all of that works great in theory but plays out terrible if the PCs are adventuring together.
Treasure was the best method neutral way of keeping score. You could fight, trick, bargain, or explore to gain it. There was less pressure to move from encounter to encounter or to fight X number of times per day.
Halivar
First Post
This. D&D is not and never was a simulation. Seems RuneQuest would be a better fit for that style of play anyhow.
Whirlingdervish
First Post
one session to go from first to second level aggravates my inner grognard my party played a month of sundays before they hit second level ...
edited because i have fat fingers sometimes
edited because i have fat fingers sometimes
ChrisCarlson
First Post
Careful. Rapid fluctuation in weight can be a sign of something serious. Or of being Christian Bale...
The Crimson Binome
Hero
It was pretty simulation-y during the AD&D days, apparently moreso in 2E than in 1E, but I guess it could also vary wildly between DMs (as it still does).
From what I gather, Gygax was never one for simulation, or really for role-playing at all. I seem to recall his once suggesting that advanced players should just go ahead and create characters at high levels, since character level was supposed to correlate to player skill. Much of what was coming out in the late eighties and throughout the nineties was designed as a reaction to Gygaxian Game-ism, just as modern day has so many games that seem to be a reaction to the predominant Simulation-ism which took its place.
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