Death & XP Earned

[LiL KiNG]

So the answers I found between the PHB and DMG weren't very satisfactory; PHB says anyone who takes part in an encounter (even if unconscious) should be awarded XP, and the DMG says something along the line that once a character is brought back from a death they should be awarded any of the encounters experience. (I may be missing something somewhere though...)

The way I've played it in the past with an old group was to truncate earned experience based on your participation or death during an encounter. Example being that if your character is in another part of a building or dungeon from where a fight breaks out and you come in for maybe the last half you'd only get 50% of your earned XP for the encounter, or if you die 90% of the way through the fight with the Troll, you'd get 90% of the XP you should have earned once/if you are revived.
While this seems to rob XP from people, I also feel it more accurately reflects what they should have earned.
For naysayers of this I should add that I also award bonus XP for roleplaying, completing certain or optional task objects, and for unique and creative ideas or actions. For instance I had a group a of level 1 adventures encounter a enraged bear while trekking the woods, the Fighter, Rogue, and Wizard were just excited to roll damage dice and wanted attack with sword and spell but the Druid used his Wild Empathy [The ONLY time I've ever seen this class feature used by the way] to calm the bear and they passed without incident. Now everyone was awarded XP for the encounter as appropriate since they did 'defeat' it, but I gave the Druid something like an extra 50 XP for his creative way of dealing with the bear without killing it. I think he was rubbing behind it's ear as the party passed and then he said farewell and left a part of his rations with it.

...so to get off memory lane and back to the point, I'm just curious how other DM's run the issue of XP earned and dying during an encounter?

 

[ahayford]

I guess it depends on your group....but why would you want your players to advance at different rates? These games are typically (not always) a group event, and if a player participates (even as dragon food) and somehow survives after the fact, I'd say that everyone gets xp. Now if you want to assess a seperate penalty or bonus for certain activities....thats one thing.

The again, I tend to run XP by leveling the characters up at story point milestones and don't really award individual xp awards for encounters. To me, its just more unnecessary numbers to keep track of that bog down the experience (haha) of playing the game. I know in my head approximately how many encounters I want to run between levels and don't really feel the need to measure it in xp.

Some players love getting xp though...to each their own I guess.

 

[Grogg of the North]

Typically what I do is if you participate in the encounter or are doing something that is productive and helps the party you get full xp. For example if the fighter chases after the kobold going to warn his buddies and leaves the rest for the group, he gets full xp for that encounter.

I also award full xp for scenarios where party members don't get to act. If the fighter gets hit by hold monster and just stands there all combat I don't see the reason to penalize him/her twice. Same goes for a scenario where the barbarian wins initiative, rages, charges, power attacks, crits and turns the monster into a smear on the wall before anyone else acts.

As for dying, I use an XP debt system. When you come back to life you don't lose xp or levels. You instead gain a xp debt equal to how much you would have lost from coming back to life. New xp is split between the debt and leveling up normally. I find it easier to deal with and my group seems to enjoy it too.

I will openly admit that my laziness greatly affects how I award xp.

 

[LiL KiNG]

but why would you want your players to advance at different rates?

Our groups are usually mixed levels due to people choosing either a human or a +1LA race, level buyoffs, templates, etc. But everyone is for the most part within 2 levels of each other (mixed between a couple 8's, 9's and a 10 right now, only the 10 is a human/non-LA race). The nature of the XP reward system evens things out over time though - in this last adventure the level 10 got overall less XP then the rest of the group. We don't worry too much about the levels (except from the DM's perspective for challenges and all) and are more in it for the fun (and lets face it, we're all loot whores to varying degrees).

Also the XP is something I calculate after the end of the night and email out to the group, so having different calculations doesn't interfere or interrupt game time.

 

[LiL KiNG]

Typically what I do is if you participate in the encounter or are doing something that is productive and helps the party you get full xp. For example if the fighter chases after the kobold going to warn his buddies and leaves the rest for the group, he gets full xp for that encounter.

Agreed.

I also award full xp for scenarios where party members don't get to act. If the fighter gets hit by hold monster and just stands there all combat I don't see the reason to penalize him/her twice. Same goes for a scenario where the barbarian wins initiative, rages, charges, power attacks, crits and turns the monster into a smear on the wall before anyone else acts.

Also agreed, those characters are still conscious and/or participated in some way - my question was geared to more what do you do when you Fighter gets mauled by that Orge's club (massive damage for example) in the first round of combat and dies; would you give him full XP for the encounter once he's brought back to life?
If he died when the creature is still at half hitpoints (so half the fight) I would give him 50% of his XP because that was as much he was alive for to earn - the DMG seems to state that in either of those cases he should get full XP upon his being brought back to life...

As for dying, I use an XP debt system. When you come back to life you don't lose xp or levels. You instead gain a xp debt equal to how much you would have lost from coming back to life. New xp is split between the debt and leveling up normally. I find it easier to deal with and my group seems to enjoy it too.

I actually kinda like that idea, don't know if my group would go for it or not though, a couple of us are pretty RAW types and a couple are more 'lets wing it' types.

I will openly admit that my laziness greatly affects how I award xp.

lol, my email traffic with our earned XP sometimes doesn't go out for days, but we only meet every other weekend for a night so I have some leeway...

 

[Grogg of the North]

Agreed.

Also agreed, those characters are still conscious and/or participated in some way - my question was geared to more what do you do when you Fighter gets mauled by that Orge's club (massive damage for example) in the first round of combat and dies; would you give him full XP for the encounter once he's brought back to life?

If he died when the creature is still at half hitpoints (so half the fight) I would give him 50% of his XP because that was as much he was alive for to earn - the DMG seems to state that in either of those cases he should get full XP upon his being brought back to life...

Hmm ... I guess it depends on how I feel at the time and on a couple other factors such as how long until resurrection and how the dice went that night.

For now I'll just default to being lazy and probably not award any xp to that individual for the encounter.

 

[Water Bob]

I always went hard core on this. If a character dies during an encounter (and is later resurrected), then part of the penalty of dying is that you get no XP.

Don't die.

Back in my 2E AD&D days, I would have the major XP divided evenly between all group members, then each character could earn his own, individual bonuses for doing certain things. For example, if two fighters, a thief, and a mage take on 3 Orcs and find a chest with a jeweled necklace in it, I'd award group XP, divided evenly, for all three Orcs and the necklace treasure XP. But, the fighters would get an XP bonus for each Orc they downed. The mage would get a bonus for the spell he cast. And, the thief would get a bonus for picking the lock on the chest.

I'm so glad I'm playing the Conan RPG now where XP is totaly at the whim of the GM. The game is so much easier, and not much bookkeeping for XP.

 

[Vegepygmy]

I'm just curious how other DM's run the issue of XP earned and dying during an encounter?

I do it by the book. It seems fairer to me than trying to guesstimate how much a particular PC actually contributed, and over time I'd bet it works out anyway.

 

[Fanaelialae]

Agreed.



Also agreed, those characters are still conscious and/or participated in some way - my question was geared to more what do you do when you Fighter gets mauled by that Orge's club (massive damage for example) in the first round of combat and dies; would you give him full XP for the encounter once he's brought back to life?
If he died when the creature is still at half hitpoints (so half the fight) I would give him 50% of his XP because that was as much he was alive for to earn - the DMG seems to state that in either of those cases he should get full XP upon his being brought back to life...



I actually kinda like that idea, don't know if my group would go for it or not though, a couple of us are pretty RAW types and a couple are more 'lets wing it' types.



lol, my email traffic with our earned XP sometimes doesn't go out for days, but we only meet every other weekend for a night so I have some leeway...

I'd award the fighter full xp. He took a shot that would have otherwise killed a different PC, and thereby contributed to the party overcoming the challenge.

To put it a different way, what if only one PC survives a tough encounter? Should he get 4 shares of xp (the total worth of the encounter) or 1/4 (his normal share)? I believe it should be the latter, as the rogue by no means overcame the challenge on his own. The rogue didn't solo the challenge. Rather, the fighter, cleric, and wizard all perished in carrying the party to success. Therefore, they each deserve a fair (albeit posthumous) share of the xp.

If you're looking for an in-game justification, remember that one often learns more from failure than success.

 

[LiL KiNG]

I'd award the fighter full xp. He took a shot that would have otherwise killed a different PC, and thereby contributed to the party overcoming the challenge.

Depending on when he would drop would depend on the amount of xp as per my examples above. True, maybe that shot would've dropped someone else, but maybe it wouldn't have, but if it did then they'd get truncated xp themselves.
*I should say though, if that's the way you prefer to run it(and in fact how the DMG says), more power to ya, it's just not my way and I don't agree with the DMG on this - though with all rules already out there I can see why maybe they just said "screw it" and didn't expand on this issue more.*

To put it a different way, what if only one PC survives a tough encounter? Should he get 4 shares of xp (the total worth of the encounter) or 1/4 (his normal share)? I believe it should be the latter, as the rogue by no means overcame the challenge on his own. The rogue didn't solo the challenge. Rather, the fighter, cleric, and wizard all perished in carrying the party to success. Therefore, they each deserve a fair (albeit posthumous) share of the xp.

No of course not, in that scenario the rogue would only receive the normal 1/4 (or 1/5 since we have 5 PC's in our group) of the encounter's xp. The other three characters, under my way of doing it, would receive the approximate percentage that they contributed to the fight until they died. Yes the other characters contributed, but once they died they couldn't earn xp anymore (if raised/resurrected they'd get their posthumous % for the encounter awarded).
I don't see how if you're killed, in the first 1-2 rounds of fight especially, that you should get your full take of the xp - yes you participated, briefly, but why should you get awarded the same amount of xp when you died and the guys who survived and probably had to work a little harder on that encounter didn't. That's why, though it is slightly more work on my part, I like the % method. The % method does award them the 'fair' posthumous share of the xp they deserve - if resurrected.

If you're looking for an in-game justification, remember that one often learns more from failure than success.

True, but one learns nothing more after death... It's nice there is a way to save your character you've worked hard on or like, but even by RAW there is no rewarding a death and in fact, unless you get an expensive true resurrection, there are only penalties. So why should xp from the encounter that killed you be any different?
Situation depending, who's to say you'd learn anything if you never saw the dagger, axe, arrow, trap, etc., that killed you coming? A rogue's blade in the back teaches you nothing - except that it sucks to not have imp. uncanny dodge... rogue's happy though because that is the perfect scenario for him.

Again, I'm not just robbing my players of a % of their xp. Deaths are infrequent, and they earn bonus xp for various things from me far more then they'd ever be penalized by my %'ing their xp from a death.
I'm also not advocating for all DM's to follow my method either, this is just how I like to handle death/xp.