Death & XP Earned

[LiL KiNG]

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.

That's cool if you run it how the book says - I personally don't agree with it, but other people take umbrage with different rules that don't bother me...
Even if I guesstimated on the low side of the xp, I tend to award far more bonus xp then they'd lose by my death/xp method.

In a grossly exaggerated scenario; lets say you have a... bard in your group that is just built or played poorly and they die close to the beginning of nearly every encounter you throw at them. Somehow they manage a true resurrection after every death (so no xp/level penalty inherent with the death) - they would still continue to level on par with the rest of party despite their deaths and being a liability, if you follow the DMG's suggestion of awarding them full encounter xp after a death/resurrection...
That just doesn't seem fair to me.

 

[Vegepygmy]

In a grossly exaggerated scenario; lets say you have a... bard in your group that is just built or played poorly and they die close to the beginning of nearly every encounter you throw at them. Somehow they manage a true resurrection after every death (so no xp/level penalty inherent with the death) - they would still continue to level on par with the rest of party despite their deaths and being a liability, if you follow the DMG's suggestion of awarding them full encounter xp after a death/resurrection...
That just doesn't seem fair to me.

I see your point, but as you say, that's a grossly exaggerated scenario. So why should we worry about it?

I've never run or played in a game where true resurrections were so easy to come by, and I'm sure I never will. So you are offering a solution to a "problem" that doesn't in fact exist.

 

[LiL KiNG]

I see your point, but as you say, that's a grossly exaggerated scenario. So why should we worry about it?

I've never run or played in a game where true resurrections were so easy to come by, and I'm sure I never will. So you are offering a solution to a "problem" that doesn't in fact exist.

Well I'm glad you can see what I mean, the point of it being such a stupid example was just to point out the xp gain one could receive even after dying. I know that was over the top and completely implausible - I'd never allow true rez's to be that accessible either - but it shows why I dislike the full xp after a death for someone. Even on the small scale with a death only once in a while it unfairly awards someone when they die and get a rez vs. the rest of the party members who didn't die.

If you see no problem with the system in place please don't worry about it - I'm not asking you to worry about, just comparing how others run their games with death/xp earned to my way of doing it, curious to see if anyone else has even run across this? I played with a group for close to 7 years with people coming and going as deployments and PCS's brought them in and out and we used this system with no conflicts (without ever actually looking in the DMG, it was the system in place when I joined so I never really questioned it) and it seemed not only fair, but to work great. Due to my own PCS I'm now in a new group and now that I'm DMing I automatically reverted to this method when calculating xp, one player protested recently (it wasn't the guy who died by the way, the player who died seem fine with the % method as he got nearly 95% of his xp anyway because he died a round before the monster) so I did look into it and found I dislike the DMG's 'once they're raised/rez'd give them full xp for the encounter that killed them' bit, and decided to discuss it here. That's all.

I just find giving someone full xp once rez'd doesn't seem fair, so I break it down by % of participation in the encounter - which also doesn't factor in that often to become a "problem" with uneven leveling, but feels more balanced to me. Bonus xp awarded (by me) for roleplaying or special circumstances changes the xp earned per character by uneven amounts at the end of an adventure, and this happens much more frequently - is that more damaging? Now people will slowly level faster than their companions depending on circumstances.

Everything else aside; why should someone get full xp for an encounter in which they died vs. breaking it down by what they 'earned'?

If the cleric is in a different room, building, or town from the rest of the party when they have an encounter, the cleric would get no xp from that - so why if the cleric was present but died at that encounter should he get full xp - give him some yes, for as much as he contributed, but full? I, personally, don't agree.

In the words of Richard: "Don't fwoosh me bro" but other games like WoW or Everquest don't give you any xp back from any encounter if you die - I find it funny D&D does. Aside from Classic Battletech, D&D is the only other tabletop game I play. Other systems like Conan, Rifts, Shadowrun, etc may run their xp/death thing the same as D&D but I'm not familiar with them so couldn't say.
[And no, I do not play WoW anymore-I got rid of my account before the first expansion and never looked back - hmm with that statement, maybe WoW has changed how they do dying and xp, I don't know anymore, but they didn't once upon a time]

 

[LiL KiNG]

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.

lol that is hardcore - and I like that better than giving back full xp from the encounter. Makes more sense in my mind - I try to give them what they would have earned up until death though. A little more work on my part, but I like it.

...I've heard a lot of good things about the Conan game and have to admit I'd like to check it out. I do like our FR campaign we have going right now though.

 

[Water Bob]

...I've heard a lot of good things about the Conan game and have to admit I'd like to check it out. I do like our FR campaign we have going right now though.

The Conan RPG is fantastic. I think it's one of the best versions of the 3.5 rules. Characters can viable wear no armor and have a high AC due to a Dodge-type combat stance. Or, they can Parry, too. Armor doesn't adjust AC. Armor soaks up damage if the character is hit. The game is deadly. It's mean to be a low level, gritty game, though the level cap is 20 (most NPCs are 6th level or less, with the vast majority being level 1 or 2).

Weapons do more damage than their D&D counterparts. There is no magical healing. And, the Massive Damage save is set a 20 points of damage.

It's very "gritty". Very "Conan".



It's not just "D&D in another universe" either. There's no demi-humans, and magic is dark, gritty, and very rare. One of the joys of the D&D game is the constant reward of magical weapons, armor,and other gear. Conan doesn't have that. The adventures are structured differently, too. You don't have your typical D&D dungeons in Conan. You might have an old ruin to explore, but chances are it's populated by an evil necromancer, his human thugs, and a big, nasty demonic meanace. We're not talking about goblins, orcs, hobgoblins, kobolds and the like (which I dearly love, btw). Instead, we're talking about human bandits, cultists, theives as primary enemies, with a few monsters thrown in here and there for good measure.

The game is high on character customization, and multiclassing is easy. You don't meet elves, dwarves, and the like. Instead, you witness the culture class between various human races of the world.

It is a fanstastic game, but it's not D&D. Conan delivers something a little different that only looks like D&D on the surface.

 

[Water Bob]

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

IMO, one of the strengths of the earlier editions of D&D (1E AD&D, for example) is that different character classes used different XP charts for advancement.

Pulling out my old PHB for 1E AD&D, I see....

The Fighter needed 2001 XP to reach 2nd level, 4001 XP to reach 3rd level, and 8001 XP to reach 5th level.

OTOH, the Mage needs 2501 XP to reach 2nd level, 5001 XP to reach 3rd level, and 10,001 XP to reach 5th level.

This kept the powerful mage in-check, a safegard against mages ruling the game.

I think that was a feature not a fall in the old game system.

 

[Fanaelialae]

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.*

Well, obviously, you're welcome to play however works for your group. You asked, so I was explaining why I wouldn't (and don't) do it that way.

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.

The way I see it is that the party overcame a CR X challenge. They should get their fair share of that xp, even if it is posthumous. Perhaps especially if it is posthumous, as that suggests that the CR may not have accurately reflected the difficulty of the encounter.

I find it strange that, in the above example, you would probably be rewarding total xp equivalent to a CR encounter significantly lower than the one the PCs faced, when considering that 3/4 of the party perished, the CR was probably higher than what you initially thought it to be. If the battle lasts 4 rounds, we can assume that one PC drops each round (let's say the creature has a death gaze attack and the PCs just can't seem to make their saves). The fighter gets 25% of his share (he had the misfortune of being targeted first), the cleric 50%, the wizard 75%, and the rogue 100%. You're only giving out 62.5% of the encounter's total worth. Let's say that the PCs are level 10 and the encounter was a CR 10. The xp you are giving them is a little over what they would get for a CR 8 encounter, but it's likely that the true difficulty of the encounter was at least a CR 12 (considering you managed to kill 3/4 of the party).

I feel like you assume a merit-based approach, but death is often not the fault of the player. If my fighter decides to leap down the gullet of a purple worm in order to kill it from the inside, it's my fault if he perishes in the attempt. If a fire giant wielding a greataxe crits on my fighter while he's fighting it, I don't see that as inept play. It's simply bad luck. IME, the latter is far more common than the former (at least in 3rd edition based systems).

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.

Even if you get stabbed from behind, when you come back you learn to be more wary. IMO, this translates to increased survivability, which comes from increased hp, which comes from level. (Although it'd be kind of awesome if that backstab encounter just happened to level the PC such that he suddenly gained access to imp. uncanny dodge.)

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.

Death is punishment enough; I don't see a need to add insult to that injury by denying the player experience that he (IMO) earned.

I'm not saying you have to change your methods, I'm just elaborating on why I don't agree with them myself. It isn't as though I'm one of your players, and even if I were, this is something I'd consider more an annoyance than a deal-breaker.

 

[LiL KiNG]

[MENTION=92305]Water Bob[/MENTION]; Yep, I'm gonna have to check it out. Hopefully it's more 'Conan the Barbarian' versus 'Conan the Destroyer' cause Barbarian was so much better than Destroyer...
I haven't seen the new Conan movie yet, but I want to.

 

[Water Bob]

I haven't seen the new Conan movie yet, but I want to.

The new flick is OK. It's not a great Conan film by any stretch of the imagination, and there's some silly things in it (like a ship, pull on elephants, that never goes into the water). But, still, the film as its merits, too. The world, for example, looks like it should, shown by some of the best CGI I've seen.

It's better than The Scorpion King and probably on par with Clash of the Titans. But, it's definitely no Lord of the Rings. I'd give it 3 out of 5 stars.