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<blockquote data-quote="Crazy Jerome" data-source="post: 5860144" data-attributes="member: 54877">Since what people want to reward varies so much, divorce the baseline for XP from the creatures entirely. CR or similar scales are for telling the DM how much or how little trouble he is putting the party up against. If that's all that scale has to do, it might do it well.&nbsp;Then for the default XP rewards, I'd base XP on party level, with about a page or so of guidelines on how to modify this for particular styles. If a character is 8th level, goes on an adventure of moderate complexity and length (say, expected to finish in about three 4 hours sessions), then they get NNNN XP. Or even better, if they really make that &quot;one hour adventure segment&quot; thing work out, make it per hour. Do the XP advancement chart to match, you can even make this easy to remember--say, about 100 times character level per hour &quot;adventure segment&quot;.&nbsp;In the guidelines, explain that if your players are getting stuff done but running off on tangents all the time, it might be better to go with XP per hour played. Or if they like to cut up a lot and take longer, bump&nbsp; up the reward for completion of a segment, on the grounds that everyone is having fun at the slowr pace. Or don't, if you like slower advancement to go with your slower pace.&nbsp; Or if they like to cut up a lot and drive half the table crazy in the process, bump it down or be more strict about finishing stuff. Or if your fun is in meeting the challenges, only factor in adjustments for things that turned out too hard or too easy. The DM making those kinds of adjustments is mostly art instead of math, anyway. So get a base number with as minimal a math as possible, and advise how to tweak that number appropriately.&nbsp;I'm convinced that most experienced DMs end up doing something like the above adjustments anyway. It's just harder to learn and harder to do if you are applying lots of fiddly formulas and evaluating every little bit separately. It's much easier for an up and coming DM to get to the end of the session, eyeball it, and say, &quot;You know, you guys were laying into it, but that was tougher than normal. Have a +20% bonus.&quot;</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Crazy Jerome, post: 5860144, member: 54877"] Since what people want to reward varies so much, divorce the baseline for XP from the creatures entirely. CR or similar scales are for telling the DM how much or how little trouble he is putting the party up against. If that's all that scale has to do, it might do it well. Then for the default XP rewards, I'd base XP on party level, with about a page or so of guidelines on how to modify this for particular styles. If a character is 8th level, goes on an adventure of moderate complexity and length (say, expected to finish in about three 4 hours sessions), then they get NNNN XP. Or even better, if they really make that "one hour adventure segment" thing work out, make it per hour. Do the XP advancement chart to match, you can even make this easy to remember--say, about 100 times character level per hour "adventure segment". In the guidelines, explain that if your players are getting stuff done but running off on tangents all the time, it might be better to go with XP per hour [B]played[/B]. Or if they like to cut up a lot and take longer, bump up the reward for completion of a segment, on the grounds that everyone is having fun at the slowr pace. Or don't, if you like slower advancement to go with your slower pace. Or if they like to cut up a lot and drive half the table crazy in the process, bump it down or be more strict about finishing stuff. Or if your fun is in meeting the challenges, only factor in adjustments for things that turned out too hard or too easy. The DM making those kinds of adjustments is mostly art instead of math, anyway. So get a base number with as minimal a math as possible, and advise how to tweak that number appropriately. I'm convinced that most experienced DMs end up doing something like the above adjustments anyway. It's just harder to learn and harder to do if you are applying lots of fiddly formulas and evaluating every little bit separately. It's [B]much[/B] easier for an up and coming DM to get to the end of the session, eyeball it, and say, "You know, you guys were laying into it, but that was tougher than normal. Have a +20% bonus." [/QUOTE]

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