Do you or have you ever penalized characters in terms of XP?

[Nagol]

I try to avoid xp or other out of game consequences for undesired in-game activities.

I try to construct the in-game world such that natural consequences for in-game failings are real, predictable, and plausible and then I use those to drive desired behaviour. As Plane Sailing said, rewards are usually a better driving force so often I work on natural consequences that reward desired behaviour and make sure the PCs know of them.

 

[Nagol]

<snip>

Killing them, "so they don't come after you," is downright silly from a metagame standpoint. The game's not the real world - there's going to be conflict as long as we play. Killing a guy now does not mean you'll have fewer foes later!

It does mean that the next foes won't have foreknowledge of the party's abilities, working relationships, and have developed counters to typically effective tactics, however.

 

[Rel]

After years of having problems from character backgrounds that were too extensive, we had a (tongue in cheek) 100 XP penalty on Night 1 of the campaign if your character had more than half a page of backstory.

 

[Umbran]

It does mean that the next foes won't have foreknowledge of the party's abilities, working relationships, and have developed counters to typically effective tactics, however.

Part of the GM's job it to put challenges in front of you. If you put the GM in the position of not being able to plausibly use intelligence to challenge you, he'll simply resort to using raw power, which the GM has in infinite supply.

Yes, some GMs are jerks, and toy with you using pet NPCs. But, if you kill those NPCs, the GM just comes up with some godawful monster to throw at you and paste you against the wall for your temerity: in game action cannot protect you from out-of-game jerkitude.

 

[Verdande]

I don't really see the point of taking away experience, to be honest with you. It seems like a lot of "I'm the DM and I'm in total control of this game," mentality, which is what causes a lot of players to quit gaming altogether. Nobody's playing a game so that another player can get fussy at them for killing NPCs which "aren't meant to be killed", for example. What, does he have a big neon sign around his neck saying, "Don't kill me, I'm a QuestGiver!"

The DM's not in control of the game any more than the banker's in control of Monopoly. Does the banker penalize players money if they don't "play right?"

If you don't want your players to be lawless cretins, try introducing some in-game reactions to what happens. If the players manage to kill the mayor of the peaceful town they're in, what happens? Shouldn't the town guardsmen be alert and ready for assassination? Are the players the first people in the world to have thought up murder or is the town guard that lazy and inept? Do they let the players get away or do bounty hunters show up? Do they start to get a negative reputation and get shot at on sight by nearby militamen? Do upstart paladins from muddy hamlets start challenging them to duels? Think about it in terms of real life. If you kill somebody, you don't suffer divine retribution in the form of lightning bolts or lost "life force" (which is what experience is, after all), you just kind of get away with it unless somebody catches you.

 

[Kraydak]

Yes, some GMs are jerks, and toy with you using pet NPCs. But, if you kill those NPCs, the GM just comes up with some godawful monster to throw at you and paste you against the wall for your temerity: in game action cannot protect you from out-of-game jerkitude.

A non-jerkish DM won't fudge a save-or-die on a no-name NPC, probably won't fudge a save-or-die on a mini-boss, is all too likely to fudge a save-or-die on a non-reoccurring boss and almost certainly will fudge a save-or-die on an NPC that he thinks would be interesting if he reoccurs. The DM thinks he is doing good, setting the stage for awesome-sauce. Unfortunately, reoccurring NPCs (especially those that got saved by fiat) are almost always a serving of pond-scum. Killing NPCs dead is a matter of saving DMs from themselves. The players are taking on the role of an editor.

The more a DM objects to players killing NPCs dead, the more needed the killing was, because the DMs objections mean that the DM did have "plans" that he was willing to bend the rules for.

 

[Nagol]

Part of the GM's job it to put challenges in front of you. If you put the GM in the position of not being able to plausibly use intelligence to challenge you, he'll simply resort to using raw power, which the GM has in infinite supply.

Yes, some GMs are jerks, and toy with you using pet NPCs. But, if you kill those NPCs, the GM just comes up with some godawful monster to throw at you and paste you against the wall for your temerity: in game action cannot protect you from out-of-game jerkitude.

I agree nothing done in-game can protect from a jerk anywhere around the table. I prefer out-of-game choice to defend against that (like not playing with jerks).

That said, as a DM, if a opponent survives an encounter and runs into the group again he will use any knowledge gained from the first encounter to improve his chances of winning/surviving the current one. My players have countered by attempting to reduce the possibility of recovery of opponents who could challenge them again and to control the amount of information available as to their encounters and how the group fought. I consider that to be quite reasonable and in many ways prudent play.

 

[S'mon]

Killing them, "so they don't come after you," is downright silly from a metagame standpoint. The game's not the real world - there's going to be conflict as long as we play. Killing a guy now does not mean you'll have fewer foes later!

Well IMCs letting a prisoner go might mean he joins up with other foes and you face a worse fight later, like at the end of Saving Private Ryan. Or it might mean he ends up joining with *you* against mutual enemies, and you have an easier fight. Or you might simply never see him again.

 

[Umbran]

That said, as a DM, if a opponent survives an encounter and runs into the group again he will use any knowledge gained from the first encounter to improve his chances of winning/surviving the current one.

Metagame: In the long term, the game is understood to have a continuing stream of foes, of generally increasing difficulty as you go. Whether that increase in difficulty is by the NPC having information, or by some other NPC having slightly more raw power, the difficulty is going up regardless.

Note: I'm talking about the strategic, "he's going to come back and get us some unspecified time in the future" scenario. If there's some very immediate tactical threat, like the guy running to his boss in the next dungeon room, that's another matter.

 

[Nagol]

Metagame: In the long term, the game is understood to have a continuing stream of foes, of generally increasing difficulty as you go. Whether that increase in difficulty is by the NPC having information, or by some other NPC having slightly more raw power, the difficulty is going up regardless.

Note: I'm talking about the strategic, "he's going to come back and get us some unspecified time in the future" scenario. If there's some very immediate tactical threat, like the guy running to his boss in the next dungeon room, that's another matter.

Since it seems we don't play the same game (or at least we have different underlying expectations for the game) I'll just agree to disagree.