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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Quickleaf" data-source="post: 9270450" data-attributes="member: 20323">The main question is "what counts as a resource-depleting encounter outside of combat? and how is that quantified?"My concise answer is think of the % of resources used (hit points, spell slots, class abilities) in a scene. There's no perfect metric for this - it's a feel you acquire. The DMG encounter guidelines assume that each encounter uses approximately 12 to 16% of the party's resources – basically dividing 100 by 6 to 8 encounters they assume. A more difficult encounter would use more % and an easier one less %.There are good reasons to question the DMG guidelines, but they're at least a starting point that's OK at low levels.If the party is 1st level, a charm person and a moderate bribe paid to a guard would constitute maaaybe 10% of their resources. It's fair to call that an easy encounter.Whereas an 8th level party playing through the exact same scene, I wouldn't even consider it a significant encounter (from the resource-depletion standpoint).That's the main question.Then there's the broader question of how to handle XP for non-combat encounters. Everyone has their own approach, but mine was to break from the rules-as-written and create my own quest-based XP system that jettisons "killing monsters gets XP" entirely. Basically, using the 5e <a href="https://5thsrd.org/rules/leveling_up/" target="_blank">level advancement table</a>, I derive first column to determine how much XP is required to reach the next level up. Then the two columns are a % of that value – Minor quest 10% and Major quest 30%. So to level up, a party might complete 3 major quests and a minor quest.[ATTACH=full]347869[/ATTACH]EDIT: Since I always get asked, the weirdness at 10th and 11th level? That's not me. That's built into the game by WotC for gods know what reason. Because it was nuts and messed with the flow of my quest XP system, I choose to smooth out the quest XP values for 10th and 11th level (thus they're not perfectly 10% and 30% of the XP to level up at those levels - because the XP to level up at 10th/11th is just wonky).</blockquote>

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