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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Paraxis" data-source="post: 6496879" data-attributes="member: 13009">I just level up my players every few sessions after climatic story points or after major fights. But you don't seem to like that method.  I would suggest writing down a list of the type of behavior you want from your players and also decide about how many game sessions you would like to see them play each level at.  After all XP is just positive reinforcement.So if you have an issue with players missing sessions, add attend the session to the list, if paying attention is an issue add that, if you want detailed journals or help maintaining a blog add that, if you want diplomatic intrigue, and so on.So for example if you are running a campaign of spies and intrigue in a major city, your list might be something like this.<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Deal with an agresive situation through diplomatic means</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Discover an important secret about a key npc</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Keep a journal that represents your messages sent to your spy master</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Assassinations of assigned targets</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Theft of important information</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Survive</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Maintain your cover identity</li> </ul>Now you have a list of seven things you want to see the players/characters do, a few like survival and maintaining cover identity are hopefully expected every game  and you expect atleast another two or three things from the list each session, so expected XP is 5 things accomplished each week.If you think they should be at a given level for 5 weeks than set the XP needed to level at 25.  You can weigh some items on the list more than others, like if you think a high risk assassination is worth 3 xp go ahead and do that.After a little playing around you will have what you want desired behavior from your players and your desired amount of time at each level.Players like XP because it is a tangible award they get at the end of the night telling them they got better and did a good job.  With D&D's focus on most XP coming from killing things, it is no wonder many games become kick down the door and kill-kill-kill, loot-loot-loot.  You can even customise the list for each player or add to the general list for each player, every time the Vengeance Paladin gets to uphold his oath and slay a great evil he gets XP, each session the Thief Rogue steals a object of value that is a challenge to his skill he gets XP, and so on.</blockquote>

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