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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Joe Liker" data-source="post: 6496993" data-attributes="member: 6777505">You're going to get a slightly different answer from every single DM because this really depends on the group and the type of campaign that's being played. The first thing you have to do is answer a few questions:Where does the campaign fall on the story-based vs sandbox spectrum?If it's a totally on-rails story, milestone level-ups are the way to go. If it's sandbox, you pretty much have to go with monster-kill XP. (You could assign self-directed quest XP in a sandbox game, but that involves a lot of guesswork and possibly negotiation.)How much tolerance do your players have for story-based rewards?Sounds like not much. But note that this can be mitigated by telling them ahead of time that they will level up (or gain a specified amount of XP) up reaching such-and-such goal. It's hard to do this without spoilers, but there's nothing wrong with pulling a switcheroo -- make them think they're pursuing one goal, then when they find out that the original goal is not what they thought, give them the same reward but for a different reason.How fast do you want them to level up?Obviously you have the most control over this if you don't use XP at all. But you can still control it to a degree even if you use monster XP. If you think the default rate is too fast, just multiply all XP rewards by some fraction. You should try to keep it consistent, however, and remember that the game is intentionally designed to speed parties through the first three or four levels very quickly.How much work do you want to put into it?Quest-based rewards require the most work if you intend to delineate the exact amount of XP ahead of time. Milestone level-ups are the easiest. Monster XP is on the easy side of in-between. I use a combination of monster XP and goal-based XP rewards, but the goal-based amount is done on an ad-hoc basis because I refuse to plan anything around what the group may or may not do. (My game is fairly sandboxy.)One thing I like to do is grant XP for players who set (and fulfill) personal story-based goals. They only get this XP if the goal is completely fluffy and does not involve gaining equipment or mounts or stats or any other mechanical advantage. It must be done in the pursuit of fleshing out the character's background or making the world more interesting.</blockquote>

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