D&D General Experience Matters - The benefits of XP

[iserith]

"Whenever the DM feels like it" is usually still combat, plot, or goals. Just with less transparency about how far you're progressing. Alternatively, an untransparent combat, plot, or goal based leveling system is basically "Whenever the DM feels like it."

Transparency is key in any incentive structure in my view, whether that's in a game or at work. If players are motivated to advance their characters and they know what specific things they need to do to achieve that, they tend to do those things. Not every player, not every time, but the tendency is there, and that's quite a useful thing in my experience.

 

[Vaalingrade]

The solution to that is to have the players plan out what they will do on next level-up prior to the session.

Which is fine except thanks to how XP works vs free will, leveling can be a surprise.

 

[iserith]

Which is fine except thanks to how XP works vs free will, leveling can be a surprise.

What do you mean?

 

[Vaalingrade]

Like I said previously, the DM can plan as much as they want, but the party is able to run around an get way more XP than is expected and if you ding as soon as you hit the mark, boom -- level by surprise.

 

[iserith]

Like I said previously, the DM can plan as much as they want, but the party is able to run around an get way more XP than is expected and if you ding as soon as you hit the mark, boom -- level by surprise.

Oh, you mean the DM is surprised? Not sure I see how that matters much. If I'm running a sandbox where they are incentivized with XP to do particular things (combat & social, say) with exploration incentivized with treasure and opportunity, then it works itself out naturally. It becomes less efficient to level up by staying in the easy zone. So they just go to Mt. Danger instead of Pussywillow Forest in search of bigger rewards.

 

[Vaalingrade]

I think we might be talking past each other.

What I'm talking about is it's going to be difficult to plan out your next level when you don't know when the next level is coming.

Unless you're talking about having a build in mind, in which case I'm going to duck and cover from the headsplosions incoming.

 

[iserith]

I think we might be talking past each other.

What I'm talking about is it's going to be difficult to plan out your next level when you don't know when the next level is coming.

Unless you're talking about having a build in mind, in which case I'm going to duck and cover from the headsplosions incoming.

Oh, the player being surprised then. Yeah, I encourage the players to have that sorted out in advance. It's not hard to get a sense as to whether you're going to level up in the next session when using XP.

 

[S'mon]

Levelling up - I use either the DMG training rules, with time shortened to 2 weeks/1 week with mentor, or else level up during a long rest. I use 1 week long rests (3 days in Odyssey of the Dragonlords).

I use 1:1 game: real time (except in Odyssey) and there's 1 or 2 real & game weeks between sessions, usually.

 

[Alby87]

The printed book as they are not helpful. They tend to do "Milestone" levelling. And the older had completely wrong values.

I started a Tales from the Yawning Portal campaign using XP, just for the old school feel of them. The book says, in the introduction, that running the dungeon in series gave the players enough XP to be a campaign. Guess what? At the end of Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan my players were halfway to 6 level, and the next dungeon, White Plume Mountain, is a level 8 one.

Had to use some DDAL modules to compensate (using milestones, now).

 

[Li Shenron]

I've never met a player who didn't think about leveling up from time to time. It's part of the game.

Yeah, "from time to time", for example, when you reach milestones, exactly. Which certainly doesn't have to be "whenever the DM feels like it" as you wrote. A milestone corresponds to a specific group achievement related to the story. It could be freeing a hostage, complete a journey, defeat an BBEG and so on. A DM saying "you all level up today just because it's about time" is not using milestones. So clearly, levelling up by milestone incentivizes completing milestones successfully. Which implies that if the PCs neglect (by choice or chance) to complete a milestone, the DM can definitely consider not to level them up. The downside is that it can become an incentive for the DM to help too much the PCs reach the milestone, in fear that if they don't level up then they'll be unequipped to deal with the next chapter of the campaign.