EXPs for Repeat Buisness?

[Zenon]

This is pretty clearly a call by any individual DM.

For my games, as you basically suggest, PCs can only ever get one unit of XP over the lifetime of an opponent. If they drive it off, they may get 25% or 50% the XP value. Drive it off again, maybe get half of what's left. Kill it and they get whatever's remaining.

I have had cases where villains get reincarnated, and PCs get a full share of XP when they kill him again.

I bet I'm in the minority with this method.

No, your not. This is approximately how I do it, except I use up to 33% of the XP, and encounters with the exact same creature gather more of what's left (smaller and smaller) until it is defeated.

It's like learning by doing, you might have ran away, but you learned something. Otherwise it's almost like teaching your players that they should never run (which can lead to TPKs).

subnote - Dang! First I'm agreeing with KarinsDad, now dcollins! Well, at least sometimes I don't agree with kreynolds....

 

[BBrendolfus]

testing...

 

[BBrendolfus]

The above was me just sorting out posting.

I recently ran an encounter with a Bebilith, which was defeated but planeshifted as it was called not summoned. It wants revenge and is the creature of choice for the undead calling sorceror.

I awarded xp the first time and I'll award xp the next time.

Key to my decision is that both encounters will be prepared ahead of time and be quite different. Usually I won't do this but I feel that the upcoming encounter will be a new challenge in itself and the Bebilith will have a greater understanding of the PCs abilities.

 

[Someguy]

HI BBrendolphus

and i agreee with ridleys Cohort..that is generally how I do it...

 

[BBrendolfus]

Hi Someguy, yeah Ridley's Cohort describes it well. My players have seemingly no interest in 'how' I come up with the numbers so long as things hum along.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Some folks seem to think of XP as a limited resource, with only a certain amount available from a given monster. I don't think that makes sense. XP is just a measure of how much the PCs have learned from a given situation, so it's effectively unlimited as long as they're challenged. If you fight the same great wyrm ten times, and each time it's a challenge with real risk, you get just as much XP as if you had fought ten different dragons.

I'd not thought of it this way before, but actually it makes perfect sense. Defeating something that runs away and comes back a little later isn't much difference from defeating two of those things on different occasions.

One of the issues that I wrestle with is giving xps for characters when they are defeated. My PC's were recently stomped by a druid and his pet dire bear. The druid eventually walked away from them, leaving them scattered and dying. I did give them 25% experience for the encounter, since we do learn from our mistakes IRL, and any mistake that you can walk away from in D&D must be worth something

Cheers

 

[spunky_mutters]

In previous editions, this argument would have been fuzzier. The way things are now, you are calculating XP based on the level of the encounter. If players successfully complete the encounter, they should get the XP. If the baddie comes back, it will probably have reinforcements, or possibly situational modifiers to make it a new (and probably tougher) encounter. In situations where the players are trashed, I would be inclined to calculate XP based on the level of the encounter that they were successful against. If they killed the wizard's familiar, they might not end up with any real XP, but if they killed a couple of golems, disarmed some magical traps and killed his familiar, they have overcome an encounter equal to that. It is just the wizard that I would remove from the XP calculations if he got away.

In the past, I wouldn't award the creature XP unless it was killed, but I would have story-based XP if the players foiled the baddie, or prevented it from doing what it was trying to.

 

[Anubis]

Two things:

1) THIS IS NOT A DM CALL.

2) THOSE OF YOU NOT REWARDING XP AFTER EVERY ENCOUNTER ARE DOING IT WRONG.

This is CLEARLY stated in the PH near the beginning of the "2000 SURVIVAL KIT". It is also repeated with only slightly different wording on page 165 of the DMG. (The slightly different wording is a section that explains XP for situational encounters that are more about plot than fighting.)

Here it is, and I quote: "The adventurers don't need to defeat every last monster to earn experience for all of them. If the characters are facing eight goblins, defeat five, and force three to flee, they've earned experience for all eight goblins. They've overcome the challenge that the goblins posed. Conversely, if the adventurers defeat five goblins, then decide to retreat, they receive no experience award."

Considering this is not changed in the DMG, errata, or the FAQ, it stands as the rule. You need not kill or even incapacitate opponents to get XP for them, you merely have to "win", even if you never actual fight at all! (To quote the next section: "It's possible for clever players to earn experience points without ever drawing a sword. If the characters' goal is to retrieve an idol from a hidden temple, they'll earn experience points for the ogre guardeven if they wait until it falls asleep before sneaking in. But if they were just wandering around and encountered a sleeping ogre, they wouldn't earn experience points for sneaking past it.")

In other words, you aware XP for defeating the enemy in ANY way, be it by killing the opponent, making the opponent retreat, or whatever.

MY only question is, what if an opponent runs away and comes back for another fight during the same adventure on the same day?