Have You Ever Given 0 XP, or Taken XP Away?

[Agamon]

While I don't think you're on crack, WL, I'm not sure if I ever wouldn't do this, but I haven't in the past couple decades or so.

 

[Rystil Arden]

I think I've given out a few negative ExP maybe 3 times in my DMing career, every time because the character did something so absurdly stupid that it *deserved* to go backwards in experience.

Giving out no ExP at all to anyone for a whole session happens often - pretty much every time they're in town doing treasury and training.

As for individual encounters, if you* don't participate, you* don't get ExP. If you* do take part, you* get ExP. Period.

* - "you" meaning you as character, regardless of whether you as player are present at the session or not...ExP are given for what the character does, not the player.

Lanefan

So if the player was present, rolled a low initiative, and had an action ready for her turn in initiative, but someone else ended the fight first, you would give her no XP? That seems to encourage a selfish PC who win initiative to nuke a fairly-easy encounter with her best stuff in order to get all the XP to herself.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

I'd only give 0 xp to characters who did nothing. Even if they did the wrong thing they should get xp.

A lawful good person burning down an orphanage? Sure, here's some xp, and by the way, take that LG and make it CE.

Maybe they were evil orphans?

Doing nothing was exactly the cause for the one time that I have given 0 XP. And only to one player, who's character stayed in his room at the inn, and never came out - all session. The rest of the PCs got into all sorts of trouble in the town, and had a great deal of fun in the process. Afterwards he complained that 'nothing happened'. All the other players looked at him funny.

The Auld Grump

 

[Umbran]

I have had sessions where nothing got done, and people didn't even play their roles well, so that they didn't get any XP.

I cannot, at the moment, think of a situation where I would find a negative XP award to be appropriate.

The example in the OP, especially, would not get a negative award from me, as it implies a relationship between the character and alignment that simply does not exist in my games.

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

I have applied XP penalties in times past that would result in LESS XP for the PC when XP was being handed out. Disruptive or uninvolved Players and their PC's being the primary reason for that (and few and far between were those incidents thankfully), but once upon a time there were actual rules for XP penalties for alignment changes. I don't recall if I ever had the brass to apply the full penalty thereof, but I'm sure I did something along those lines.

However, give out ZERO xp at rewards time, or spontaneously hit a PC with negative XP arbitrarily and ad hoc? Never done that. Might have been a time when I would have done it if the player had REALLY ticked me off (and THAT is no mean feat). But since I left 2E behind I'd not even consider it.

Edit: this assumes there is XP to have been earned in the first place. I have given 0 xp on "Papers & Paychecks" sessions where the PC's don't "adventure" but do spend time tallying up piles of gold from here and there, commissioning new armor, building a new tower, calling followers, consulting sages, enchanting new items, etc. There were plenty of times in some campaigns where that sort of stuff accumulated until a big chunk of (or even all of) a session would be accounting and paper shuffling with perhaps some RP thrown in to sound out new adventure possibilities or initiate some follow-up on old ones - and thus 0 XP for anyone for the evening.

 

[Mortellan]

I give out zero XP in my epic campaign all the time. At APL 30 they are just too powerful for 90% of encounters to earn anything.

 

[Nomad4life]

I’ve given negative XP before, but that was due to out-of-game behavior (repeated attempts at cheating, antagonizing other players, etc…)

Thankfully, that was only one time with one specific player who was not invited back anyway.

 

[was]

I've given 0 xp before, but never taken it away.

 

[Ed_Laprade]

No, never.

You learn from errors as much if not more, even if you do something bad, it's an experience.

And there are other methods of punishment.

Bye
Thanee

QFT

 

[thedungeondelver]

I...hm. I'm not sure how I'd categorize what I've done. I've gone "by the book" per the DUNGEON MASTER'S GUIDE and rewarded less EAXP for an encounter than a player's character "should have gotten" for bad behavior, or for generally not playing well with others.

I dunno if that constitutes "taking XP away" or not, hm.