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Message: <blockquote data-quote="KarinsDad" data-source="post: 6337860" data-attributes="member: 2011">The way I see it, if there is a substantial treasure, then there will almost always be guards. In a novel, the author can write cool ways for the protagonist to avoid them, but that's a bit harder to do in D&D.For example, let's take a 1E Ogre lair (the example in the DMG) and let's roll average rolls:2-20 = 11 Ogres11 Ogres = 1 Ogre Leader2-12 = 7 Ogre females2-8 = 5 Young OgresOgres are 4HD+1 creatures with 19 hit points = 90 XP + 95 XP each.Ogre Leaders is 7 HD with 31 hit points = 225 XP + 128 XP each.Ogre females are effectively 4 HD creatures with 16 hit points = 60 XP + 64 XP each.Ogre young are 1 HD creatures with 7 hit points = 10 XP + 7 XP each.Total XP for monsters alone: 3341 XP.The adults have 45 gold each or 885 XP.The lair has 2250 copper = 11.25 gold plus 1050 silver = 52.5 gold plus 625 electrum = 312.5 gold plus 500 gold plus 1.35 gems = 371.25 GP plus 0.5 jewelry = 1402.5 GP  plus 1.25 gems = 342.75 GP = 2992 GP = 2992 XPThe magic in the lair is 0.1 sword, armor or misc ~= 5000 GP or 833 XP plus 2 potions = 1000 GP or 600 XPSo from this, 3341 XP came from monsters and 5310 XP came from treasure (course, I was being very generous with the treasure by allowing the chances of high value items into the calculations which most DMs would not introduce into the game, upping the overall XP of treasure).5310 of the 8651 XP came from treasure or 61%. This is a solid majority, but I would not call it "the bulk". And most DMs I know would not allow things like Vorpal weapons or 5000 GP gems into the mix, so the treasure total here is a bit high. Plus this does not take into account other expenses that eat into the GP profit (and hence the XP total which is based on GP profit, not GP total) like hirelings, or giving a magic item to a henchmen to keep him happy, or paying tariffs to a local lord, or raising one or more PCs from the dead, etc.So yes, if killing the monsters was about half of the XP (and a party typically had to get past them anyway), chances are that most PCs in most 1E games got a significant chunk of their XP from killing stuff. They might have gotten more XP from GP over the lifetime of the PCs (no doubt this often happened), but the majority of the time, they had to get the XP from killing stuff first before they got the XP from the gold. If they failed killing the monsters, they got 0 XP.Plus, people are people. Many people playing D&D want to roleplay their characters. That means fighters and monks fight, magic users cast spells, and assassins assassinate. The Fighters are not fighting if the thief PC convinced everyone to sneak past all of the fights (and the fighter in armor typically cannot do that anyway, magic users have invisibility, but it is one PC per casting and most 4th level party facing 4th level ogres typically has one such spell at most). The ability and motivation of the party to be sneaky just isn't there in most 1E groups/campaigns, at least based on the capabilities of PCs in 1E and IME.Many people also use D&D as escapism and just want to kick down doors and bash skulls. That did not change when 2E came out, 2E was a result of how everyone played the 1E game. Many PCs went into the various A, B, C, ... X series modules and fighting was a major staple of those adventures (ditto for Judges Guild, etc.).I'm not quite sure what version of 1E you were playing. Sure, a lot of XP came from gold in 1E. But in order to get the gold, the majority of the time, PCs had to fight first as a general rule. No fight = no gold if there was no way to sneak past (and most DMs would not have any significant treasure unprotected).</blockquote>

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