How have XP awards changed?

[Chronosome]

Hey, all.

I haven't purchased the 3.5 DMG upgrade yet, and I keep hearing about how one of the things that's changed is how experience points are awarded. Could one of you fine folk from the future give me the scoop?

Thanky danky.

 

[Flyspeck23]

The difference is that a character of lower level than the rest of the party will receive more XP for any given encounter, because the actual amount of XP a character receives depends on her level, not on the average party level.

More work for the DM, more fun for the players, as those who're a level or two behind (because of being raised from the dead, for instance) catch up a little.

IIRC, this was introduced in the FRCS.

 

[PaulSC]

To clarify the 3.5 procedure:

For each character in the party
-> Calculate total experience as if average party level equals their level
-> Divide this total by the number of party members
-> That's the share for that character

The effect is as described above. Characters of lower levels get a bit more experience than those above them.

I have a somewhat related question.
Does anyone have a better way to handle this situation?
Player A is say 100 exp shy of the level X. Player B is level X by only 100 exp. If the party has a big encounter (or several if the DM doesn't calculate exp on the fly), since Player A is of lower level (s)he gets 300 exp more than Player B.

Now Player A has 100 more exp than Player B.

I guess I could rule that your total exp (after an award) is the lower of:
current exp + award based on being your current level
and
minimum exp for next level + award based on being at the next level

Does anyone have a better way, or am I interpretting things wrong to begin with?

 

[Chronosome]

Thanks for the replies, guys.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Does anyone have a better way, or am I interpretting things wrong to begin with?

Its a pretty unusual case, the best thing to do is simply to manually adjust the figures before handing the xp out; tables serve the GM rather than vice versa and all that!

Cheers

 

[d(sqrt(-1))]

There's also a change in the way cohorts get XP - they no longer suck it from the party XP, but each cohort basically gets (cohort level/PC level) x XP awarded to PC.

Mark