How important is game balance to you?

[Tony Vargas]

The only reason I don't is that I don't want to bring back wealth as XP and 1e style force feeding the party with gold to force leveling, and I'm not sure how I'd well balance XP for challenges when that XP would need to increase exponentially.

You could leave monster exp values alone and just have /very/ slow leveling at higher levels...

...or, you could make quest/story exp awards increasingly significant at higher level.

 

[Celebrim]

You could leave monster exp values alone and just have /very/ slow leveling at higher levels...

...or, you could make quest/story exp awards increasingly significant at higher level.

I'm in the 6th year of the current campaign and we've just hit 10th level. I think my leveling is slow enough as it is.

I give out awards for over coming challenges, for overcoming obstacles (like opening a locked door, or getting the party across a chasm, earns 10XP for the characters that assist the party in that way), for good RP, and occasionally when merited a story award that takes into account the tremendous work required to get this far. The later exists primarily to ensure that a party that finds a way to avoid most difficulty isn't overly penalized for being creative and foresightful.

 

[Lanefan]

I'm in the 6th year of the current campaign and we've just hit 10th level. I think my leveling is slow enough as it is.

I give out awards for over coming challenges, for overcoming obstacles (like opening a locked door, or getting the party across a chasm, earns 10XP for the characters that assist the party in that way), for good RP, and occasionally when merited a story award that takes into account the tremendous work required to get this far. The later exists primarily to ensure that a party that finds a way to avoid most difficulty isn't overly penalized for being creative and foresightful.

You could, perhaps, expand your story award into something given at the end of each at-least-somewhat-successful adventure once they get back to town (we do it in our games, and call it a "dungeon bonus") , where said bonus could be more or less scaled to the party's average level and thus get higher over time. Characters in a 1st-level party finishing a mission might only get a bonus of a few hundred xp; a 10th-level party finishing a mission might get several thousand xp each. Up to you what you do about characters who didn't for some reason do the whole adventure (died or joined in partway through, for example, or were held captive for much of it).

This gives a means for the lower-level types to catch up a bit, and to allow for a more exponential advancement table.

Lanefan