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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Gaiden" data-source="post: 178811" data-attributes="member: 103">I have been playing 3E since it came out and I must say that the rules for EL and CR are even more confusing than 2E.  (and that is saying something).If a party consists of four characters all of equal level, the rules are perfectly straight forward and I have no complaint.  However, it is when the number of members of a party differs from 4 and all members are not all of the same level that I am confused about.How do you adequately account for the increased or decreased power of a party when either one of the above difficulties arise with regards to awarding XP.  I guess what I am asking for is:  Has anyone come up with a algorhythm for determining XP that works in the spirit of 13.3 battles of CR equal to party level (whatever that is exactly) before attaining another level.There seems to be several ways of determining average party level.1.  add all levels of all party members together and divide by the number of party members. 2.  add all levels of all party members together and divide by 4.3.  modify characters through the chart on pg 101 of DMG such that one character equals an encounter level of one character of his level or multiple characters of a lower level.  So let's say that a party consisted of one 5th level character and 2 3rd level characters.  Since a 5th level is equivalent to 2 3rd level characters, the party is now equivalent to 4 3rd level characters and thus is equal to a 3rd level party.Once party level has been determined then one has to calculate experience.It seems that there are also several ways that this can be done1. add all of the XP from each individual monster together according to each monster's individual CR according to the XP chart on pg 166 of DMG2. modify CRs to EL by coming up with a grand total EL for the entire encounter using the chart on pg 101 of DMG such that if you had 8 CR 1/2 creatures, 5 CR 2 creatures, 3 CR 5 creatures and 1 CR 8 creature:  the 8;1/2's = 4 or 5, the 5;2's = 6 or 7, the 3;5's = an 8, and the 1;8 = 8.  Thus you now have 2;8's, 1;5 and 1;7 (used higher value for simplicity).  2;8's = 5or6;5's and 1;7 = 2;5's so now you have a total of 9;5s (again rounding up) which is the equivalent of an EL 11 battle.After XP has been calculated one then has to figure out how to divide it. - again with several methods1. divide equally among players2. divide XP by number of total levels of players then give each player that amount multiplied by their level3. divide XP in reverse order of original calculation of party level using the chart on pg 101 of DMG so that if it was determined that 1;5 = 2;3's then since out of the theoretical 4;3's that exist in the party the 1;5 would get half the XP and the 2;3's would divide the other half equally.All of this doesn't even include methods to calculate XP separately for each person starting from the beginning.THoughts and suggestions would be appreciated.  Again, remeber the purpose of the XP is to be consistent with the idea behind 13.3 battles per level gained for a party of four characters all of equal level fighting encounters equal to their party level.Thanks in advance for your posts and going through all of that math.<img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />edit - forgot to add that with those 13.3 battles:  each battle only uses a 1/4 of the party's resources</blockquote>

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