I think the D&D experience system has a lot to do with my players being murder hobos.

[Blue]

I greatly prefer the 13th Age XP system - there isn't one. 13th Age is a d20 OGL game that came out before 5e by some of the lead designers of 3ed and 4e, but it's a streamlines, fast running game like 5e.

Basically, the DM gives out an incremental advance even session or two, which is part of what you get when you level. When you've accomplished some milestone she tells you to level up. You don't collect and count the Incremental Advances, they are just to keep your character growing.

I'm meh on 4e, but one of the things int he rules was treasure packets - divorcing treasure from looting monsters. Kill the bandits in the forest, maybe you loot their corpses for a treasure packet. but scare them off so they don't hit the taxmen anymore, the sheriff will reward you ... one treasure packet. Figure out that the bandits are fighting unjust taxation and join them, your share of the next heist plus a magic item they had around they couldn't use is ... one treasure packet.

The idea of doing that XP, so if you solve a problem by diplomacy, by stealth, or by killing the game doesn't penalize you for two of those three, is a strong one.

And from there, some tables may wonder why they need the middleman of XP at all, when really all they are is currency to collect for the level.

 

[Saeviomagy]

Therefore optimal play is to scout around for secrets, sneak past the monsters, negotiate instead of fight, and generally try to grab all the freebies before picking up a level.

However, people don't do this for three reasons.

You forgot the fourth reason: the CR system has never kept up with player's abilities to synergize character powers, so levelling up actually outpaces it, even if it doesn't seem to on paper.

 

[psychophipps]

You forgot the fourth reason: the CR system has never kept up with player's abilities to synergize character powers, so levelling up actually outpaces it, even if it doesn't seem to on paper.

100% agreement here. After level 8 or so we could just wade into whatever and beat it like a red-headed step-child. Almost zero real challenge. Tactics? My group's idea of tactics was waiting until the second combat round for the headlong charge *and it didn't matter*...

 

[Sunseeker]

You forgot the fourth reason: the CR system has never kept up with player's abilities to synergize character powers, so levelling up actually outpaces it, even if it doesn't seem to on paper.

Worse: monsters themselves lack synergistic powers. You can put an Illithid on a dragon and get a master-blaster combo, but they'll still lack party synergy.

 

[Rune]

Here's a bit of unintuitive logic. In homebrew games, experience points are actually a malus, not a bonus. The DM will generally scale encounters to match the party level, so gaining levels is a treadmill.

I'm not so sure that that assumption is accurate. I would wager that a far greater percentage of homebrew-campaign-DMs run sandboxes than non-homebrew-campaign-DMs. Maybe even the majority. And, while it is certainly possible to scale the challenges in a sandbox to fit the party's level, I would bet that most don't, since that would take away one of the selling-points of a sandbox campaign.

Now, that doesn't mean that the milestone-leveling (or something similar) can't work for sandboxes; as long as the party sets its own goals, it works out at least as well as more traditional XP systems for sandbox-play.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

Some players get this way because their characters were never punished for fighting or killing or robbing the wrong people. Or they just do not get invested enough in their characters that they would want to avoid such trouble.

For example, if they kill someone in a town who is not a known criminal, or someone they cannot prove deserved it, and nothing happens to them, then why would they not keep doing it?

And sure, there are plenty of players who have been this way since the early days of dungeon crawls where you kill everything that gets in your way, but there are also plenty of newer players whose only experience before trying 5th edition was video games and almost none of the rpgs have any kind of built in penalty or morality system.

 

[Giant2005]

There are a couple of things which I think DnD does wrong that promotes the murder-hobo mentality.

1. Encounter balancing. Encounter balancing is absolutely bunk - those rules should be ignored completely. The fact that the rules convince the DMs to math out a perfectly balanced encounter ensures that everything the party comes up against, the party can defeat. That just encourages them to go ahead and defeat everything because they know they can win. More than that though, it is entirely unrealistic - not everything should be winnable and it should be up to the players to evaluate the risk before picking an otherwise avoidable fight.

2. Xp Rewards. DnD doesn't have any rules for granting xp, other than murdering everything in sight, so of course that is exactly what people will do. Sure the modules all tend to give rewards for other things, but unless you are running those modules, the players have no reason to believe that they will get reasonable amounts of xp for non-combat actions. Even worse is the fact that without guidelines on how to do so, most DMs simply won't give reasonable amounts of xp for non-combat actions.
The Palladium system has a great xp system that you can transplant over pretty seamlessly and it fixes that particular issue and has the added benefit of encouraging your players to become better roleplayers.
Although a couple of those xp rewards tend to assume you are playing a good campaign, so it may result in the opposite effect - your players might go from being murder-hobos to the equally annoying SJW-hobos.
Here are the xp reward values for the Palladium system if you are interested:

Combat
Zero points for fighting that's just to show off, too proud to stand down, gets the rest of the group in trouble, or any stupid or selfish reasoning.
25-50 points for killing or subduing a minor menace.
75-100 points for killing or subduing a major menace.
150-400 points for killing or subduing a great menace. Additional Experience Points are likely.

Other Actions. Reasoning & Role-Playing
10-25 points for performing the right skill (successful or not), at the right time, for the right reason, for mid to high level characters (4th level and up), this might apply only to skills performed when they are absolutely critical or done under stressful conditions.
25-50 points for a clever, but futile idea.
25-50 points for using good judgment or one's power or skill well.
25-50 points for playing in character when it would have been easier not to.
25-100 points for a clever, useful/helpful idea or action.
50-100 points for avoiding unnecessary' violence; self-restraint or talking, bluffing or intimidating oneself (and associates) out of trouble or danger.
50-100 points for a small act of self-sacrifice, or an act of kindness, mercy, or compassion.
50-100 points for insightful and helpful deductive reasoning or keen observation.
50-100 points for a successful daring or heroic action (whether it was clever or not).
75-150 points for playing in character/playing one's alignment when circumstance or powerful temptation begged otherwise.
100 points for a quick thinking idea or action that was helpful.
100-200 points for insight or deductive reasoning that plays a huge role in a critical plan or saving lives.
200 points for a critical plan or action that saves the character's own life and/or a few comrades.
400-1000 points for a critical plan or action that saves the entire group and/or many innocent people.
100-300 points for endangering the character's own life (self-sacrifice) to help or save others.
500-700 points for a genuine life and death self-sacrifice in a situation where the character's heroism seemed likely (or almost certain) to cost him his life. Leaping in front of an energy blast meant for someone else to save that person, even though the blast is likely to kill the hero, or offering his/her own life to save the group or an innocent person (and the exchange truly seems to be a death sentence with no apparent chance for escape). Odds are that the character will really die!

 

[enigma5915]

I stopped using XP and level up characters based on passage of time. I also increased the lethality of combats in my game. Players tend to avoid combat unless they have to do it and have no other way around it. Since there is no meta award to fighting creatures to level up and the possibility of dying is a serious concern, my players think things through and tend not to act so rash and foolhardy.

 

[GrahamWills]

Monte Cook argues persuasively that the XP system can be a defining quality for what drives play at your table. He states:

The core of gameplay in Numenera—the answer to the question “What do characters do in this game?”—is “Discover new things or old things that are new again.” This can be the discovery of something a character can use, like an artifact. It makes the character more powerful because it almost certainly grants a new capability or option, but it’s also a discovery unto itself and results in a gain of experience points.

He designed the XP system to reward discovery and not combat. This has made a difference at my table. -- not just from old-school systems that reward killing, but even from systems that are milestone-based or quest-based (like 13th Age). My Numenéra players are very likely to go look at something, investigate it, and then run away or ignore it. They are also much more likely to push buttons, try random things and interact with the world.

Image a scenario where there's a fight likely to start with some abhumans/orcs. There is also a set of levels that can be pushed. In 3.5 games, invariably the approach (which is pretty commonly the correct way to do it) is to kill everything, search for info on how to operate the machinery, and try the levers. In 13th Age, my players are pretty likely to try either first. Probably the combat-built characters will attack, and the drow pastry chef bard will try out the levers. In Numenéra they ware highly likely to run to the levers, try them out, and if nothing interesting happens, leave or try harder.

Because of the XP rules, combat in Numenéra is seen as an annoyance to be avoided. It slows down your ability to get important things done. In old-school D&D it's the reverse; some players will even get annoyed with a game session with no combat, because combat si the most rewarded activity. Even when we replace the XP system with a goal-based system, we tend to phrase it in combat terms: kill the dragon, get rid of the orcs, solve the goblin problem, suppress the thieves guild.

I used to use the full XP rules from Rolemaster (back when I loved book-keeping ...) and that had two very interesting effects. First was that the amount of Xp you got from fighting something new was HUGELY more than the amount for something you knew. So the party moved around a lot (good!) so they could meet new and interesting creatures (good!) and kill them (not so good). Second, you got XP for traveling. Once they got their hands on a magic carpet, they immediately loaded up with long-term supplies and spells and started on a tour of, well, everywhere. Not sure if that ended up good or bad, but it was very clear that the XP system was motivating actions very strongly.

 

[Corpsetaker]

Thankfully I play with people who take all aspects of their character seriously. What I mean by this is alignment. If you are lawful good and violence is your first reaction then I will call you up on it. I will also have the game itself respond to such actions with the likes of laws, revenge, etc....

I put a stop to this kind of thing long ago.