Whizbang Dustyboots
Gnometown Hero
You may need to see a doctor, FYI.
D&D 5E If I were to publish a megadungeon, how would you prefer I handle XP?
- Thread starter RangerWickett
- Start date
Yaarel
Mind Mage
By simply counting encounters, it can be any kind of encounter: combat, social, exploration, puzzle. Anything that seems to receive genuine effort from the players counts as an encounter.
For levels 5 to 12, it (mathematically) takes about 15 standard combat encounters to reach the next level.
But for many reasons, it is better to simply count encounters directly - and count any kind of encounter.
Especially for a sandbox style, players can do whatever they want - anything! If there is effort to achieve any kind of immediate goal, it counts as an encounter.
The DM might decide every level takes 15 encounters to reach the next level.
Personally, I smooth out the math as follows:
Level 1 until level 2: 4 encounters
Level 2: 7 encounters
Level 3: 10 encounters
Level 4: 13 encounters
Levels 5 to 12: 15 encounters each
Levels 13 to 20: 10 encounters each
Yaarel
Mind Mage
Re the megadungeon.
Personally, for me to buy into a megadungeon adventure, the premise must feel plausible. If there is a room with six orcs in one room, and four in an other, there must be a reason why this would make sense.
Generally, a megadungeon is either a natural cavern, thus a subterranean wilderness. If there is any sapient life, there must be reason why they are there and for what they are doing.
Plausible subterranean structures can include an elaborate sacred burial complex, with the goal of honoring a dynasty while hiding buried wealth.
Otherwise, it needs to be a fully functional city, with all the needs and traderoutes of a city. (Here, "city" can be as small as a football stadium, in which case it is more like a government center for a wider subterranean "rural" population of groups of families.)
It is possible to have a cavern that is 10s or even 100s of miles long, originally formed by flowing water, much like a three-dimentional system of rivers and lakes.
Then there is the D&D Underdark, a world to itself, comprising vast wildernesses pocketed by cities and tradeposts along traderoutes.
Personally, for me to buy into a megadungeon adventure, the premise must feel plausible. If there is a room with six orcs in one room, and four in an other, there must be a reason why this would make sense.
Generally, a megadungeon is either a natural cavern, thus a subterranean wilderness. If there is any sapient life, there must be reason why they are there and for what they are doing.
Plausible subterranean structures can include an elaborate sacred burial complex, with the goal of honoring a dynasty while hiding buried wealth.
Otherwise, it needs to be a fully functional city, with all the needs and traderoutes of a city. (Here, "city" can be as small as a football stadium, in which case it is more like a government center for a wider subterranean "rural" population of groups of families.)
It is possible to have a cavern that is 10s or even 100s of miles long, originally formed by flowing water, much like a three-dimentional system of rivers and lakes.
Then there is the D&D Underdark, a world to itself, comprising vast wildernesses pocketed by cities and tradeposts along traderoutes.
Megadungeon XP should be for
(a) defeating monsters - 5e BTB works fine for this, especially if most encounters at higher level are with groups of low CR monsters
(b) Goal achievement, in particular getting treasure. Ideally I'd like to see each treasure cache have its own XP award.
Megadungeons should be big. There are plenty of good OSR examples. I've been running (in 5e D&D) Stonehell, Barrowmaze and Arden Vul, they all work fine. I recommend taking a look at these and others, eg Dwimmermount, Forbidden Caverns of Archaia, Highfell et al. Megadungeons should not be designed to be cleared, they should support multiple PC groups, over long term to indefinite play. They are campaign environments in which adventures take place, they are not themselves adventures per se.
(a) defeating monsters - 5e BTB works fine for this, especially if most encounters at higher level are with groups of low CR monsters
(b) Goal achievement, in particular getting treasure. Ideally I'd like to see each treasure cache have its own XP award.
Megadungeons should be big. There are plenty of good OSR examples. I've been running (in 5e D&D) Stonehell, Barrowmaze and Arden Vul, they all work fine. I recommend taking a look at these and others, eg Dwimmermount, Forbidden Caverns of Archaia, Highfell et al. Megadungeons should not be designed to be cleared, they should support multiple PC groups, over long term to indefinite play. They are campaign environments in which adventures take place, they are not themselves adventures per se.
Eyes of Nine
Everything's Fine
I agree with goal achievement. Something Mad Mage did was have some goal for every level. Now, our DM was running it with milestone advancement, so our only goal was to solve that goal. I think it would have been more interesting to do like you suggest - XP for resolving encounters; and XP for solving goals
This is exactly the perspective I'd take for a megadungeon. It's a setting; not an adventure. Actually a failing of Mad Mage - it wants to be an adventure but really would have been a better product if it a) behaved like a setting and b) gave DMs ways to make a mega dungeon come alive - faction play; creature migration and changes between pc ventures; handling CR / PC level disparity encounters; and more
RangerWickett
Legend
My idea is to present an overview of the dungeon, with 10 'highlight dungeons' that are more fleshed out, each with an associated mini-adventure. You can use as many or as few as you want, separately or together, but if you would like to string together a campaign, here are 10 objectives take take the party through 10 interesting parts of the megadungeon and lead toward a satisfying climax.
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MNblockhead
A Title Much Cooler Than Anything on the Old Site
That sounds very cool.
I think one of the hardest things to get right with megadungeons is making it easy for the DM to see the big picture and how the various levels connect to one another. I highly recommend using well formatted call out and if you release a PDF version, have it well hyperlinked. And, please, for the love of your hardworking DM customers, have a couple people carefully review the maps and insure that they accurately match the descriptions and that they are as error free as you can make them.
I love the stuff that Frog God Games put out. But they have released very expensive, premium printed books with expensive add ins like massive cloth maps, but then have really sloppy errors in their editing. Both Rappan Athuk and Tegel Manor suffer from this. You don't want errata discussion threads to be a main focus of customer engagement.
Assume gritty rest rules. Or, to be more accurate, assume you can only rest at certain safe points.
Have limited numbers of short-rest shrines within the dungeon. Each such shrine is one-use; once used for a short-rest, you can't use it again.
Resting in the dungeon otherwise is impossible.
Block most kinds of extra dimensional travel within the dungeon. Have force magic decay in the environment, so you can't use the hut.
---
Why do I say this?
Because once you have done that, you can now make the dungeon more dangerous with less monsters. So the total XP earned is less, but the total fights required is more.
Fighting 2-3 encounters, taking a short rest, 2-3 encounters, short rest, 2-3 encounters and then long rest becomes far more standard. Beating those 2-3 encounters to reach a shrine becomes key; and some shrines are 4 encounters deep.
At less XP per encounter, more encounters and more content before you level.
And with gritty rests, it becomes 10 days per baseline adventuring day. So instead of 45 days from 1 to 20, it is 450 days from 1 to 20, more than a calendar year.
If we add in any kind of serious travel of downtime it stretches out further. Imagine if different parts of the dungeon can be a week's travel apart, and many areas are 2 weeks from a place to have a safe long rest (how mega is your mega dungeon?). Now an expedition enters the mega dungeon, travels 2 weeks (attempting to avoid fights; maybe gets in 1 or 2) to the goal adventuring zone, does 6-9 fights with 2 short rests (taking 3 days) to defeat that zone, travels 2 weeks back to the nearest place of safety, and then takes a week for a long rest.
That is 14+14+7+3 = 38 days for 1 "adventuring day". At that rate, it is almost 5 years to reach level 20.
While those long periods of rest/travel don't have to take up table time (you can have mechanics for it), they do take up calendar time. And they explain why a partly cleared area recovers and becomes dangerous again if the PCs retreat for a long rest; because it has been a month.
---
Have a higher-level danger economy going on.
Areas of a dungeon are impacted by the player's actions more than just "did they kill creatures here". Some areas will repopulate. Some with change in response to being attacked. Others will clear out even though the PCs never went there.
Most areas repopulate or otherwise become dangerous again after a long rest if you don't clear/finish the entire area. Other areas, the monsters move out if a significant attack happens and refortify somewhere else, taking their treasure with them.
---
Don't make the mega dungeon too crowded. There should be long travel times within it, and areas with multiple routes. Cave complexes, mushroom groves, etc; not just corridors.
Have limited numbers of short-rest shrines within the dungeon. Each such shrine is one-use; once used for a short-rest, you can't use it again.
Resting in the dungeon otherwise is impossible.
Block most kinds of extra dimensional travel within the dungeon. Have force magic decay in the environment, so you can't use the hut.
---
Why do I say this?
Because once you have done that, you can now make the dungeon more dangerous with less monsters. So the total XP earned is less, but the total fights required is more.
Fighting 2-3 encounters, taking a short rest, 2-3 encounters, short rest, 2-3 encounters and then long rest becomes far more standard. Beating those 2-3 encounters to reach a shrine becomes key; and some shrines are 4 encounters deep.
At less XP per encounter, more encounters and more content before you level.
And with gritty rests, it becomes 10 days per baseline adventuring day. So instead of 45 days from 1 to 20, it is 450 days from 1 to 20, more than a calendar year.
If we add in any kind of serious travel of downtime it stretches out further. Imagine if different parts of the dungeon can be a week's travel apart, and many areas are 2 weeks from a place to have a safe long rest (how mega is your mega dungeon?). Now an expedition enters the mega dungeon, travels 2 weeks (attempting to avoid fights; maybe gets in 1 or 2) to the goal adventuring zone, does 6-9 fights with 2 short rests (taking 3 days) to defeat that zone, travels 2 weeks back to the nearest place of safety, and then takes a week for a long rest.
That is 14+14+7+3 = 38 days for 1 "adventuring day". At that rate, it is almost 5 years to reach level 20.
While those long periods of rest/travel don't have to take up table time (you can have mechanics for it), they do take up calendar time. And they explain why a partly cleared area recovers and becomes dangerous again if the PCs retreat for a long rest; because it has been a month.
---
Have a higher-level danger economy going on.
Areas of a dungeon are impacted by the player's actions more than just "did they kill creatures here". Some areas will repopulate. Some with change in response to being attacked. Others will clear out even though the PCs never went there.
Most areas repopulate or otherwise become dangerous again after a long rest if you don't clear/finish the entire area. Other areas, the monsters move out if a significant attack happens and refortify somewhere else, taking their treasure with them.
---
Don't make the mega dungeon too crowded. There should be long travel times within it, and areas with multiple routes. Cave complexes, mushroom groves, etc; not just corridors.
I definitely think it's important for megadungeon play to use 1 week long rests or similar. Been doing that for years. I find short rests work ok at 1 hour if limited to 3 per day. I also recommend use of 1:1 time as per Gygax in the 1e DMG, so that the IRL calendar generally matches the game calendar. This makes book keeping very easy.
My main 5e Barrowmaze group have played 30 sessions so far, 25/4/21-19/3/23. In that time the two highest level PCs have reached 10th level (second one last session), and just under two years have passed in-world. Helix & the Barrowmoor
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