CleverNickName
Limit Break Dancing (He/They)
In an earlier, unrelated thread, the subject of milestones vs. XP points came up. I didn't want to squash the discussion, but I also didn't want to derail my own thread...so I forked it over here.
In a nutshell: I plan to use milestone leveling in my next campaign, instead of assigning XP points. Here's how it all went down.
Please discuss! I didn't want to kill the discussion; I just wanted to keep it on-topic. How do you feel about Experience Points, and how they are distributed?
In a nutshell: I plan to use milestone leveling in my next campaign, instead of assigning XP points. Here's how it all went down.
To which I replied:I would like a d20 Modern 2.0. but there are some problems about balance of power. How to explain it better? Do you remember the survival horror videogame "Alien: Isolation"? Only a xenomorph is a true nightmare, but in other games, for example the 1994 Capcom arcade "Aliens vs Predators" you can kill literally hundreds. A psycho-killer with a knife, for example the night slasher from Stallone's movie "Cobra" is too dangerous for an unarmed civilian character as Ingrid Knudsen (Brigitte Nielsen) but Marion "Cobra" Cobretti (Sylvester Stallone) could kill all the cult of "the new world". With the right weapon you can kill a dinosaur and only a shot is enough. With remote-control drones you can kill enemies from other town, or country. You could drive a truck to run over horde of zombies. Buffy the vampire slayer only needed a RPG (rocket-propelled grenade) to kill the judge (season 2 episode 14) and the Mayor was tricked to go to a zone with lots of explosives.
How should be the XP reward and the challenge rating when the monster is too hard, or easy?
And [MENTION=6775031]Saelorn[/MENTION] joined the discussion.I don't mind experience points, but the way they are assigned has always seemed silly to me., and slanted toward violence. Why do we get experience for combat, but not for anything else?
It's a little bit off-topic, but to answer your question: I plan to do milestone leveling in this campaign instead of handing out XP.
So I kicked it over here with this response:Experience Points are slanted toward violence, because levels primarily reflect your capacity for violence. Fighting is how you get better at taking a punch, which is the only stat that goes up with every level. If you're not going around and fighting everything, then it doesn't really matter what level you are.
That's certainly true for some games.
However, exploration scales with level just as combat does. With a higher level comes greater skill proficiency in things like Perception and Investigation, and better access to magic items (sorry, I mean "technology" and "computers"), vehicles, and other gear. You unlock class features and spells that let you move more easily, travel farther, carry more, and find things more quickly.
Same for the social interaction pillar, as well. The higher your level is, the more proficient you have become in things like Deception and Persuasion, you've acquired items that buff Charisma, you've unlocked class features and spells that let you charm or influence others. You've met more factions and made more contacts, and the quality and importance of those contacts are higher. And so on.
Anyway, this is off-topic...it has nothing to do with running a sci-fi campaign using 5E rules. I'll make this a different topic in the forum so that we can discuss it there.
Please discuss! I didn't want to kill the discussion; I just wanted to keep it on-topic. How do you feel about Experience Points, and how they are distributed?
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